A federal judge in Ohio sentenced a child predator to 48 years in prison after an investigator from the 1st Judicial District Attorney’s Office posed as an underage teen in an internet sting.
Investigators were monitoring an internet chat room in 2014 when Larun Eugene Miller, 45, who was using the screen name “seeking younger75,” contacted them.
One investigator began to communicate with him both online and on the phone, and the communication became sexually graphic, according to a news release.
“Miller told the teen he was sending her a bus ticket so that she could come to Ohio to meet him,” the release said.
Investigators were able to identify him and discovered that he was a sex offender on federal probation for a sex offense involving a child.
Miller told the investigator that as he was in the process of sending her a bus ticket, he was also meeting with another teen in Ohio.
“In light of the child protection issues involved with Miller admitting he was meeting an actual teen, investigators immediately contacted law enforcement in Ohio.”
In January, 2016, Miller was tried in the U.S. District Court in Akron, Ohio, and convicted last month.
“The feds mean business with this kind of offense,” said Pam Russell, spokeswoman for the 1st Judicial District Attorney’s Office. “We were really pleased about it.”
Since 1996, when the Child Sex Offender Internet Investigations Unit was created, the unit has made more than 800 arrests, Russell said.
