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Child pornography investigation that began in Pacific Northwest leads to suspect in Middleburg: warrant

49-year-old booked into Clay County jail on 3 counts of possessing child pornography

Alvin Bost (Clay County Sheriff's Office)

MIDDLEBURG, Fla. – An investigation into child pornography that began back in the fall of 2020 has now led to an arrest, according to an arrest warrant.

Alvin Bost Jr., 49, of Middleburg, was taken into custody Monday afternoon at his home and then booked into the Clay County jail on three counts of possessing child pornography.

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According to the 10-page arrest warrant obtained by News4JAX, the investigation into Bost began started in October 2020 when a detective in Ellensburg, Washington, received a complaint that a man who identified himself as Marc Halston on Craigslist was offering to pay a woman $3,000 if she painted his house in the nude. Later in the warrant, it states he offered to pay the woman $100,000 to send him nude photos and videos of herself with other females who are under the age of 12.

The arrest warrant states that detectives in Washington looked up the man’s Facebook page where they found a “marc.halstone.39″ was related to the Craigslist ad and a Gmail account with the same name.

Further investigation led to the discovery of an IP address that was traced back to Middleburg, Florida, and a second IP address that traced back to a work office on Philips Highway in Jacksonville, the arrest warrant shows. According to the warrant, Both locations had one name in common: Alvin Bost. According to the warrant, the IP address that traced back to Middleburg was Bost’s home, and the IP address that traced back to Sissin’s Office Systems is where Bost worked as an internal IT manager. Detectives noted in the warrant that this is when they figured out Marc Halston was a fictitious name and that the suspect they were looking for was more than 2,800 miles away in the Sunshine State.

Detectives in Washington contacted the Clay County Sheriff’s Office and that promoted deputies to get a search warrant for Bost’s home since they were provided screenshots of detailed conversations about soliciting images and videos of nude children, the arrest warrant shows.

The search of Bost’s home was conducted in February 2021, and according to the arrest warrant, numerous electrical devices were seized as evidence to be examined.

According to the arrest warrant, when a forensics analysis of an external hard drive and a computer tower were completed, it revealed images and videos of multiple nude children

Bond for Bost was set at $300,000. As of Tuesday, he remained at the Clay County jail.

A News4JAX background check revealed Bost was previously convicted of attempted rape in North Carolina. He was also convicted of assault in North Carolina.


About the Author
Erik Avanier headshot

Award-winning broadcast and multimedia journalist with 20 years experience.

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