A 37-year-old Old Tappan man is facing a stack of criminal charges after Bergen County investigators say he created and posted AI-generated nude images of two women online, pairing the fake images with the victims' real names and photographs. Daniel G. Pfeiffer was arrested Thursday following a months-long cyber crimes investigation that traced the posts back to him.
Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella announced the arrest, which followed an investigation that began back in May after Harrington Park police alerted the prosecutor's Cyber Crimes Unit to social-media posts depicting two adult victims, according to NJ.com. Those posts, authorities said, included the victims' real names and photographs alongside the AI-generated deepfake nude images.
Search Warrant Executed at Pfeiffer's Home
Investigators identified Pfeiffer as the person responsible for the social media accounts that generated the posts. On Thursday, detectives from the Cyber Crimes Unit executed a search warrant at his home, capping off the monthslong probe into who was behind the accounts, per the same account.
Authorities say Pfeiffer created and distributed computer-generated nude images of the two victims and posted them to social media. The investigation was carried out under the direction of Chief Jeff Angermeyer of the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office and Chief Robert Murphy of the Harrington Park Police Department, the outlet's report notes.
Charges Pile Up Under New Deepfake Law
Pfeiffer was charged with two counts of third-degree creation of deceptive visual media and two counts of third-degree distribution of deceptive visual media. He also faces two counts of third-degree invasion of privacy, two counts of fourth-degree cyber-harassment, and two counts of harassment, a petty disorderly persons offense, the station's report states.
Under New Jersey's deepfake statute, generating a work of deceptive audio or visual media to further a crime is classified as a third-degree offense, as is soliciting, disclosing or using such media, according to the New Jersey Legislature. The law defines deceptive audio or visual media as a technological representation that realistically depicts a person's speech, conduct or writing when that person did not actually engage in it, relying substantially on technical means, and the statute allows for a fine of up to $30,000 per violation.
Pfeiffer was remanded to the Bergen County Jail to await a first appearance in Bergen County Superior Court in Hackensack.
A Familiar Name in Bergen County Cyber Cases
This is not the first time Pfeiffer has faced accusations tied to harassing women online. He was previously reported to have been arrested three times since 2015 for similar crimes related to stalking, cyber harassment and posting the likenesses of dozens of women without their consent, according to NorthJersey.com.
The case lands amid a wider reckoning with AI-generated sexual imagery across New Jersey and beyond. The spread of sexually explicit AI-generated images has raised alarm as generative AI tools grow more sophisticated, including fakes that depict minors, per NBC New York. Federal prosecutors have separately charged New Jersey resident Cornelius Shannon and Texas resident Arturo Hernandez with using AI to generate sexually explicit videos and photos of female celebrities and private women, with Shannon, a Hasbrouck Heights resident, accused of publishing at least 240 albums of such material featuring politicians, musicians and singers, the outlet reports. Those two men are among the earliest defendants charged under the federal Take It Down Act, and in April 2026 an Ohio man became the first person convicted under that same law after pleading guilty to using AI to generate child sexual abuse material, NBC New York notes.
Other New Jersey families have turned to the courts over similar harms. A Westfield teenager victimized by AI-generated nude images and her family filed a federal lawsuit against the family of a teen boy accused of creating and sharing the images, according to 1057thehawk.com. And a 17-year-old Union County girl sued the ClothOff app after classmates allegedly used it to generate deepfake child pornography of her and other female students — a lawsuit that alleges the app's affiliated sites and applications receive at least 27 million visitors and generate an average of 200,000 images every day, NJ.com has reported separately.
