Attorney charged in child-porn case

GLENDALE — A 57-year-old attorney was arrested Friday at his law office in connection with possession of child pornography and an Uzi, police said.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office charged Walter Luostari of Glendale with three felony counts of possession of child pornography and one felony count of illegal possession of an assault-style rifle.

Glendale Police Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators arrested Luostari at his law office on the 1100 block of Foothill Boulevard in La Cañada Flintridge.

“He’s been accessing, proliferating and collecting child pornography — explicit pornography,” Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said.

He had been the subject of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation since October 2006, according to the district attorney’s office.

The agency had been investigating an Internet website that depicted child pornography.

Police searched Luostari’s Glendale apartment during their investigation, according to the district attorney’s office.

Luostari’s case stems from the agency’s Operation Predator program, in which various law enforcement agencies throughout the nation work together to investigate child pornography.

Luostari is the third man to be arrested in agency investigation in the past three months.

Christopher Kenji Hamilton, 33, and Eric Johnson, 34, were each indicted in August on one count of possession of child pornography after federal authorities discovered that they were using peer-to-peer networks to share graphic videos and images of children, officials said.

Luostari is expected to be arraigned Monday in a Los Angeles Superior Court.