A 28-year-old Maumelle man agreed Friday to spend the next 25 years in federal prison for posing as a teenager on a social media website and enticing boys and girls to meet him for sex, sometimes paying them for sexual acts.
Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller accepted a negotiated guilty plea and sentence from Larry Wayne Wilder, a former manager of a Twin Peaks restaurant in Little Rock, after reviewing a pre-plea sentence report.
Wilder pleaded guilty to two charges -- attempted enticement of a minor to engage in a sex act and production of child pornography.
According to the U.S. attorney's office and an FBI agent's affidavit outlining probable cause for Wilder's arrest on Aug. 31 on a federal criminal complaint, he was caught through a tip that the MeetMe.com legal team submitted to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which in turn contacted the FBI.
MeetMe.Com is a website much like Facebook that allows users to list who is online and uses GPS to show who is nearby. The site has a feature allowing users to search for other users in a specific age range who are nearby. Users must be 13 years old or older to sign up.
The FBI agent said that, according to the tip, two teenagers, one age 17 and one age 15, had online discussions through the website with Wilder, who used the name Chris Grey. The affidavit said the 17-year-old agreed to have sex with Wilder for $100 until the teen saw a photo Wilder sent, asked how old he was and, upon learning he was in his 20s, backed out. The agent noted that Wilder had initiated the 35-message conversation.
The affidavit also describes part of a 19-message conversation that Wilder had with the younger teen in which they agreed that Wilder would pay for sex with the teen.
The document describes sexually explicit photographs that the teens and Wilder exchanged while he pretended to be younger than 18.
"Today's case continues to show the dark side of the Internet and the ease with which adults can prey on young children," U.S. Attorney Chris Thyer said later Friday in a news release, adding, "What is particularly disturbing in this case is the predator acted not just on the Internet, but made contact with the victims in real life. Thankfully, today's lengthy prison sentence will put an end to his heinous criminal activity."
Thyer emphasized that "there are others like him still out there," and urged parents to remain vigilant in monitoring their children's social media usage and to remind their children that "they never know who is on the other end of the computer."
Based on the tip, members of the Pulaski County sheriff's office and the FBI conducted an online "takeover" of one of the teen's social media accounts, and during conversations with Wilder, agreed to meet him at a local park for the purpose of having sex. Wilder was arrested when he arrived at the park, Thyer said.
Wilder later admitted to law enforcement officers that he pretended to be younger than 18 because it was easier to talk with children than with adults. Thyer said Wilder admitted to meeting several boys and girls younger than 18 for sex, but couldn't remember how many he'd had sex with.
On Wilder's cellphone, officers found 140 videos and 2,600 images of child pornography, as well as multiple conversations in which he asked minors to send him sexually explicit pictures, Thyer said. He said that when one minor refused to send more photographs of himself, Wilder threatened to post the teen's pictures that he already had on the Internet.
Metro on 05/07/2016