A GWENT policeman exchanged indecent images of children over an internet messaging service, a court heard yesterday.

Michael Roger Owen Thomas, 40, formerly of Newport, is on trial at Cardiff Crown Court accused of 11 counts of distributing indecent images of children, ten counts of making indecent images of children and one count of possessing indecent images of a child.

He denies all the charges.

Jim Davies, prosecuting, alleged a group of six men used a free internet messaging service called Google Hello in 2007 to view indecent images of children.

He said this system, which went out of use in June 2008, was used for family and friends to share photos but said it was a gift for those who wanted to share child porn.

Five of the men, from across the UK, have been arrested.

Mr Davies said the sixth man used the username oscarnovind2 and claimed this was the username used by Thomas.

Mr Davies said that between March and October 2007, Thomas’ username had sent 253 images and received nearly 2,500.

He said 33 of those sent and 456 of those received were indecent images of children.

He said Thomas had also received indecent images from other people.

But Mr Davies said no indecent images were found on Thomas’ computer.

The court heard how Thomas’ laptop had been taken to PC World in Newport on October 11, 2007 seven weeks before he was arrested.

Mr Davies said this was because of a computer fault and so the hard drive had to be reformatted which destroyed some of the traces.

He said a forensic examination of Thomas’ computer showed how an advanced anti-virus software had been used hours before his arrest on November 29, 2007.

He said this appeared to have been done simply by chance but that it deleted more than 28,000 files.

The prosecution told the jury that Thomas can be identified as using the username oscarnovind2 because of email addresses, IP addresses and through reference to Thomas’ work records.

For example, Mr Davies said Thomas’ online betting account used one of the same email addresses used by oscarnovind2 on Google Hello.

He said it could not have been the case of a neighbour hacking into Thomas’ internet accounts as his router had a security password.

Proceeding