GUILDERLAND — A Guilderland man was arrested Friday on six counts of promoting a sexual performance of a child, a felony, and more charges may follow.

Anthony D. Gentile, 54, of 6019 Baneberry Drive, appeared in Colonie Town Court on Monday, after being jailed Friday, and was released on $75,000 bail, according to Lieutenant Robert Winn, who heads the Investigation Division of the Colonie Police Department. Gentile said he works for General Electric as a systems analyst, Winn said; Gentile could not be reached for comment.

Winn told The Enterprise that events leading up to the arrest unfolded this way: Investigator Christopher Smith, who works undercover in the “cyber world,” was investigating peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. The P2P networks, as they are called, let users access videos, games, music, and books using a program that searches for other computers on a P2P network.

“The defendant was looking for child pornography,” said Winn; in July, Investigator Smith received child pornography from the same IP address on six days. An IP, or Internet Protocol, address is a numerical label given to each device in a computer network. Altogether, 58 pornographic images were sent from the IP address that turned out to be Gentile’s, said Winn.

“I can’t give you all the ins and outs,” said Winn of how the investigation was carried out because that would reveal police techniques that will be used again. Basically, he said, “Devices recognize hashtag values; each image has its own hashtag value.”

Since Smith, in addition to working for the Colonie Police, is also a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crimes Against Children Task Force, the FBI helped in identifying Gentile as did the Guilderland Police Department.

On Friday, Sept. 5, a search warrant was executed for 6019 Baneberry Drive, Gentile’s home, where he was interviewed and arrested. His computers and storage devices were seized and are being examined for more pornographic pictures and videos; there could be as many as thousands of images of child pornography, police say.

The 58 images that police have looked at depict sexual acts with children ranging in age from infant to prepubescent, Winn said, adding, “It’s not pretty.”

Winn said police found no indication that local children were harmed; the child pornography appeared to be made commercially, much of it abroad in eastern Europe or Asia.

Nevertheless, the Colonie Police Department asks that anyone who suspects being victimized by Gentile call the department at 783-2744.