EAST NEWARK, New Jersey — A 19-year-old Hudson County man is in jail after an interstate investigation that began with a police call in Ohio ended, five months later, with his arrest at his own front door. Hudson County Prosecutor Wayne Mello announced on Monday, November 9, that Benjamin Martes, of East Newark, was arrested at his residence on Friday, November 6, by members of the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office Special Victims Unit and its Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force. Prosecutors allege that Martes contacted a 12-year-old girl in Ohio through the online gaming platform Roblox and instructed her to create and send sexually explicit material of herself.
The case did not start in New Jersey at all. According to the prosecutor's office, the investigation began in June 2026, when the Colerain Township Police Department in Ohio contacted the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office Special Victims Unit about an ongoing child sexual abuse material investigation. Ohio investigators had determined that the 12-year-old had encountered an individual through Roblox who allegedly instructed her to produce and transmit sexually explicit material involving herself. Working from that Ohio report, investigators identified Martes as the person who had allegedly communicated with the child.
Source: Englebrook Independent News, Nov 9 2026 (Hudson County Prosecutor's Office statement)
According to the prosecutor's office, investigators also discovered that Martes was storing child sexual abuse material on electronic devices. That allegation — possession alongside the alleged contact with the child — is what produced the two separate counts he now faces. The victim is identified in this report only by her age and state, in line with the protection owed to a child in a case of this kind; no name or image of her has been released by authorities, and none is published here.
The charges, in full
Martes faces one count of first-degree Endangering the Welfare of a Child, tied to the alleged facilitation of child sexual abuse material, and one count of second-degree Endangering the Welfare of a Child, tied to the alleged possession of child sexual abuse material, the prosecutor's office said. Early local reporting differed slightly on how the second count was described, but the prosecutor's announcement, as carried by both Englebrook Independent News and nj.com, lists facilitation for the first-degree count and possession for the second-degree count. After his arrest, Martes was transported to the Hudson County Correctional Facility, where he is being held pending his initial court appearance. The charges are allegations: Martes has not entered a plea in any reporting so far, and he is presumed innocent unless and until he is proven guilty in court.
Source: MineNest / Hoodline summary of nj.com reporting, Nov 9 2026
In New Jersey, endangering the welfare of a child is the charge the state uses for exactly this category of alleged conduct, and the degree is what drives the punishment on a conviction. First-degree offences sit in the most serious tier of New Jersey's sentencing code — generally 10 to 20 years in state prison — while a second-degree conviction generally carries 5 to 10 years. Those ranges describe what the charges can carry if the state proves them; they are not a prediction of this case, which has not yet reached even its first court appearance. What the two-count structure tells readers is narrower and important: prosecutors are alleging both the creation-side conduct (facilitation) and the possession of material, not possession alone.
How an Ohio report becomes a New Jersey arrest: the ICAC system
The path of this case — a township police department in Ohio, a county prosecutor in New Jersey, an arrest five months after the first call — is the Internet Crimes Against Children system working the way it is designed to. ICAC task forces are state and local units, coordinated nationally, that specialise in online child-exploitation investigations: they take reports from platforms, schools, parents and other police departments, trace accounts and devices across state lines, and hand the case to the prosecutor where the suspect actually lives. Prosecutor Mello credited three units with this investigation and arrest: his office's Special Victims Unit, the HCPO Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, and the Colerain Township Police Department in Ohio. The five-month gap between June and November is also typical of these cases, in which identifying the person behind an account usually requires legal process served on platforms and internet providers before any arrest can be made.
Roblox is one of the most widely used gaming platforms among children, and contact from strangers happens inside games and chats, not only on social media. Safety guidance from child-protection investigators is consistent: keep chat and privacy settings at their most restrictive for young children, tell children never to move a conversation to another app or send photos of themselves, save — do not delete — any suspicious messages, and report them to the platform, to local police, or to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's CyberTipline. A child who has been asked for images has done nothing wrong; the adult who asked is the crime.
For Punjabi and South Asian families, this case lands close to home twice over. Hudson County — Jersey City, Hoboken, Kearny and the small borough of East Newark itself — sits in the middle of one of the densest South Asian corridors in the United States, next to Newark, Edison and the Iselin-Oak Tree Road community, and children in those households are on the same gaming platforms, in the same group chats, as children everywhere else. Cases like this one are the reason school districts across New Jersey run online-safety sessions every year: the risk does not arrive as a stranger in a park, it arrives as a friendly username inside a game the family already trusts.
What happens next: Martes is being held at the Hudson County Correctional Facility pending his initial court appearance, where the charges will be formally presented and the question of whether he stays detained or is released under conditions will be argued under New Jersey's bail rules. From there, a case of this kind normally moves to a grand jury, which decides whether the evidence supports an indictment on the first- and second-degree counts. The prosecutor's office has not announced a court date, a plea, or any further arrests, and the investigation credited to the Special Victims Unit, the ICAC Task Force and Colerain Township police may still develop. Awaaz Punjab will report the first-appearance outcome when Hudson County releases it.