Maine man gets prison for soliciting graphic photos in teen chat room

PORTLAND, Maine - A Canton man was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Portland for attempting to transfer obscene material to a minor.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Torresen sentenced Dale Carr, 52, to 21 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. Carr pleaded guilty on Jan. 24.

According to court records, in September 2019, Carr began chatting with an undercover FBI agent posing as a 13-year-old girl in an online chatroom designed for children aged 16 and under. Over the course of the next several weeks, Carr repeatedly asked the agent, who he believed was an underage girl, for sexually explicit photos and expressed an interest in having sex with her. In October 2019, he sent the undercover agent a close-up photograph of his penis.

The FBI investigated the case.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children recently reported an alarming 97.5 percent increase in online enticement reports between 2019 and 2020.

"Online enticement" involves an individual communicating with someone believed to be a child via the internet with the intent to commit a sexual offense or abduction. This type of victimization takes place across every platform, including social media, messaging apps, gaming platforms, etc. For more info about online enticement, including red flags and risk factors, go to www.missingkids.org/theissues/onlineenticement.