Husband's child-porn collection found by wife's techie friend as Bay Area couple sought to adopt

MENLO PARK - Staring at an imminent background check in their quest to adopt a child, Matthew Emilio Coda made a long-delayed and troubling confession to his wife: He had a past conviction for having child pornography.

That was the last truthful thing the Menlo Park man said about the issue, according to prosecutors. He denied having child porn - but thousands of images were revealed on his computer, thanks to some tech savvy. He even had child porn on his iPad when he was arrested this week as he got off a plane at San Francisco International Airport, authorities said.

Coda is being held without bail at the San Mateo County jail on suspicion of possessing more than 3,500 images of child pornography, for which he was arrested, and on a second charge stemming from the images they found on his personal devices upon his arrest.

After confessing about his past conviction in New Jersey, Coda reportedly assured his wife that he had kicked the problem, and, at her request, let her examine his computer.

“She asked him if it was still a concern, and he said, ‘Absolutely not,'” District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.

Prosecutors say Coda was confident she would not find anything disturbing because he had painstakingly deleted any trace of child porn. He even agreed to have a friend with some technological expertise take a look.

But Coda underestimated the friend's skills. Unknown to him, the friend used software to reveal files that, while marked for deletion and not findable by most users, were actually still on the hard drive.

“(Coda) thought he had wiped it out,” Wagstaffe said. “But the friend, a techie, found it.”

The technique turned up several thousand suspected child-porn images, authorities say, and Coda's wife alerted the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office, who spent the next two months building a case against him. The wife also kicked him out of their home and voiced her plans to file for a divorce, prosecutors said.

“For her to have the wherewithal to recognize how bad this is, we are grateful for this good citizen,” Wagstaffe said.

Detectives eventually obtained an arrest warrant for Coda, and they were waiting for him Monday at SFO when he returned to the Bay Area. When they arrested him, they noticed he had a smartphone, laptop computer and iPad, and they seized those devices while they sought a warrant to examine them.

The initial examination turned up 17 child-porn images on the iPad, Wagstaffe said, adding that the most recent image was downloaded within the past two weeks.

The district attorney restated detectives' finding that Coda was not producing or distributing the images. Coda initially posted $200,000 bail after his arrest but was remanded following the new charge.

Wagstaffe said the rest of Coda's electronic devices are still being examined by forensic technicians.

Anyone with information about the case can contact Sheriff's Detective Gaby Ghaghouri at 650-259-2314 or gchaghouri@smcgov.org. Anonymous tips can be left at 800-547-2700.