Carteret, Piscataway Men Charged In Statewide Child Porn Bust

CARTERET, NJ — A part-time firefighting instructor from Carteret and an electrician from Piscataway were arrested this summer as part of the State Police and Attorney General's sting into online child luring and child pornography.

Edward Kross, 66, of Carteret, a part-time firefighting instructor, was arrested May 28. He was charged with third-degree possession of child pornography.

Timothy McMahon, 46, an electrician from Piscataway, was arrested May 21. He was also charged with third-degree possession of child pornography.

State Police and Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said incidents of online child sex abuse and online child luring dramatically increased during the COVID lockdown, as more teens, children and adults were online.

March through July of 2020 saw a 50 percent increase in tips to New Jersey's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, compared to the same time period in 2019. In fact, State Police launched the sting in mid March as tips to the task force started pouring in. The sting ended in July, with 21 people, including one woman, arrested across New Jersey.

“Predatory conduct against children is up as much as 50 percent during COVID as homebound children, starved for outside contact, spend more time on their devices,” said Grewal. "And opportunistic sexual predators target them."

Many cases in the operation stemmed from cyber tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, but others involved undercover chat investigations where men were attempting to meet children or other individuals online in order to sexually assault children. Read more here: 21 Arrested In NJ Statewide Child Porn Bust Amid COVID-19 Crisis

Adults can find and groom children on apps such as Kik, Skout, Grindr, Whisper, Omegle, Tinder, Chat Avenue, Chat Roulette, Wishbone, Live.ly, Musical.ly, Paltalk, Yubo, Hot or Not, Down and Tumblr.

Arrests have also been made involving the gaming apps Fortnite, Minecraft and Discord.

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