DECATUR - Bond was set at $75,000 on Friday for a 45-year-old Decatur man arrested a day earlier by local and federal authorities for investigation of possession of child pornography and disseminating it via U.S. mail and the Internet.

The suspect remained in the Macon County Jail late Friday afternoon. Formal charges have not been filed.

Decatur police were proceeding with the case against the suspect, but federal authorities could decide to step in and take over the case for prosecution in federal court, said Sgt. Gary Buenting of the Decatur Police Department.

The man's computer was seized, and an analysis of its contents was being done by a Customs and Immigration Enforcement Bureau agent, Buenting said.

A Decatur police detective and agents of the U.S. Postal Service, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI executed a search warrant at about noon Thursday at the suspect's house in the 1000 block of West Leafland Avenue, said Detective Ronald Borowczyk in a sworn statement filed in circuit court in support of the bond request.

The suspect was found to have used a computer to run a file sharing program that provided a peer to peer connection, Borowczyk said. An FBI agent in the New Orleans, La., field office conducted an investigation into peer to peer programs and connected with the Decatur man on March 26, he said.

The FBI agent advised he had downloaded six images from the Decatur man that were child pornography, Borowczyk said. Four of the pictures showed prepubescent females performing sexual acts, one depicted a knife held to a girl's body and the final download was a strip of 15 images with prepubescent and teenage subjects engaging in various forms of sexual activity, he said.

The Decatur man also was found to possess several forms of media such as VHS videotape, DVD and LaserDisc with pictures of a woman who is now 37 but was a teenager when the pictures found were made in 1984 and 1985, Borowczyk said.

Under questioning, the suspect allegedly acknowledged to officers that he knew the woman was underage when the photos were taken. He allegedly further stated he reproduced the images to trade with other people on the Internet and that he used the U.S. mail to send the images to others on several occasions.

Ron Ingram can be reached at ringram@;herald-review.com or 421-7973.