Sex Offender Sentenced to Life Imprisonment Plus Additional Ten Years in Federal Child Exploitation Case

            Fort Smith - Kenneth Elser, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, announced that Jack Lambeth, age 58 of Midwest City, Oklahoma, was sentenced today to Life In Prison without the possibility of parole on charge of Interstate Travel with Intent to Engage in Aggravated Sexual Abuse of a Minor in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2241(c). An additional ten (10) years was imposed per statute due to the defendant’s status as a sex offender. The sentencing took place before the Honorable P.K. Holmes, III in the United States District Court in Fort Smith.

            Court records reflect that in March of 2015, the Fort Smith Police Department began an undercover investigation directed at individuals who were using the internet to target minors for sexual activity. During the operation, an undercover officer entered an internet chat room utilizing an online persona of an adult mother offering her 8 and 9 year old children for sexual exploitation. Lambeth, a registered sex offender from Oklahoma, began chatting with the undercover officer about the possibility of having a sexual encounter with the children. During the month of March, Lambeth made specific plans to travel to Arkansas to engage in such sexual acts, and also sent the undercover officer sexual devices to be used on the minors. On or about March 28^th, Lambeth was arrested by the Fort Smith Police Department after he contacted the undercover officer stating he was at a local motel. In August, Lambeth pleaded guilty to crossing a state line with the intent to engage in a sexual act with a minor under 12 years of age. At sentencing, the Government presented the Court with evidence that Lambeth had previously been convicted of raping a minor and, in a subsequent case, a federal child pornography offense. 

            This case was investigated by Fort Smith Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  Assistant United States Attorney Dustin Roberts prosecuted the case for the United States.

            The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and their Criminal Division Child Exploitation and Obscenity Sections (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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Related court documents may be found on Public Access to Electronic Records Website @www.Pacer.gov