Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal announced that a Mercer County man who had more than 12,000 files of explicit images of minors on his computer devices was sentenced to prison today for distributing explicit images of minors online through a peer-to-peer network.
Officials say Matthew Brutto, 32, of Ewing, N.J., was sentenced to five years in state prison, including 2 ½ years of parole ineligibility, by Superior Court Judge Peter E. Warshaw Jr. in Mercer County.
According to authorities, Brutto pleaded guilty on Aug. 23, 2018 to a second-degree charge of distribution of explicit images of minors. He will be required to register as an offender under Megan’s Law and will be subject to parole supervision for life.
In pleading guilty, Brutto admitted he knowingly used file-sharing software to make multiple files of explicit images of minors readily available for any other user to download from a “shared folder” on his computer.
Detectives of the Division of Criminal Justice Financial & Computer Crimes Bureau were monitoring an online file-sharing network that is popular with offenders who download and trade explicit images of minors when they identified a computer address that was sharing explicit images of minors. On three separate dates in March 2018, the detectives successfully downloaded a total of 42 files of explicit images of minors being shared from that IP address, which was traced to Brutto’s home in Ewing.
Officials say on April 10, 2018, detectives of the Division of Criminal Justice, assisted by a special agent of U.S. Homeland Security Investigations and detectives of the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office and Ewing Police Department, executed a search warrant at Brutto’s home, arresting him and seizing his computer devices. The computer devices were brought to the Division of Criminal Justice Forensics Laboratory in Hamilton, where a forensic examination revealed over 12,000 videos and explicit images of minors on a computer hard drive.
Attorney General Grewal and Director Allende urged anyone with information about the distribution of explicit images of minors on the internet – or about suspected improper contact by unknown persons communicating with minors via the internet or possible exploitation or sexual abuse of minors – to contact the New Jersey Internet Crimes Task Force Tipline at 888-648-6007.