A 63-year-old Herminie man is being held without bail at the Westmoreland County Prison after Pennsylvania State Police say a search of his home turned up more than 1,000 files of child sexual abuse material. Greg A. Hayes now faces roughly 100 counts of possession, along with charges of disseminating child sexual abuse material, criminal use of a communication facility, and resisting arrest.
The investigation began after Pennsylvania State Police’s Computer Crime Unit received reports from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, according to WPXI. Court records reviewed by the station show a preliminary hearing has been scheduled for October 5. Per the Westmoreland County District Attorney’s Office, the case traces back to a CyberTipline report from NCMEC that flagged 58 uploaded files of child sexual abuse material linked to an IP address registered in Hayes’ name.
Search Warrant Ends in a Foot Chase
When troopers arrived at Hayes’ Herminie Road home on September 24 to execute the search warrant, he reportedly tried to run on foot once he was told he was under arrest, according to the same district attorney’s office account — the incident that led to the added resisting arrest charge. Officers seized both electronic devices and standalone digital storage media from the residence, the office says.
What investigators found once they got those devices into a forensic lab dwarfed the original tip. The district attorney’s office reports that examiners confirmed over 1,000 files of child sexual abuse material specifically depicting adolescent children — a scope far beyond the 58 files that first drew scrutiny to Hayes’ internet connection.
Judge Cites Danger to Society
Judge John E. Christner denied Hayes bail, according to court records cited by WPXI, calling him a threat to society. Hayes remains held at the Westmoreland County Prison as the case moves toward next week’s preliminary hearing.
How the Charges Stack Up Under State Law
The possession charges against Hayes fall under Pennsylvania’s Act 125, enacted in October 2024, which updated Title 18 to replace older terms like child pornography with child sexual abuse material and classifies possession and viewing under 18 Pa.C.S. § 6312 as felony-grade offenses, according to the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Herminie is a village in Sewickley Township, the setting for a case built almost entirely on digital forensics.
The scale of the tip that started it all is not unusual nationally. NCMEC’s CyberTipline processed 21.3 million reports of online child exploitation in 2025 and escalated more than 53,000 urgent leads directly to law enforcement, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Pennsylvania State Police officials have told the Times Leader that annual CyberTips submitted in the state jumped from 5,000 to 6,000 a year before the COVID-19 pandemic to more than 15,000 tips annually in recent years.
Part of a Busy Month for Westmoreland County Prosecutors
Hayes’ arrest lands in the middle of a month in which Westmoreland County authorities have filed several major child exploitation cases. Hoodline has separately reported on the Monessen abuse case against Joshua Rioux, denied bail earlier this month, and on a Lower Burrell prosecution involving a man held without bail as police pursue child-abuse charges. Both cases are being handled separately from Hayes’ but reflect the same wave of digital-exploitation enforcement moving through the county this month.
State police digital forensics units work alongside the federal Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force network, which conducted nearly 347,000 investigations and made more than 17,000 arrests nationwide in 2025, according to the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Statewide, Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services recorded 41,070 reports of suspected child abuse in 2024, up from 40,301 the year before. It remains unclear whether federal authorities will take up Hayes’ case given the file count and the interstate nature of NCMEC’s referral system.
