Two Men Sentenced For Separate Incidents Of Attempting To Sexually Exploit Minors Online

GREENSBORO, N.C. – Two men who, in separate incidents, attempted to entice minors to engage in sexual activity were sentenced today, announced Matthew G.T. Martin, United States Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina.

CHRISTOPHER JAMES WILSON, 36, of Cana, Virginia, pleaded guilty on April 9 2018, to one count of enticement of a minor and one count of attempted enticement of a minor. He was sentenced by United States District Judge Loretta Copeland Biggs to 250 months of imprisonment, followed by 20 years of supervised release.

When WILSON committed the federal offense last year, he had twice been convicted of state sex offenses against minors, in 2003 and 2006, and was already a registered sex offender. In June 2017, a Stokes County mother reported that WILSON used Facebook to send her 12-year-old daughter a picture of WILSON’S genitalia, and a request that the girl send WILSON nude images of herself. Stokes County Deputy Sheriff Christopher Lawson received permission to take over the minor’s account in an undercover capacity, and Investigator Lawson then communicated with WILSON from June 15, 2017 to August 4, 2017. The messages WILSON sent to what he believed to be the 12-year-old girl contained sexually explicit content and direction to engage in sexual activity.

This case was investigated by the Stokes County Sheriff’s Office, a member of the North Carolina Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force.

ADRIAN RODRIGUEZ, 33, of Jamestown, North Carolina, pleaded guilty on April 9 2018, to one count of attempted enticement of a minor. He was sentenced by United States District Judge Loretta Copeland Biggs to 151 months of imprisonment, followed by 10 years of supervised release.

RODRIGUEZ was identified by the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office during an undercover operation on a social media messaging application popular with minors. In March 2017, Deputy Sheriff Zachary Neefe created an undercover persona of a 13-year-old girl from Alamance County and joined a teen chat group. RODRIGUEZ later sent direct-messages to this 13-year-old girl persona and, over the course of several days, RODRIGUEZ repeatedly expressed his desire to perform sexual acts with what he believed to be the 13-year-old. RODRIGUEZ planned to meet the minor on March 21, 2017, for the purpose of engaging in sex acts. When RODRIGUEZ arrived in Alamance County, he was arrested by investigators. A subsequent examination of RODRIGUEZ’S phone revealed that he possessed approximately 40 videos containing child pornography, and had recently engaged in numerous sexual chats with individuals who purported to be minors.

This case was investigated by the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office, a member of the North Carolina Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force. Homeland Security Investigations assisted with the identification of victims.

These cases were prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Eric L. Iverson and were brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative by the Department of Justice to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by United States Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

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