TRENTON – Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal announced that a Mercer County man who had more than 50,000 files of Explicit Images of Minors on his computer devices was sentenced to state prison today for distributing explicit images of minors online and assaulting two state detectives during his arrest in 2016.
Police say Meng, 45, of Pennington, N.J., was sentenced today to five years in state prison, including 2 ½ years of parole ineligibility, by Superior Court Judge Darlene J. Pereksta in Mercer County.
He must register as an l offender under Megan’s Law and will be subject to parole supervision for life.
accoridng to officials Meng pleaded guilty on March 4 to second-degree distribution of Explicit Images of Minors and two counts of third-degree aggravated assault on a police officer.
Police say he was sentenced to five years in prison, including 2 ½ years of parole ineligibility, on the child pornography charge, and three years on each of the assault charges.
The state had requested that the assault sentences be concurrent to one another but consecutive to the child pornography sentence, for a total sentence of eight years in prison.
However, the judge ordered that all of the sentences be served concurrently.
Deputy Attorney General Supriya Prasad prosecuted Meng and handled the sentencing for the Division of Criminal Justice (DCJ) Financial & Computer Crimes Bureau, under the supervision of Bureau Chief Julia Glass and Deputy Bureau Chief Jillian Carpenter.
A DCJ detective was monitoring a file-sharing network popular with offenders when she identified a computer address that was sharing Explicit Images of Minors.
The detective successfully downloaded over 25 files of child pornography being shared from that IP address, which was traced to Meng’s home in Pennington.
Police say on Dec. 14, 2016, DCJ detectives, assisted by the Hopewell Township Police Department and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, executed a search warrant at Meng’s home.
During execution of the warrant, Meng attempted to grab the handgun of a DCJ detective. Two DCJ detectives stopped Meng from taking the gun, but both detectives suffered minor injuries during the struggle.
Additional members of law enforcement helped the detectives to subdue Meng. Investigators seized two hard drives, a flash drive, and a desktop computer from the home.
A forensic examination of the devices at the Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory in Hamilton revealed more than 50,000 files of Explicit Images of Minors. The Mercer County Special Victims Unit also assisted in the operation.