Stephen Salamak, 38, admitted using email "to seek and obtain images of child pornography, including images of prepubescent children" while working as a senior corrections officer at East Jersey State Prison in Rahway, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said.
He also tried to arrange to have sex with an 8-year-old girl through a person he thought was her mother -- but was actually a role-playing investigator from the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, a criminal complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Newark alleges.
The undercover investigator had responded to a Craigslist ad posted by Salamak, the complaint says.
A U.S. District Court judge scheduled sentencing for Nov. 15.
Once he's completed that sentence in federal prison, Salamak will have to register as a sex offender.
Carpenito credited special agents of the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) with the investigation leading to the plea secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Alfonzo Walsman, chief of his Public Protection Unit in Newark.
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