A 54-year-old Montrose man was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison Friday for posing as a modeling agent and asking underaged girls for nude photos and videos of themselves, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver said today.
Vernon L. Estes was indicted by a federal grand jury in April and agreed to plead guilty to coercion and enticement of a minor in September.
Prosectors say Estes solicited young teenaged girls in Yahoo chatrooms in 2008. He sent the videos and photographs deemed to be child pornography as examples of the images he was looking for.
On three occasions, however, instead of teenaged girls, Estes was communicating with law enforcement agents in Oregon, Washington and Florida who were pretending to be teenagers.
Estes will also serve five years of supervised probation and register as a sex offender when he is released from prison.
