Camden County Man Sentenced for Offering Child Pornography

A Camden County man has been sentenced to three years in state prison for offering more than 800 images of child pornography on the Internet, Acting Attorney General John J. Hoffman announced on Friday.

Joshua B. Ferreri, 28, of West Berlin, previously pleaded guilty to an accusation charging him with second-degree offering of child pornography. He will be required to register as a sex offender under Megan’s Law.

He was among 27 defendants arrested in 2012 as a result of “Operation Watchdog,” a multi-agency investigation led by the New Jersey State Police and the Division of Criminal Justice that targeted offenders who distributed known images and videos of child pornography on the Internet.

Ferreri admitted that he knowingly used Internet file sharing software to make one or more files containing child pornography readily available for any other user to download from a designated “shared folder” on his computer.

Ferreri was arrested on April 13, 2012, when a search warrant was executed at his residence by the New Jersey State Police Digital Technology Investigation Unit and TEAMS South Unit.

Investigators seized Ferreri’s laptop computer, which was found to contain child pornography.

A later forensic examination of the computer at the Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory in Hamilton revealed more than 800 images and videos of suspected child pornography, more than 50 of which were in shared folders and readily available to be downloaded by other peer-to-peer, or P2P, network users.

“The hundreds of files of child pornography found on Ferreri’s computer are an alarming indicator of how much of this filth is available on the Internet,” Hoffman said. “Every file represents an act of sexual abuse and exploitation of an innocent child, and every user who shares these abhorrent materials re-victimizes those children. We’re working hard to send these offenders to prison and ensure that the public is warned of them under Megan’s Law.”

“We’ll continue to patrol cyberspace with our law enforcement partners to arrest anyone who sexually exploits children as part of this network of manufacturers, distributers and users of child pornography,” Director Elie Honig of the Division of Criminal Justice said. “We have the technology and the will to catch these offenders and put them behind bars.”

The attached image of Joshua Ferreri was provided by the Attorney General.