A U.S. Army recruiter was busted on child pornography charges after police tied him to 800 images of exploited young girls — including infants, authorities said.
Andrew Gutterman, 29, was arrested Thursday afternoon on charges of promoting a sexual performance by a child.
At his arraignment in Brooklyn Friday, Judge Claudia DePeyster released Gutterman on his own recognizance, denying an assistant district attorney’s request for $50,000 bail.
Court papers described the children in the photos being “from infant to 14 years old” and said they were in various stages of undress and performing various sex acts on themselves or an adult.
The images were uploaded to two internet photo sharing accounts and discovered by an employee for the file storage service Dropbox, the court papers said.
The alleged crimes occurred between May 24 and June 22 2016, according to court papers.
The NYPD’s Computer Crimes Squad started an investigation following a tip last Aug. 16 from the national Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The center was contacted by Dropbox, which provided the child porn files — including pictures and videos.
Police determined there were actually 762 such images, a majority of them child porn, in that account. They also found 44 other files in another Dropbox account.
Investigators linked both to Gutterman and traced his computer to his former Williamsburg home and his current Westchester home, in Harrison, sources said.
His Dropbox accounts were also linked to his Facebook page and his Photobucket account.
From Photobucket, sources said, police learned Gutterman is a U.S. Army recruiter.
The Army didn’t respond to a request for comment, but sources said the NYPD confirmed Gutterman’s status by contacting the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division.
Judge DePeyster, appointed to the bench in April 2015, was previously the NYPD’s assistant deputy commissioner of trials for 11 years.
“No moral person regardless of party line and with ethical standards would have let this (guy) get out,” said Michelle Esquenazi, president of Empire Bail Bonds.
“Why did this judge (release) the defendant?” Esquenazi said.
“Unbelievable.”
A spokesman for the Office of Court Administration, however, said the judge was acting with the discretion accorded her.
“And she has all pertinent facts, circumstances of the case and history of the defendant to make her decision,” the spokesman said.
Gutterman could not be reached for comment.
