An Oklahoma man was arrested after hundreds of images of child pornography were found on a phone that belonged to him — but it was all part of a scheme hatched by his wife, investigators say.

The wife, 33-year-old Lacey Hucks, and her friend Angel Moore, 44, are accused of working together to frame the husband, according to arrest affidavits.

Investigators believe Hucks’ plan centered around gaining custody of their kids.

“It had to do with her getting her children back,” Garvin County Sheriff Jim Mullett told McClatchy News. “If they could get him out of the picture, then she thought she would get her children back.”

On April 18, Hucks drove her accomplice, Moore, to the Wynnewood Police Department, gave her the incriminating phone, and asked her to make a report, according to an affidavit filed May 2.

Moore turned over the device, telling police she had seen Hucks’ husband using it to look at child porn at his Garvin County home.

The phone was handed over to Garvin County deputies. On it, they found hundreds of images of “various juvenile female victims,” documents say.

Hucks’ husband was placed under arrest. But investigators became suspicious when the phone he had on him — his current phone — had no similar content as the one Moore gave them.

Investigators got a warrant to search Hucks’ phone and discovered that she and Moore knew each other, and seemed to be friends. Phone records showed they had communicated about making the police report prior to April 18, an affidavit said.

Moore had said previously that she did not know Hucks. But in an interview, she told a deputy that Hucks had encouraged her — even coached her — to deliver the false report against her husband.

“(Moore) admitted that she was never at (the husband’s) residence and never observed him with the phone,” the affidavit said, but Hucks had described the home to her. “(Moore) stated that she thought she was doing the right thing for (Hucks).”

Through further investigation, deputies learned that the images on the phone had been downloaded months earlier, in December, all within a few days, documents said, and they all appeared to be screenshots from the same website.

(editor：)