South African man wanted in US after missing court hearing in child sexual abuse material case

Court documents allege that Venter used cryptocurrency to purchase child sexual abuse material on the dark web.

A South African man facing three charges of possessing child sexual abuse material in the United States is wanted after allegedly failing to appear in court.

An arrest warrant has been issued for 31-year-old Glen Venter in Rochester, Minnesota, Minnesota Now reported.

Venter failed to appear for a required hearing in Olmsted County District Court last week, according to the publication.

He was released without bail in late April after initially being charged with one count of possession of child pornography.

Court records show that the criminal complaint was amended in June to include two additional counts of the same offence.

The case stems from an investigation into alleged cryptocurrency purchases of child sexual abuse material.

According to the charges, Rochester police received information that Venter owned a Coinbase account which had allegedly been used to purchase the material on the dark web in early February.

A search warrant was executed at his Rochester residence on April 28.

The criminal complaint states that Venter admitted to investigators that he had been viewing child sexual abuse material for more than 10 years.

He also allegedly admitted to using his cryptocurrency account to purchase sexually explicit material involving children.

During the investigation, police reportedly discovered that Venter had been the subject of three cyber tips involving child sexual abuse material submitted by Facebook in 2022 and 2024.

Those reports were traced to an account based in SA.

Additional cyber tips submitted by Google and Snapchat were linked to accounts in Rochester.

The court document further states that Venter told investigators that he and his family relocated from SA to the Rochester area in September 2025.