Richland computer tech back in jail, accused of similar sex crime

The owner of a Richland information technology business is being held in the Benton County jail on suspicion of possessing child pornography after serving a federal prison sentence related to child porn.

Sky Steven Bennett was arrested on April 20 while being on 20-years probation after a five-year federal prison sentence for receipt of child pornography, according to federal court documents.

In 2012, he was employed by Columbia Energy and Environmental Services, which has worked on Hanford nuclear site projects.

An allegation that Bennett was mishandling electronic information for the company led to an investigation that showed he created a back door in the company servers to delete child pornography on a personal hard disk drive attached to his work computer, according to company documents.

He also accessed an audio monitor in the company’s server room to hear what was being said there.

During the investigation he admitted to downloading child porn from the internet since he was 17, according to court documents. He was 34 when he was sentenced in 2014.

At the time, Richland police recovered from Bennett’s electronic devices about 600 pictures of child pornography, including of infants and toddlers being harmed.

While on probation, his electronic devices were being monitored by the U.S. Probation Office in the Eastern District of Washington.

On April 20, the probation software alerted that he was potentially accessing explicit material through his work computer.

Bennett said initially that he was recovering data from a memory card for a client.

But 90 minutes later said he had found an old memory card from prior to his 2012 arrest that had been returned to him by the Richland Police Department, according to a court document.

He gave the memory card to law enforcement, and a Homeland Security Investigations special agent and a Richland police detective found deleted files of sexual images of prepubescent girls, according to court documents.

The Homeland Security Investigations agent said in a court document that there was no record of police seizing a memory card or returning a memory card in the previous investigation.