An Ocean County man and former New Jersey state corrections officers admitted Monday he distributed images of child sex abuse.

Michael A. Ruggiero, 37, of Forked River in Lacey Township, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Trenton to one count of distribution of child pornography, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of New Jersey announced.

Ruggerio was using a mobile chat application to distribute the images, some of children under the age of 12, in April 2016. He also admitted receiving child porn on the app, and that he had images on his cell phone when authorities arrested him in June 2017, at work, authorities said. (Federal prosecutors did not name the app so as to not alert other users trading in such illegal images, court papers show.)

He worked at the Albert C. Wagner Youth Correctional Facility in Chesterfield, a state Department of Corrections prison for young adult offenders. He was a senior corrections officer with an annual salary of $48,559 a year.

The charge he pleaded to carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison, a maximum potential penalty of 20. He’s scheduled to be sentenced in October.

Investigators found Ruggiero as an alleged porn sharer after police in Canada arrested a man on a parole violation, authorities have said. That man told local police he’d been using the app to distribute child porn to other users, and Canadian police took control of the account and identified other users. One was Ruggerio, and detectives traced an IP addresses to his home in Ocean County, and his phone.

Federal Homeland Security Investigations agents from the Newark were involved in the investigation that led to Ruggiero’s arrest, the agency said.

Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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