An Aurora man arrested last week was caught with more than 400,000 photos and videos of child sexual abuse material, according to the police department.
Michael Ray Lozano, 52, was arrested on Dec. 4 and charged with eight counts of felony sexual exploitation of a child, according to a from the Aurora Police Department.
Federal investigators first learned about a suspect in Aurora attempting to download child sexual abuse material in 2023, police said. FBI agents later searched Lozano’s home and seized an unknown number of devices, which together stored several terabytes of explicit material involving children.
The FBI handed the investigation over to the Aurora Police Department in August 2025 so charges could be filed in state criminal court after the Assistant U.S. Attorney’s Office in Colorado declined to accept the case, according to Lozano’s arrest affidavit.
Lozano allegedly downloaded the files through Freenet, a free software that shares documents between users and attempts to hide which computers upload to or download from the network, the affidavit stated.
Law enforcement across the country has investigated the trafficking of child sex abuse material on Freenet since 2011, police said in the affidavit. Message boards on the website allow users to post keys to explicit photos and videos for others to download, or to discuss the sexual exploitation of minors.
Some of the files believed to have been downloaded by Lozano between December 2022 and August 2023 include videos of children — as young as 2 and as old as teenagers — engaging in sexual contact with each other and with unidentified adults, according to the document. Many of the videos were nearly an hour long, and at least one was more than 90 minutes.
When FBI agents searched Lozano’s home in August 2023, he told them he had an attraction to minors and watched the videos “to keep his urges under control,” the affidavit stated.
He told agents he started watching child sex abuse material in 1996, that he viewed it nightly and that he downloaded “new content” every few months.
The FBI reviewed the materials found on Lozano’s devices between October 2023 and August 2025, according to the affidavit. That’s when the case was transferred to the Aurora Police Department and, in September, an arrest warrant was issued for Lozano.
As of Thursday, Lozano had posted bail at $5,000, police said. He is next scheduled to appear in court Friday morning.
Anyone with information on the case is asked to contact Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867. Tipsters can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a reward of up to $2,000.
This is a developing story and may be updated.
