A 36-year-old Rossville man is facing two felony counts of sexual exploitation of children after Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents traced online activity involving child sexual abuse material back to his home. Nathan Aldrich was arrested and booked into Walker County Jail, capping an investigation that GBI says began a year and a half earlier.
According to the FOX 5 Atlanta report, the GBI launched its investigation into the online possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material in February 2025. Investigators eventually traced the activity to Aldrich's home in Rossville, a small city in Walker County that sits along the Tennessee border in the Chattanooga metropolitan area and had a population of 3,980 residents as of the 2020 U.S. Census. Aldrich was arrested on Thursday, per the GBI, and taken into custody at Walker County Jail.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says its Regional Investigative Office in Calhoun and the Walker County Sheriff's Office directly assisted the agency's Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit with the case that led to Aldrich's arrest. Whether additional charges will ultimately be filed remains unclear, per the FOX 5 Atlanta report, and the investigation is still described as active.
How the Case Fits Into a Statewide Task Force
The probe was carried out under the umbrella of the Georgia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, a specialized program housed within the GBI's CEACC Unit that focuses on identifying people trading child sexual abuse material online, according to the GBI. The task force was established in 2003 with funding from the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and now includes more than 220 affiliated law enforcement agencies and prosecutorial offices across the state, the agency notes. The GBI's work fits within the broader national ICAC Task Force Program, which the U.S. Department of Justice created to help state and local agencies build up their forensic and investigative capacity against technology-facilitated child exploitation.
The scale of that work is considerable. GBI operational figures show the CEACC Unit has received 11,647 CyberTipline reports from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in a single year, while executing 110 residential search warrants and making 85 child exploitation arrests over that same span. Just days before Aldrich's arrest, the GBI's CEACC Unit joined 24 other ICAC task force agencies for what was called Operation Sneaky Peach, a statewide sweep that resulted in 26 arrests on child sexual exploitation charges.
Potential Penalties and How to Report Tips
If convicted, Aldrich would face severe mandatory penalties under Georgia law. Under Georgia Code § 16-12-100, felony convictions for sexual exploitation of children carry mandatory statutory prison sentences ranging from 5 to 20 years for a first offense, rising to 10 to 30 years for any subsequent conviction, according to J. Ryan Brown Law. A conviction also carries mandatory lifetime sex offender registration. Georgia law separately requires commercial or private media processors who spot suspected abuse material to report it immediately to law enforcement or the GBI, a mandate that grants those reporters civil and criminal immunity, per Georgia Criminal Lawyer.
Authorities are urging anyone with additional information about the case to contact the GBI CEACC Unit at 404-270-8870. The GBI also accepts anonymous tips regarding child exploitation through several other channels, including its toll-free tip line, online submissions at gbi.georgia.gov, the See Something, Send Something mobile app, and NCMEC's CyberTipline.
Part of a Broader Pattern in Georgia
Aldrich's arrest follows a familiar pattern for GBI cyber investigations across the state this year. A Forsyth man was charged in January after a similar CEACC Unit investigation, and a Mount Airy man was arrested in April on multiple sexual exploitation of children charges in Habersham County. Earlier cases in McDuffie County and Buena Vista followed the same investigative path, underscoring how frequently NCMEC CyberTipline reports and task force coordination lead to arrests across Georgia's counties, both large and small.
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