Acting Attorney General John J. Hoffman announced that an Essex County man was sentenced to prison today for offering Explicit Images of Minors on the Internet. 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 Explicit Images of Minors on the Internet. Asaf P. Guttman, 42, of Bloomfield, was sentenced to three years in state prison by Superior Court Judge Richard T. Sules in Essex County. He pleaded guilty on Oct. 31 to second-degree offering of Explicit Images of Minors, a charge contained in a 2014 indictment.
Guttman will be required to register as a sex offender under Megan’s Law. Deputy Attorney General Anand Shah prosecuted Guttman and handled the sentencing for the Division of Criminal Justice Financial & Computer Crimes Bureau. In pleading guilty, Guttman admitted that prior to his arrest on April 13, 2012, he knowingly used Internet file-sharing software to make one or more files containing Explicit Images of Minors readily available for any other user to download from a designated “shared folder” on his computer.
Detectives with the New Jersey State Police Digital Technology Investigations Unit downloaded 31 images of Explicit Images of Minors from a shared folder on Guttman’s computer, including images of prepubescent girls being molested and raped. A search warrant executed by the State Police and other members of the New Jersey Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force at Guttman’s residence revealed evidence of numerous files of Explicit Images of Minors on a personal computer in a storage room in the basement that he could access remotely from another computer. Guttman was charged in Operation Watchdog, a multi-agency investigation in which one woman and 26 men were arrested in March and April of 2012 on charges of distribution and possession of Explicit Images of Minors. The New Jersey State Police Digital Technology Investigation Unit coordinated the investigation, which also involved the Division of Criminal Justice and 19 other law enforcement agencies. The State Police Technical Emergency and Mission Specialists (TEAMS) Unit assisted in executing search warrants.