Pine City man sentenced to 29+ years in prison for child pornography scheme
MINNEAPOLIS — An eastern Minnesota man was sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison for soliciting young girls to make child pornography, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger announced Monday.
In October last year, 26-year-old Caleb McLaughlin, of Pine City, pleaded guilty to four counts of soliciting, producing, receiving and distributing images of child pornography, as well as one count of enticing a child to engage in illegal sexual activity.
According to court documents, McLaughlin created and used multiple social media accounts and communications applications to solicit and direct over 200 minor victims to create sexually explicit videos and images to send to him. Of those victims, 26 were between the ages of 11 and 16 years old.
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McLaughlin used a variety of aliases and Snapchat IDs including "Jake Benson," "Lift11," and "Tech4cm." He is also said to have sometimes lied about his age, saying he was 17 in order to prey on minor girls he met online. He also would offer the minors drugs, alcohol, cash and gift cards in exchange for sex acts.
The sentencing judge called McLaughlin's behavior, "shocking, even to someone like me, a federal judge who has been sentencing [child sex offenders] for over two decades."
McLaughlin was sentenced to a total of 350 months in prison followed by 12 years of supervised release.
