A New Jersey man posed as a high school student to solicit minors for sex via video chat, officials say

A Morris County man was charged this week with impersonating a high school student on social media to sexually exploit a minor, federal prosecutors said.

According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, Carlos

Urbina-Gutierrez posed as a student at an unknown high school in Morris County in 2023 and used a fake online female persona on social media to chat with underage boys who were students there, the office said.

On Christmas last year, Urbina-Gutierrez used those social media accounts to encourage one of the boys to engage in sexually explicit behavior while he was participating in a video call, investigators said. He then secretly recorded the video call and saved it on his phone.

In May, police learned that he was allegedly soliciting videos from minors online, and on the 15th of that month, detectives questioned him about the allegations, a criminal complaint states.

He consented to a search of his home, during which investigators found a second cellphone that contained a one-minute video of the child, the complaint says.

He was subsequently arrested and charged, officials said.

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Chris Sheldon can be reached at [email protected].