D Walden 
A Jupiter man accused of sending child pornography to multiple Stuart Middle School students will be held in federal detention as he faces a charge of distribution of child pornography, a judge ruled this week.
Coltin Plummer, 27, of Jupiter, was arrested following an FBI investigation that identified six minor victims in Stuart and a minor victim in South Carolina, court records show.
The FBI was assisted by officials with the Martin County and Palm Beach County sheriff’s offices.
During a detention hearing Tuesday in Fort Pierce, U.S. Magistrate Judge Shaniek M. Maynard, rejected pleas by Plummer, and his Jupiter parents to allow him to remain free on bond.
In an order released Friday, Maynard stated that “no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the safety of other persons and the community if the defendant (Plummer) is released.”
“The weight of the evidence against Plummer, Maynard noted, “is significant at this stage of the proceedings.”
“According to that evidence, defendant sent child pornography and obscene images to several preteen children, verbally threatened to rape two of them, asked one of them whether they wanted to see his gun and sent one of them a screenshot of her own location to prove that he knew where she lived,” Maynard wrote.
“This presents a significant danger to minors in the community, and there are no conditions that the court could set that would sufficiently mitigate that danger.”
Maynard also cited evidence that Plummer targeted a 12-year-old girl in York County, South Carolina via Snapchat and attempted “to force her to send him nude images of herself.”
“At some point, he told her, ‘I know where you sleep, I’ll just rape you,’” Maynard wrote.
According to a federal criminal complaint affidavit, on Feb. 7, the assistant principal of Stuart Middle School called Martin County Sheriff’s Office deputies after four students came to her about an unknown Snapchat user sending them inappropriate sexual messages and videos.
Two additional students told law enforcement officers they also got messages and videos from an unknown Snapchat user.
A task force officer with the FBI got a state search warrant for Snapchat for the identity and location of the seven Snapchat accounts that were sending the girls inappropriate messages.
According to the affidavit, Snapchat gave the FBI officer an IP address, which linked to Plummer’s mother’s address in Jupiter, where Plummer lived.
Federal agents served a search warrant at the Jupiter home of Plummer’s mother, where he was found and taken into custody. Plummer told FBI officers he used his phone to download and save the child pornography images he sent students he’d accessed from the dark web.
Officers found multiple inappropriate images of children on Plummer’s phone. He admitted creating multiple Snapchat accounts to send pornography to users he didn’t know.
In her detention order, Maynard noted Plummer had no criminal history and worked at Southern Exposure Enterprises, a barn and fencing company.
Records show Plummer’s parents, who along with his sister appeared with him in court, requested he be released and offered to be co-signatures on a bond.
