U.S. Department of Justice

Federal Bureau of Investigation

257 East 200 South, Suite 1200
Salt Lake City, Utah 84111

For Immediate Release

Date: May 6, 2008

Contact: SA Juan T. Becerra
Salt Lake City, Utah
(801) 579-1400

Special Agent In Charge, Timothy J. Fuhrman, announced that:

The Salt Lake City field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Paul Lawrence Briggs pursuant to an active warrant for failure to register as a sex offender.
Briggs was identified by television news viewers who identified Briggs from a surveillance video at a Denny's located at 250 West 500 South, Salt Lake City, Utah.
The video shows the images of Briggs dropping an object as he walks into the Denny's restaurant. The object was picked up by another patron of the restaurant and turned over to the restaurant manager. The manager viewed the object, identified as an MP3 type of media storage device with a viewer. Within the device were three micro SD memory cards which were viewed by the restaurant manager. The Manager, after briefly viewing the images notified the FBI of possible child pornography on the memory cards.
The FBI, with the help of the news media, placed the surveillance photographs on the news and viewers helped to identify Briggs from the surveillance video.

The FBI arrested Briggs early this afternoon at a local store. He will be booked into the Salt Lake County Adult Detention Center.

The federal investigation into this matter continues.