A Kansas man was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in prison for impersonating a minor female on social media and enticing dozens of minors in the Topeka area to record and send him sexually explicit images and videos of themselves, officials stated.
According to court documents, Jeffrey D. Pierce, 42, of Topeka, was a former teacher and basketball coach at Seaman High School in Topeka, officials stated.
He impersonated a minor female on various social media platforms and induced minor males in the Topeka area to create and send him images of themselves engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
Evidence recovered from Pierce’s phones and other electronic devices shows that his exploitative scheme lasted for at least several years and that he targeted minors in his community, including his students at the high school where he formerly taught, officials stated.
(September 2020 News Report)
“Pierce, an educator and coach, used deception, manipulation and threats to exploit the most vulnerable victims and those he was entrusted to protect, our children” said Special Agent in Charge Charles Dayoub of the FBI Kansas City Field Office.
Pierce was also sentenced to five years of supervised release and ordered to pay $55,100 in special assessments.
To date, the FBI has identified over 80 minors who were victimized by Pierce.
Pierce’s online communications with these victims established that he coerced at least one minor to send him additional sexually explicit material by threatening to distribute that minor’s images to others, distributed sexually explicit images of other minors, and encouraged another minor to engage in in-person sexual conduct with him while he was still impersonating a minor female.
In total, law enforcement recovered from Pierce’s electronic devices several thousand images and videos depicting minor males engaged in sexually explicit conduct, as well as hundreds of screenshots of social media accounts belonging to other users and multiple images of nude and undressing minors that appear to have been taken in locker rooms at two Topeka high schools.
The FBI investigated the case.
Trial Attorneys Kaylynn N. Shoop, Austin M. Berry, and William G. Clayman of the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) prosecuted the case.