A former National Crime Agency Officer has been convicted of indecent images of children, possessing extreme images, and misconduct in a public office.
Adam Taylor of Waltham Abbey pleaded guilty to the offences at a hearing last week after officers found more than 700 indecent images of children, and another 200 images of extreme pornography or bestiality on computers and storage devices at his home.
Officers from the NCA's Anti-Corruption Unit arrested the 40-year-old in April 2022, after discovering that an IP address linked to his home address was accessing illegal content.
Taylor, who joined the NCA in 2014 and was working as an intelligence officer at the time, was immediately suspended. He was later dismissed for gross misconduct.
Searches of his home address found “a large number of laptops, tablets, USBs, hard drives, DVDs, CDs and other electronic storage devices” containing the images, the NCA said.
Some of the images were found on a computer Taylor had been given for work.
Taylor pleaded guilty to four counts relating to the images and two counts of misconduct in a public office at a hearing at Southwark Crown Court on 12 June. He was bailed until sentencing on 2 August.
NCA director general of operations Rob Jones said people like Taylor "have no place in law enforcement”.
“It was other NCA officers, working diligently and covertly to protect the public, who were responsible for bringing him to justice,” he said.
"The NCA is at the forefront of tackling online child abuse and it is vital that we identify and root out anybody within the agency involved in this or any other criminal activity. Whilst shocked and saddened that an NCA officer could be convicted of such crimes, we recognise that the scale of the online child sexual abuse threat means we must remain vigilant and work proactively, as we did in this case, to identify any potential risk in the agency,” Jones added.
"Behind each of those images recovered from Taylor's devices was a vulnerable child who had been abused. We remain determined to pursue offenders like him wherever in society they operate, and to protect the victims of online child sexual abuse."