According to the United States Attorney's Office , District of Colorado, an Indiana man has been sentenced to serve more than 34 years in a federal prison this week after pleading guilty of attempted coercion and enticement to engage in unlawful sexual activity with a minor child and distribution of child pornography in Colorado. Here are the details.
* Steven Raines, 35, of Fort Wayne, Ind., was first charged by criminal complaint on July 2 and was indicted by a federal grand jury in Denver on July 9, the U.S. Attorney's Office reported. He pleaded guilty to those charges in October and was sentenced on Tuesday.
* On April 1, Raines began chatting online with an undercover Homeland Security Investigations agent out of Glenwood Springs, Colo., after the agent entered a publicly accessible chat room whose topic focused on sex with children. The agent was pretending to be a single mother of two daughters under the age of 16.
* An individual, later identified as Raines, engaged in a conversation with the agent and expressed interest in having sex with the agent and the two minor children, stating that he had been searching for 20 years for someone like the agent who would provide access to her children, the attorney's office reported.
* For the next three months, according to the attorney's office, Raines continued chatting and emailing with the agent via his smart phone. He began sending pictures depicting child pornography and making plans to travel to Colorado to have sex with the two young girls, including one who was under the age of 6.
* Raines admitted that he had been a pedophile since the age of 15, the attorney's office stated.
* Raines made plans to bring his child pornography with him to Colorado in order to "teach" the girls, the attorney's office reported. He made statements about his own children and admitted to sexually molesting another child and producing pornographic images of his sexual abuse of that child.
* In late June, Raines began traveling to Colorado, arriving on June 30 to a residence in Garfield County, Colo., which was the address the agent had provided to him.
* According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Raines was taken into custody at that address and agents and officers discovered approximately 130 images and 84 videos of child pornography on a cell phone that was seized from Raines at that time.
* Further discs containing child pornography were discovered at Raines' home and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children identified 23 known series of child pornography on his phone and email.
* According to U.S. Attorney John Walsh of Colorado, Raines will receive a severe penalty of decades in prison followed by a life term of supervised release.
* The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and the Garfield County Sheriff's Office, the attorney's office reported. The Homeland Security Investigations Resident Agent in Charge in Indianapolis and the United States Attorney's Office in Fort Wayne, Ind., also assisted in the investigation and prosecution.
* According to an October press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver, Raines' plea agreement stipulated that he would receive a sentence of at least 30 years. He was ordered held without bond until sentencing.
