A 62-year-old retired flight attendant is in custody at the Federal Detention Center on charges that he took pictures of himself having sex with underage girls in Thailand and transported the images when he re-entered the United States.
Ronny Lee Waldrip is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court on Monday to find out whether he will remain in custody pending trial.
A federal grand jury returned an indictment in June charging him with transporting child pornography and three counts each of sexual exploitation of a child and engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign country.
The court kept the indictment sealed until Waldrip’s arrest and court appearance Wednesday.
The Department of Homeland Security said it started investigating Waldrip in January 2011 after a person with whom he was living in Bangkok reported that the former flight attendant was involved in child pornography activities in Thailand.
The DHS said the person later allowed Homeland Security Investigations agents to enter the residence, where they found compact discs and digital video discs containing images of child pornography.
The person also told the agents that Waldrip had traveled to a Thai village in an attempt to procure a minor for sex.
When Waldrip arrived in Honolulu in February 2012, HSI special agents confronted him about his activities in Thailand and seized Waldrip’s cellphones, camera, two laptop computers and two spy cameras.
The HSI said its agents found images of Waldrip having sex with three minor females on one of the computers.
Agents later tracked down the females, and all three identified themselves and Waldrip in the images.
Two of the girls said they were 15 when they had sex with Waldrip. The other said she was 12 or 13.
The third girl said Waldrip agreed to pay her family approximately $34,000 if she had sex with him, the HSI said.
