Man told wife of conviction on child porn

Matthew Coda and his wife were considering adopting a child when, according to prosecutors, the Menlo Park man confessed a dark secret: He had once been convicted in New Jersey on charges related to child pornography.

Coda, 47, told his wife he no longer looked at child pornography, but she wanted to be sure he was telling the truth, San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe told The Chronicle on Wednesday.

That’s when his wife enlisted the help of a “techie friend” who searched Coda’s computer and discovered more than 3,000 images of child pornography.

Wagstaffe said that when the “techie friend”

found the images, Coda’s wife immediately contacted the San Mateo County Sheriff ’s Office, kicked her husband out of their house and filed for divorce. She alerted authorities in September, triggering a months-long investigation that led to Coda’s arrest Monday night at San Francisco International Airport.

Coda initially came clean to his wife because the conviction seemed likely to surface during the intensive background check required for adoption, Wagstaffe said. He said prosecutors did not know all the details of Coda’s conviction in New Jersey but were working to obtain records.

He praised Coda’s wife for coming forward, calling her “an incredibly savvy person.”

“She didn’t just look around herself and leave it at that,” Wagstaffe said. “She enlisted someone who had real technical skills.”

Coda’s wife did not return phone calls Wednesday seeking comment, and she is not being publicly identified by the sheriff ’s office or the district attorney’s office.

Coda was arraigned Tuesday in San Mateo County Superior Court on one felony count of possession of more than 600 images of child pornography. He is being held at the Maguire Correctional Facility in Redwood City on $200,000 bail. His next court date is scheduled for Dec. 13.

Detective Sal Zuno of the San Mateo County Sheriff ’s Office said Coda is employed in a “technical field” in Mountain View, a job that does not involve working with children. He did, however, volunteer at the Half Moon Bay Library from May to July in 2015, tutoring children as part of a “reading club program.”

Michelle Durand, a spokeswoman for the San Mateo County Manager’s Office, said in a statement that the library had received no complaints about Coda during his time as a volunteer. She also pointed to security measures taken for all volunteers.

“All library volunteers must submit an application and be fingerprinted prior to starting their volunteer work,” Durand said in the statement. “Mr. Coda cleared the screening process and volunteered with the Half Moon Bay Library’s reading club program. This program is held in the public area of the library, and volunteers are visually supervised by library staff at all times.”

Zuno said no one has contacted police with reports of inappropriate behavior related to Coda’s work at the library, but that the sheriff ’s office is looking into his time there as part of its ongoing investigation.

He asked that anyone with information related to the investigation contact Detective Gaby Chaghouri at (650) 2592314.