Waretown Man Pleads Guilty To Child Pornography Possession

WARETOWN, NJ – A 42-year-old Waretown man pleaded guilty on Wednesday to endangering the welfare of a child by possessing at least 1,000 images of child pornography on a laptop computer, Ocean County prosecutors announced.

Michael Delia pleaded guilty to the charges on Wednesday when Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer announced that he will be seeking a sentence of four years in prison when Delia is sentenced later this month, officials announced in a news release. Delia will also be required to file as a sex offender and in addition to the prison sentence, will be subject to parole supervision for the rest of his life, officials said.

An investigation launched last year by the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office determined that an IP address belonging to Delia was being used to download child pornography images through a peer to peer file sharing application, prosecutors said Wednesday. Detectives and other law enforcement officials executed a search warrant at Delia’s Waretown home in March 2019 and seized a laptop, cell phone and other electronics. A forensic examination of the computer determined that it contained more than 1,000 but less than 10,000 pornographic images involving children, which led to Delia’s arrest without incident.

Delia is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 11.