A 40-year-old North Little Rock man admitted Thursday to a federal judge that he met with a man last year in Burns Park to discuss exchanging sexual favors with children.
"I'm just ashamed to be here in this situation," Mark Alan Bugg told U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson while acknowledging that facts read aloud by an assistant U.S. attorney were true.
The prosecutor, Kristin Bryant, said Bugg began corresponding in February 2017 with an undercover Faulkner County investigator on social media, despite his fears that the man who approached him online was a police officer.
The officer said in his affidavit that he approached Bugg online after the investigation of another person with whom Bugg had communicated, indicating he had a sexual interest in children.
While the officer pretended to have a sexual interest in children as well, transcripts of his conversations with Bugg that were contained in court documents showed that despite being initially wary, Bugg eventually acknowledged that he would be interested in providing members of his family, including children, to have sex with the officer. In exchange, he said, he wanted to have sex with the officer's family, including children.
Bugg sent a sexually explicit photograph of a young girl to the officer, describing the girl as a member of his family, though it was actually a photograph he had received from another person online and not anyone he knew, Bryant said. But by sending the photo, Bugg became guilty of distribution of child pornography, Bryant said.
Facing a jury trial in October on one count of distribution of child pornography and two counts of enticement of a minor for sexual purposes, Bugg told the judge Thursday that he would admit to the distribution charge, which carries a prison sentence of 10 years to life, because "I believe this is the best course I have."
Bugg's attorney, John Wesley Hall Jr., told Wilson that Bugg, who has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, was very familiar with federal sentencing guidelines, so much so that he had been giving unofficial legal advice to other prisoners in the Sheridan jail, where he has been housed since his arrest last year.
Wilson set Bugg's sentencing for Dec. 19.
Metro on 08/31/2018