MI- Cedar Springs man pleads guilty, sentenced to year in jail as part of Internet sex sting; father says it was entrapment

5-18-2009 Michigan: (Phase-I)

GRAND RAPIDS -- ____ chatted online with a girl he thought was just 14, and even drove by what he thought was her Grand Rapids Township home.

But he never met with the teen and, when police working with on an Internet predator sting caught up with ____, the 34-year-old insurance representative was more than 20 miles from the girl's alleged home. He had no condoms or alcohol in his car.

Nonetheless, the Cedar Springs man pleaded guilty to using the Internet to communicate in order to commit a crime and was sentenced Monday to one year in the Kent County Jail. He will be on the state sex offender list for the next 10 years.

Before taking the plea offered by the state Attorney General's Office, ___ was facing up to 20 years in prison. He was one of 21 people nabbed in an October child predator sting at a Grand Rapids Township home conducted by the AG's office, along with the national group Perverted Justice.

Many of those cases are making their way through the courtroom of Kent County Circuit Judge James Robert Redford, with most defendants taking a plea deal and only one so far going to a jury trial.

Redford said he looked through 40 pages of Internet chat logs between ___ and the woman decoy for the Internet sting, who claimed online to be a teen.

"The e-mail conversation, while disturbing at a basic level, is not as disturbing as some I've seen (from those arrested in this group)," Redford said.

"i wish i wasn't, but i care that you dont get hurt and i don't go to jail," ___24829 wrote, according to transcripts released by authorities. "i don't want to lose everything i have."

The faux 14-year-old expressed disappointment that ____ might back out and not want to "hook up."

"you know i do...i just have A LOT to lose, ya know," wrote ____24829.

"sowwwy," wrote angeldreemzzz, the decoy.

"my home, my job everything," ____24829 wrote.

Angeldreemzzz: "i jst wanna have fun."

____24829: "i know. me too."

Before he was sentenced on Monday, ____ choked out an apology as he fought back tears.

"I'm deeply sorry," he said.

____'s lawyer, Terry Tobias, said his client never intended to have sex and would not go to the "girl's" home, arranging to meet her elsewhere.

"They were just going to go to a football game and that's it," Tobias said.

Curt ____, the father of the defendant, said his son has never been in trouble with the law and was not looking for under-aged sex. He said his son wrote numerous times. "I can't do it."

For the father, there is no doubt what happened here.

"It's definitely entrapment," he said. ..News Source.. by Barton Deiters | The Grand Rapids Press