An Anchorage man is charged with trying to meet up for sex with a 13-year-old girl, who was really an FBI agent posing as a minor online, according to a charging document.
Federal authorities say they arrested Benjamin Roundy, 41, early Saturday and charged him with solicitation of a minor, possession of child pornography and attempted possession of child pornography.
“The FBI is continuing to actively investigate whether (Roundy) had hands-on contact with any of the minor children depicted in the images and videos,” the charges say.
According to the charges, agents began looking at Roundy back in 2018, when they received a tip about someone uploading videos of child porn to a hosting service. But Roundy moved from Eagle River to Anchorage sometime between 2018 and 2020, and “the investigation was suspended in order to prioritize other active matters,” the charges say.
In July of 2023, an undercover agent began communicating online with Roundy, saying they were a 13-year-old girl. The charges describe in detail Roundy’s sexually explicit messages to the fictitious girl through July and into August and his attempts to convince her to meet him in person.
On Thursday, according to the charges, the girl told Roundy the street she supposedly lived on, in Anchorage’s Muldoon neighborhood. The FBI was trailing Roundy, and the charges say they saw him “prowling” the street, apparently trying to find the girl, who had not yet agreed to meet him.
The next night, after more chatting, the fictitious girl told Roundy she was at a friend’s house, and when he asked for the address, she gave it to him, the charges say. Roundy again drove to the area, eventually parking in a spot where he could see what he thought was the friend’s home, according to the charges. That’s when the FBI took him into custody.
The charges say investigators found over 2,000 photos and 200 videos in a folder on Roundy’s phone, most of which appeared to be images of child pornography.
In a separate court filing seeking Roundy’s continued detention, a prosecutor wrote that Roundy’s attempts to find the girl amounted to “an active level of engagement and proportionate dangerousness lying outside the bounds of similarly situated defendants.”
Roundy’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Federal prosecutors said in a written statement that the FBI is looking for any other potential victims Roundy might’ve had. They said he went by the names “Aleks” or “Alekzander Marko,” and anyone with additional information should contact the FBI Anchorage Field Office at (907) 276-4441 or anonymously online at tips.fbi.gov.
The FBI refused to answer questions about why agents suspended their 2018 investigation of Roundy, and the Department of Justice declined to comment.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Roundy and his family had moved from Eagle River to Anchorage. According to the charges, only Roundy moved to Anchorage.
Casey Grove is host of Alaska News Nightly, a general assignment reporter and an editor at Alaska Public Media. Reach him at cgrove@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Casey here.
