Created: 5/24/2004 10:36:52 PM 
By Jamie Muro First Coast News
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- An international crack-down on child pornography turned up 200 leads on the First Coast. There have been several arrests, including a clown from the First Coast, who is known as "Spanky."
Twenty-three-year old Thomas Allen Riccio is charged with ten counts of third degree sexual exploitation of a minor. He accused of downloading child pornography.
But for Riccio, this is a bizarre turn of events for a man who dreamed of entertaining children for a living. Riccio is a circus clown for Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. He was hired a few months ago. At the time, he was an employee of First Coast News. It was then Riccio talked with us about his dream.
"Just the smiles and stuff to make people laugh, you're about to entertain. The key ingredient is the heart, that's your key ingredient," Riccio said in an interview with First Coast News in November.
Riccio was arrested in Fayetteville, North Carolina while the circus was performing there. Authorities say his computer in his room on the circus train contained two thousand pictures of child pornography downloaded from the internet.
"The pictures we observed in that were very, very young females, five and six years old that were engaged in sexual activity with older adults," said Sgt. Thompson of the Fayetteville Police Department.
Riccio's arrest is part of a bigger sting called "Operation Falcon." Operation Falcon was a major American investigation of internet child pornography that involved investigators from the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Postal Service. The governmental agencies identified an American company that provided credit card support to a number of sites physically located in the former Soviet Union.
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