A former Jersey City teacher who once taught math at Westfield High School has been sentenced to eight years and 10 months in federal prison after investigators found more than 100 images and 75 videos of child sexual abuse material on his devices, along with his participation in an encrypted chat group called “Baby Rapist.” Matthew Ozol, now listed at 41 years old, had pleaded guilty earlier this year to a single count of possession of child pornography.
U.S. District Court Judge Evelyn Padin handed down the sentence, according to NJ.com, which reported that Ozol was sentenced to eight years and 10 months in prison. The same judge had presided over Ozol’s guilty plea in February, when, per Hudson County View, Matthew Ozol pleaded guilty before Judge Evelyn Padin to one count of possession of child pornography. His age has been reported inconsistently across coverage of the case — 39 at the time of his August 2025 arrest, 40 at his February guilty plea, and 41 in the most recent sentencing report.
Investigators said the material recovered from Ozol’s electronic devices included many depictions of sexual abuse of infants and toddlers, an allegation attributed to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The case grew out of a wider investigation into an encrypted group chat, where, according to the same outlet’s reporting, chat participants discussed sexually assaulting young children and distributed a video depicting similar abuse.
How Investigators Traced the Case Back to Ozol
Federal prosecutors determined that an account inside the graphic group chat was traced back to Ozol’s IP address, the arrest allegation that first broke the case open. That led law enforcement to execute a search warrant at Ozol’s home in August 2025, where the devices containing the illegal material were recovered. The chat group itself carried the name “Baby Rapist,” according to case documents and court statements cited by the same outlet.
Court documents also indicate the conduct stretched back years before his arrest. Per the outlet’s reporting, since 2022 Ozol had sent and received messages expressing a desire to sexually abuse children. That timeline overlaps with his departure from the classroom — records show he resigned from the Westfield Public School District in June 2022 in what the district described as good standing, and he had been listed as a math teacher at Westfield High School that same year.
Sentence Includes Restitution and Decade of Supervision
Beyond the prison term, Judge Padin ordered Ozol to pay $10,000 to a victim of his offense, NJ.com reported, and sentenced him to 10 years of supervised release once he completes his prison sentence. The case was prosecuted as part of Project Safe Childhood, a Department of Justice initiative that, as the outlet noted, marshals federal, state and local resources to locate, apprehend and prosecute child exploiters and identify and rescue victims.
Project Safe Childhood was launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, according to Hudson County View, as a nationwide effort to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse. Ozol’s case is not the only one of its kind to surface in New Jersey this year: a Union County man was sentenced to 78 months in prison for receiving and possessing child pornography in a separate case announced in January by the U.S. Attorney's Office, District of New Jersey.
