A 24-year-old Little Havana man is facing 14 felony charges after Miami police say a cloud-storage tip led detectives straight to his front door. Seth Thomas Vela was arrested following a raid on his home in the 200 block of Southwest Sixth Avenue on Thursday, accused of possessing at least 13 videos depicting boys and girls as young as 1 to 3 years old being sexually abused, along with one video that detectives say involved a dog.
The case began in 2025, when Dropbox alerted the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to five illicit files uploaded to its cloud storage service, according to WPLG Local 10. That kind of automatic referral isn't optional for tech companies — under 18 U.S.C. § 2258A, electronic communication and cloud storage providers like Dropbox and Google are federally required to report suspected child sexual abuse material to NCMEC's CyberTipline as soon as they become aware of it, according to Traverse Legal.
Miami police then requested that Google provide information tied to the email address registered to the Dropbox account, the outlet's report notes. That request came back pointing to Vela, who investigators say was associated with at least a half-dozen other email addresses. One of those additional addresses led detectives directly to Vela's home on Southwest Sixth Avenue, per the same account.
What Detectives Found Inside the Home
When Miami police raided the home Thursday, they seized several electronic devices, the station's report states. Detectives said Vela had more than a dozen child sexual abuse videos, and one of the videos involved a dog in the abuse, according to the arrest report cited by the outlet. Vela invoked his rights and refused to answer police questions, the report notes.
Vela is now charged with 13 counts related to possession of child sexual abuse material, plus one count of having images or videos of sexual conduct with animals — 14 felony charges in total. As of Friday, his bond was listed as still to be set, per jail records referenced in the report, and he is being held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, according to Miami-Dade County.
How Florida Law Treats Each File as a Separate Charge
Florida's stacking of charges by individual file explains why Vela faces so many counts at once. Under Florida Statute § 827.071, simple possession of child sexual abuse material is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison per count, but possessing 10 or more files can elevate the charges to aggravated possession, a second-degree felony carrying up to 15 years per count, according to The Hoffman Firm. Separately, Florida Statute § 828.126 makes knowingly possessing, filming, or distributing pornographic material depicting sexual conduct between a human and an animal a third-degree felony, per The Florida Senate.
A conviction on the possession counts could also carry sex-offender registration, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Florida also maintains a public sexual offender registry.
Part of a Wider Miami Pattern
Vela's arrest follows a string of recent Miami-Dade cases built on the same pipeline of automated tech-company tips feeding into local investigations. Earlier this month, Hoodline reported that a Miami man was held on 15 felony counts after a Gmail tip to NCMEC flagged child abuse files uploaded to a personal account. Days later, other Miami-Dade cases were also mentioned in coverage.
That national scale is enormous: in 2025, 61.8 million images, videos, and files were reported to NCMEC's CyberTipline. The article also references sentencing in South Florida cases.
It remains unclear whether forensic analysis of Vela's seized devices will lead to additional charges, what bond amount will ultimately be set, or whether federal prosecutors will join the case alongside Miami-Dade's state charges.
