A 52-year-old Carrollton man is being held at the Carroll County Jail after detectives say a tip from state investigators led them to seize his digital devices and charge him with two counts of sexual exploitation of children. Alfred “Lee” Alloway was arrested on July 23, following an investigation that began the day before, when the Carrollton Police Department received a CyberTip from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
According to WSB-TV, the GBI's tip alleged that Alloway possessed material depicting a child engaged in sexually explicit conduct, per police. CyberTip is described as the nation's centralized reporting system for the online exploitation of children, and it fed directly into an active investigation by Carrollton detectives, who seized digital devices from Alloway during the case.
Those devices are now being examined by a certified digital forensics examiner working out of the Carrollton Police Department's digital forensics lab. Police say additional charges are possible depending on what that forensic review turns up, though as of now Alloway faces two counts of sexual exploitation of children. He remains in custody, and as with any pending case, he is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.
How the Case Reached Carrollton Detectives
The Carrollton Police Department is an affiliate agency of the GBI's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, a network of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies that investigates technology-facilitated crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children. The department's detectives receive specialized training and resources through that program, using it to investigate cases, recover digital evidence, and identify offenders. The detective who worked the Alloway case was trained through the Internet Crimes Against Children program, per the station's report.
This kind of tip-driven casework has become far more common in recent years. Annual CyberTip reports processed in Georgia surged from roughly 2,160 in 2013 to more than 32,000 by 2024–2025, according to data published in Police Chief Magazine by former GBI leadership. Nationally, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received 21.3 million CyberTipline reports in 2025 alone, escalating more than 53,000 urgent cases directly to law enforcement, per MissingKids.org. The organization also notes that the federal REPORT Act, enacted in 2024, expanded tech platform reporting requirements to include online enticement and sex trafficking, contributing to a 158% jump in enticement reports submitted to NCMEC between 2024 and 2025.
A Statewide Enforcement Network
The infrastructure behind Carrollton's investigation traces back decades. The national Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force program, created by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1998, has evaluated more than 922,000 child exploitation complaints and led to over 95,500 arrests nationwide, according to the Department of Justice. In Georgia, that federal-state partnership has produced coordinated stings like Operation Byte Down, a February 2025 sweep in which the GBI's Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit and 33 affiliate agencies arrested 17 people statewide, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
The Carrollton case is also part of a pattern of similar arrests across West Georgia stemming from CyberTip leads. In neighboring Troup County, sheriff's deputies arrested a LaGrange man in April on two counts of child sexual exploitation after a CyberTip referred through the GBI. And in March 2025, a federal judge sentenced a Marietta man to over six years in prison after a CyberTip-driven investigation uncovered thousands of illicit media files, a case Hoodline also covered.
Potential Penalties and What Comes Next
Under Georgia Code § 16-12-100, sexual exploitation of children is a felony carrying a mandatory prison term of five to 20 years for a first offense, fines up to $100,000, and mandatory lifetime registration on the state sex offender registry, according to Justia Law. Whether Alloway faces additional counts will depend on what investigators find as they continue examining the seized devices, police said.
Carrollton police are asking anyone with additional information to contact Detective Chad Cook at 770-834-4451 or [email protected]. The investigation remains active.
