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Three convicted sex offenders Stanton Ulmer, 32, of Neptune Township, Felice Black, 24, of Paterson, and Pietro Parisi, 34, of Westville have been arrested by New Jersey State Police after accessing MySpace and Facebook.

They were charged with violating provisions of Megan’s Law which restricts internet access by convicted sex offenders.

It came into effect in January.

Attorney General Anne Milgram initiated the investigation after a civil investigation coordinated by the Division of Consumer Affairs determined that there were hundreds of registered sex offenders with accounts on social networking sites.

The investigation by the State Police Digital Technology Investigations Unit took four-months. State Parole Board and the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force also helped in it.

According to Milgram:

Our earlier investigations made it shockingly clear how vigilant we must be in guarding against the danger of sexual offenders surfing social networking sites to search for and contact potential victims. Social networking sites cannot become playgrounds for sexual predators.

The investigation found that Ulmer had a Facebook account, and Black and Parisi had MySpace accounts. Detectives also seized computers, a webcam and a mobile phone.

Rick Fuentes, the State Police superintendent said:

Social networking sites provide a meaningful way for people to communicate via a virtual community. But they are potentially dangerous by also offering sexual predators ‘one-stop shopping’ to locate and groom victims.

It should be noted that last year the Attorney General issued civil subpoenas to social networking sites to determine whether registered sex offenders had opened accounts after MySpace disclosed that it had been able to identify thousands of convicted sex offenders who had established profiles on the social networking site.

MySpace identified 268 accounts registered with New Jersey sex offenders while Facebook identified 23 accounts according to New Jersey authorities.