Carson hearing on child porn charges set Thursday
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A hearing will be held in Federal Court on Thursday for a local chiropractor accused of buying child porn on the internet.
The suspect, Dr. Marvin Carson, will appear before U.S. District Magistrate Travis R. McDonough at 2 p.m., March 5 at the U.S. District Courthouse in Chattanooga. He faces felony charges of intent to view child pornography.
The FBI opened an investigation into Carson in January 2026 after the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (“TBI”) referred to FBI Tullahoma two cyber tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children involving Carson. The FBI investigation determined that, between February 2024 and August 2025, Carson made four Cash App transactions of Bitcoin to a wallet associated with child sexual abuse material. Based on the FBI investigation, Judge Steger ordered law enforcement to search Carson’s residence for, among other items, images of child pornography and to seize materials containing images of child pornography.
On Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, federal and state law enforcement executed the residential search. During the search, officers located and seized multiple devices including but not limited to two desktop computers, two laptop computers, an iPhone, and an iPad.
“During the search, agents with the FBI and TBI interviewed Carson,” the investigator said in his complaint against the suspect. “Carson acknowledged his understanding of the Miranda rights by signing a rights waiver form and answered questions posed to him by the agents. Carson confessed to viewing child pornography: ‘I can admit that I looked at images [heavy sigh] that were illegal.’; ‘I looked at images. I knew they were illegal images.’ and ‘I’ve seen images that I shouldn’t’ve seen.’”
Carson reportedly admitted that he had been viewing child pornography since he was in his early twenties. When asked about the amount of images Carson had viewed, Carson admitted in the past year he had seen “hundreds to thousands that were definitely illegal.” Carson stated that he had most recently viewed child pornography the week before his home was raided.
Carson reportedly confirmed his control over the Cash App account used in the reported transactions and that the linked credit union account was also his, and Carson stated that he had learned to use Bitcoin and the dark web in order to subscribe to the child pornography website, which he identified as “Tortube.” He admitted to the Cash App payments, but not all four, and explained that the payments went to a subscription service that allowed him access to a large amount of child pornography. Carson admitted that he preferred girls aged about sixteen years old but that he had viewed child pornography featuring victims of all ages.
The investigator said the hard drives continue to be analyzed but the search has already netted numerous illegal videos. The videos in question include children three and under having inappropriate relations with an adult male. There is also a video that is allegedly a teenager involved in sexual relations.
