Bloomington resident Christopher Perantoni pleaded not guilty to a fifth-degree child pornography possession charge in his initial hearing Feb. 27, Monroe County Prosecutor Jeff Kehr said in an email to the Indiana Daily Student.
He was remanded to jail with bail set at $150,000 or $1,000 in cash.
Perantoni was a general manager at Community Nissan of Bloomington, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The Bloomington Police Department arrested the 55-year-old Feb. 24 after executing a search warrant at his house, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Police found a USB flash drive while searching his house allegedly containing thousands of pornographic images and videos of women below the age of 18.
Detective Kevin Frank, a BPD officer who specializes in sex crimes against children, estimated the youngest children depicted were 5-7 years old.
The affidavit singled out 10 folders within the USB drive containing child pornography, but stated the named examples in the report were only “a small sampling” of the drive’s contents.
Police found additional media storage devices in his home and are still investigating the contents of the others.
Among named pieces of evidence, six of the ten folders named in the affidavit contained Cyrillic characters. Cyrillic is an alphabet most used in the Russian written language.
No further court dates have been scheduled since his initial hearing.
