BUTLER TWP — A township man was caught with child pornography when he sent his computer's external hard drive for repair, authorities said.

Thomas J. Perantoni, 65, was to turn himself in to authorities today at the office of District Judge Kevin O'Donnell in Butler Township, for arraignment on 20 counts of possession of child pornography.

Butler Township Police on Wednesday charged Perantoni following a 10-month investigation.

Police said that the co-owner of Digital Technologies at the Greater Butler Mart contacted them Feb. 16, to report finding “questionable images and videos of child pornography involving young girls” on the defendant'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 advised 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.”

Many of the images were of child modeling, police said, which is “an indication of child pornography.”

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?”

Detectives on Oct. 4 obtained the state police computer analyst's report that indicated more than 1,000 images of child pornography were recovered from Perantoni's internal hard drive.

Perantoni has an unlisted telephone number and could not be reached for comment. Online court records did not indicate if he has an attorney.