A Worcester County man pleaded guilty in United States District Court Wednesday to possessing exploitative images of children after officials found more than 30 pictures stored on his phone in an app designed to look like a calculator.
Investigators were tipped off in December of 2020 that Matthew Stefanelli, a 32-year-old Upton man, ran an account that stored explicit images of children. After searching his home on Jan. 6, 2021, police seized a cellphone later found to hold 33 exploitative photos of minors, the office of Acting U.S. Attorney Nathaniel R. Mendell said.
The application Stefanelli used to keep the pictures on his cell phone was encrypted and designed to mimic a calculator from the outside, officials said.
On Wednesday, Stefanelli pleaded guilty in a federal courthouse in Worcester to a single charge of possessing the explicit images of children. He faces up to 20 years in prison, Mendell said.
The case was part of Project Safe Childhood, created in 2006 by the Justice Department to join federal, state and local agencies to investigate people who exploit children.
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