District Attorney will look into case involving water polo photos on sites

The Orange County District Attorney's Office is reviewing whether laws were broken when photos of local high school boys water polo players were posted on gay sex Web sites.

Non-action photos of unsuspecting high athletes on local pool decks have been placed on more than a half-dozen Web sites with sexual content, the Orange County Register has reported.

"We are looking into it right now to determine if there were any laws violated," Orange County DA spokesperson Farrah Emami said Tuesday. "Right now it's too early to tell."

Should the review find laws were broken the DA's office will launch a full investigation into the matter, Emami said.

UC Irvine officials are in the process of hiring an outside firm to assist the university in an investigation into whether Scott Cornelius, a UCI police dispatcher, took inappropriate photographs of boy water polo players.

Photographs on gay porn sites of unaware high school boys water polo players from Orange County high schools and other Southern California schools are credited to Scott Stanford and AllenSnaps.com, a Web site linked to Allen Rockwell, a Southern California photographer.

UCI police chief Paul Henisey said last week his department has received information indicating that Scott Cornelius and Scott Stanford are the same person.

Contact the writer: sreid@ocregister.com