A Jersey City man was arrested Tuesday for allegedly sending lewd photos and messages to an underage girl in another country, according to prosecutors in Hudson County.
Members of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force arrested Stanley Ruiz, 40, at his residence and charged him with third-degree endangering the welfare of a child and lewdness, the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
Ruiz was being held at the Hudson County Correctional Facility pending his first court appearance.
In March of this year, someone tipped off the ICAC, a nationwide network of 61 coordinated task forces, representing more than 5,400 federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, that focus on technology- and internet-based crimes against children.
The tipster alleged that “an adult male sent explicit messages and images to a female juvenile through the social media application Discord,” county prosecutors said. “The victim, who lives out of the country, identified herself as a juvenile to the defendant multiple times.”
Exploitation of children across national boundaries and even oceans has soared as predators mesh internet access with artificial intelligence. In the first six months of 2025 alone, 518,720 so-called online enticement reports streamed into the Cyber Tipline of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the organization said in September. That was nearly double the 292,951 complaints received during the same time period in 2024.
Even more stark, reports of generative artificial intelligence being used to sexually exploit children skyrocketed from 6,835 to 440,419. Moreover, the harassment is becoming ever more violent, NCMEC Executive Director Lauren Coffren testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.
“These alarming increases are a wake-up call,” said John Shehan, who oversees the NCMEC’s Exploited Children Division. “These statistics are not just numbers — they represent children experiencing unthinkable harm.”
