A 68-year-old Butler Township man was sentenced Thursday to several years of probation for possessing images of child pornography.

Butler County Judge Timothy McCune sentenced Thomas J. Perantoni to seven years of probation after he pleaded no contest Oct. 2 to two felony counts of child pornography.

Perantoni was originally charged with 20 counts of child pornography after police said computer repairmen stumbled on the images while trying to service Perantoni's hard drive. He must also register as a sex offender for 10 years.

Police said that the co-owner of Digital Technologies at the Greater Butler Mart contacted them Feb. 16, 2017, to report finding “questionable images and videos of child pornography involving young girls” on Perantoni's hard drive, according to court documents.

Two days earlier, police said, Perantoni had brought the hard drive to the store for repair work.

He said that he “wanted to get all his files off it because the circuit board inside was fried,” the co-owner told investigators, referring to the defendant.

While transferring the files from one hard drive to another one, as part of the repair process, the store official discovered one file containing alleged sexually explicit videos and photos.

Police Detective Sgt. James Sasse, in his affidavit, described the images as showing “prepubescent girls, who were obviously under the age of 18.”

He seized the external and internal hard drives and obtained a search warrant for them.

The hard drives were subsequently turned over to a state police forensic computer analyst for examination, documents said, which confirmed evidence of “nude images and videos of pubescent and prepubescent females.”

On Feb. 23, police got another search warrant, this one for Perantoni's home on Courtside Lane. He was home when detectives served the warrant.

“He admitted to downloading pornography,” police said, “but to his knowledge, there was no child pornography.” He claimed he did not know the girls “were too young.”

Additionally, in his apparent defense, Perantoni asked police that “if he knew there was child pornography on (the hard drive), then why would he take it somewhere to be repaired?”