FLORIDA MAN SENTENCED TO 188 MONTHS IN PRISON FOR CHILD EXPLOITATION

United States Attorney John L. Brownlee announced today that ERIK LEE LARSON, 26, of Pompano Beach, Florida, was sentenced today by Judge James P. Jones in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia to 188 months in prison for charges related to child exploitation. LARSON was also ordered to register as a sex offender and serve a term of eight years supervised release after his release from prison. LARSON previously plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to transport a minor in interstate commerce for the purpose of prostitution and one count of conspiracy to commit sexual exploitation of a child.

According to evidence presented at an earlier hearing by Assistant United States Attorney Zachary T. Lee, LARSON, who was living in Bluefield, WV, contacted a minor child on the internet site Myspace.com in November 2006 and through internet communications convinced the minor to leave her home in Tazewell County, Virginia and travel to Bluefield, West Virginia, for the purpose of engaging in prostitution. Subsequently, in early December 2006, LARSON transported the minor to Miami, Florida and continued to direct her to engage in prostitution until LARSON was apprehended by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Miami Minor Vice Task Force in Miami, Florida on December 27, 2006.

The investigation of the case was conducted by the Tazewell County Sheriff’s Department, Virginia State Police, Miami-Dade Police Department, City of Miami Police Department, United States Marshals Service and the Bristol and Miami offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant United States Attorney Zachary T. Lee of the United States Attorney’s Office in Abingdon prosecuted the case.