18 Camden County males arrested on child-porn charges

In five days of pre-dawn raids at homes in 14 Camden County municipalities, authorities this week arrested 18 males for keeping pre-pubescent child pornography, some of it violent, on their computers. Three others were being sought late yesterday.

Operation Sentinel, as it was dubbed, netted a police dispatcher from Haddon Township, Michael Connelly, 51; an enlisted Army soldier in Haddonfield, Tim Schiffman, 27; a retired corporate executive in Waterford, Clarence Pribus, 67; and a man already under indictment for sex crimes, Jordan Winczuk, 24, of Oaklyn.

Authorities said the diversity of the suspects, ranging in age from 14 to 67, was notable. They live in all corners of the county - from rural Waterford and urban Camden to suburban Voorhees.

They are juveniles, grandfathers and married men, police said.

"We want to scare as many people away from this as we can," said Lt. Martin Devlin of the Camden County Prosecutor's Office Major Crimes Unit. "Big Brother is watching. We're in the same cyberspace you are, and we are actively preying on the predators."

Investigators tracked the pornography using software that traces digital fingerprints left on the Internet. From their offices in Camden, detectives spotted in real time those who downloaded child porn, and matched Internet addresses to street addresses where the computers are located.

That's enough to secure a warrant. At the homes, they interviewed residents to determine who used the computer for such purposes.

At the start of a series of raids in Haddonfield at 5 a.m. Wednesday, Prosecutor's Office investigators gathered at the municipal building for a briefing with investigators from the New Jersey State Police and the FBI.

As the sun rose, teams descended on homes, armed with knock-and-announce warrants.

Prosecutor's Office investigator Kevin Kellejan knocked on the door of a retired university professor in Haddonfield, at a two-story white Colonial with green shutters and a neatly planted row of red geraniums.

Inside, investigators located two computers and began searching for hard drives, thumb drives, cell phones or anything that could contain electronic images. In a front room with a view of a street where young children play, investigators found a computer with the two pornographic movies they were looking for.

Hours later, police emerged with the handcuffed suspect - Schiffman, the son of the professor - along with household computers that would undergo more thorough searches in Trenton for hidden and deleted files.

"We will come to your homes in the early hours of the morning, rouse you from your beds, search your computers and arrest you," Camden County Prosecutor Warren Faulk said at a news conference yesterday in Haddon Township.

Faulk noted that a third of those arrested were juveniles.

"If nothing else, this should be a wake-up call to parents that they should be vigilant in watching the computers of their children," he said.

Police said all of those charged possessed graphic pornography of children in computer images that are illegal to download, purchase, sell, share, or even to look at.

"These can not appear on your computer by accident," Devlin said.

A total of 33 computer units and hard drives were seized this week, in addition to 34 weapons, confiscated for the safety of the officers, police said.

When they started searching for child-porn downloaders, Devlin said, there was so much going on, it was "incredible." They searched specifically for content with pre-pubescent children.

While police have found at least three suspected sexual offenders, most of the suspects are not registered sex offenders.

Investigators, many of whom are parents, spoke of the difficulty working on the investigation and viewing such disturbing images. Faulk said he saw two images for the first time on Monday and had to walk away from the computer.

State police said seven more operations are ongoing throughout the state, and 70 people have been arrested as part of such operations so far this year.

"Perhaps we can stop a young guy from turning into an older pervert, or older predator," Devlin said.

Under the law, endangering the welfare of children by possession of child pornography is a fourth-degree crime. In 17 cases this week, those arrested were released within hours and free to return home. If convicted, they will not be required to register as sex offenders.

Four of those arrested also were charged with distribution, a second-degree crime that would require them to register as sex offenders if convicted.

If federal charges are filed, those carry more serious penalties.

On Thursday, Mark Hendrickson, 47, of Princeton, was sentenced to serve five years in prison for receiving and distributing child pornography. Hendrickson was arrested in 2008, and authorities said he traded 147 images and his computer contained nearly 200 other images of child porn.

"When you're looking at a film of child pornography, you're actually looking at a crime scene," Devlin said.