Nixa Junior High School Assistant Principal Colby Fronterhouse pretended to be a Kickapoo High School student named Lacey Jones while enticing one of his students, a 13-year-old boy, to send him nude photos, according to a detention motion filed today in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.
Fronterhouse, 41, is being held in the Greene County Jail after being arrested on charges of sexual exploitation of a child and sending and receiving child pornography.
The allegations against Fronterhouse are detailed in the motion:
On September 11, 2020, Christian County, Missouri, Deputy Devin Wagner contacted John Doe, then 13 years old, and John Doe’s father. Deputy Wagner was advised that John Doe had been contacted by an unknown individual, claiming to be a 14 year old female, (the “suspect”), using the phone number (417) 228-0055 and that John Doe had transmitted text messages with this phone number for approximately one week.
During the exchange of messages, the suspect convinced John Doe to transmit nude images of himself, in exchange for nude images of herself. Christian County, Missouri, Sheriff’s Office Detective Sarah Spurlock-Patterson downloaded the contents of John Doe’s Apple IPhone 8.
Detective SpurlockPatterson used law enforcement resources to learn the suspect phone number (417) 228-0055 was registered to Bandwidth, LLC, but was maintained by Ad Hoc Labs.
An investigative subpoena to Ad Hoc Labs revealed that the account associated with the burner phone number (417) 228-0055 was created on November 5, 2019, and “burned/expired” on September 18, 2020. The account listed phone number (417) 827-7535 as the actual phone number behind the burner phone number of (417) 228-0055.
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Task Force Officer (TFO) Joseph Fletcher did research and determined that to register for a “burner” number with Ad Hoc Labs, a subscriber must provide a legitimate phone number. The defendant was notified of law enforcement’s request to Ad Hoc Labs for the subscriber information.
A subpoena to AT&T revealed that the phone number (417) 827-7535 was registered to the defendant since November 10, 2007.
AT&T provided two addresses for the defendant, one of which was 2573 South Mumford Avenue, Springfield, Missouri 65809. AT&T provided an email address for the defendant of colbyfront@yahoo.com. Ad
Hoc Labs provides a service called the “Burner App”. According to their website, “Burner is your "other" number – a smart privacy layer for the smartphone era, giving users the power to take control of their communications and personal data. Enabling users to obtain and manage additional phone numbers for voice, SMS, and MMS communications, Burner is fast, safe and private. Burner lets users get as many numbers as they want, use each as a private line on an iPhone or Android phone, and keep numbers indefinitely or 'burn' numbers they no longer need.”
On January 6, 2021, TFO Fletcher began reviewing the forensic analysis of John Doe’s cell phone and John Doe’s associated iCloud account. TFO Fletcher located a series of images of a male in underwear, with what appeared to be an erect penis outline showing through the underwear.
TFO Fletcher also located an image titled IMG_0466.JPG depicting a male exposing his penis. These images match the content of the text message thread between the suspect and John Doe. The exposed penis image was last modified on September 5, 2020, fitting the timeline of the text message and the content of the text messages between John Doe and the suspect.
TFO Fletcher reviewed the conversation that took place between John Doe and the phone number (417) 228-0055, which occurred between September 2, 2020, and September 6, 2020. During the conversation between John Doe and the user of (417) 228-0055, John Doe told the suspect he is 13 years old and the suspect identified himself as a 14 year old female.
The first text message sent by the suspect to John Doe read, “Hey, Ryan, was kind of hoping I’d hear from you over the weekend or this week:). I am so glad our paths crossed on Friday because I DEFINITELY had fun at your place:)...I needed to relieve some stress, and that definitely did the trick! Anyway, would love to hang out again sometime soon if you’d want!...so let me know if you’re interested:). Hope to talk to you soon!! – Lacey.”
After John Doe clarified that he is not “Ryan”, the text message conversation continued on for approximately four days with the suspect asking and encouraging John Doe to send the suspect sexually explicit images, having sexually explicit conversations with John Doe, and John Doe sending sexually explicit images to the suspect.
At some point, the suspect made specific requests for poses or types of images from John Doe. During the text conversation, the suspect sent John Doe multiple images of a female who appeared to be approximately 14 years old, some of which were in bathing suits or underwear. The suspect appeared to entice John Doe into sending additional images of himself by promising to send John Doe additional images of the female.
John Doe stopped responding to texts on September 6, 2020.
Within the conversation, the suspect ultimately identified himself as “Lacey Jones” a student who attends Kickapoo High School. Law enforcement followed up with Springfield Public Schools and determined that there was no student with the name “Lacey Jones” who attended Kickapoo High School.
TFO Fletcher was able to determine that the defendant was residing at the 2573 South Mumford Avenue address, and obtained a federal search warrant signed by Chief Magistrate Judge David P. Rush for this residence on January 21, 2021. The federal search warrant was served on the residence on January 26, 2021.
During the service of the search warrant, TFO Fletcher contacted the defendant at the residence. In the defendant’s right front pants pocket was an Apple iPhone XS cell phone, which was seized by TFO Fletcher.
On January 27, 2021, HSI TFO Larry Roller, a certified forensic analyst, was able to perform a partial extraction of the iPhone seized from the defendant’s person. In the information provided to TFO Roller from the iPhone extraction, the iPhone was utilizing the phone number (417) 827-7535. The email address colbyfront@yahoo.com was found as having been used on the iPhone and was the email address associated with the iCloud account on the iPhone.
Recovered in the partial extraction of the iPhone collected from the defendant were 16 connection logs to the Burner application server, showing this iPhone had connected to the servers owned and managed by Ad Hoc Labs Inc. Burner application.
One of these connection logs showed the defendant’s iPhone had connected to the Burner application servers on September 4, 2020, which was during the time frame when the text message conversation occurred between John Doe and the Burner application VoIP phone number (417) 228-0055.
TFO Roller also determined that the defendant had completely reset his IPhone on September 21, 2020, at 0553 hours. This reset occurred after John Doe stopped communicating with the defendant and three days after (417) 228-0055 was allowed to expire.
The defendant also reinstalled Windows on the Dell laptop recovered during the search warrant on November 17, 2021, at 22:09 hours, six days before Dee Wampler sent the email regarding the investigative subpoena to Ad Hoc Labs.
The defendant was employed as an Assistant Principal at Nixa Junior High School in Nixa, Missouri, at the time of the text message conversations with John Doe.
On January 27, 2021, TFO Fletcher made contact with the administration at Nixa Junior High School who confirmed that John Doe’s cell phone number was present in the school records database and that the defendant would have had access to that information.
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