Lake Forest Chamber of Commerce director and former city planning commissioner Jerry J. Zechmeister is scheduled to be arraigned this morning for allegedly having watched and downloaded about 160 videos of child pornography on home computers, according to prosecutors.
It is further alleged the 61-year-old shared kiddie porn on the Internet for seven years.
The Orange County Child Exploitation Task Force, special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations and detectives from the Newport Beach Police Department investigated Zechmeister before his Oct. 9, 2013, arrest at his Lake Forest home.
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Jerry J. Zechmeister, Lake Forest Chamber Director and Ex-Planner, Popped for Child Porn
A conviction could send Zechmeister to state prison for up to three years and eight months and force him to register as a sex offender for life, according to the Orange County District Attorney's office.
Currently out on $20,000 $50,000 bail heading into this morning's hearing in Newport Beach, Zechmeister is charged with two felony counts of possession and control of child pornography.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.