Overview
- Lincoln Erickson, 32, of Farmington Hills pleaded guilty in federal court to receipt of child pornography and remains in custody.
- Court filings say agents found videos of minors engaged in sex acts and AI‑generated child sexual imagery on Erickson’s phone, and quoted messages in which he admitted abusing a friend’s three‑year‑old.
- The probe expanded after the March 2025 arrest of Brett Tooman in Ohio, whose case and undercover FBI contact led investigators to Telegram threads that implicated Erickson.
- Two other men identified in court papers — psychotherapist Jeremy Brian Tacon and attorney Joshua Ronnebaum — were arrested after encrypted chats and alleged message threads linked them to the network.
- Erickson faces 5 to 20 years in prison, up to $250,000 in fines, mandatory sex‑offender registration, and is scheduled for federal sentencing on September 15, 2026; investigators say the mix of real and AI imagery complicates future prosecutions and victim identification.