Long Prison Sentence For Minnesota Man Who Victimized Hundreds

Minneapolis, MN (KROC-AM News) - A Minnesota man has been sentenced to more than 29 years in federal prison for victimizing young children in the production, receiving, and dissemination of child pornography.

In response to the sentencing order, Andrew Luger, the US Attorney for Minnesota says, "For years, Caleb McLaughlin used social media to groom, sexually exploit, and abuse hundreds of minor victims. He preyed upon the most vulnerable, with some victims as young as 11 or 12 years old."

Starting in or about January 2019, court documents indicate the 26-year-old Pine City man used multiple social media accounts to contact and solicit more than 200 minor victims to produce and send him sexually explicit images. The court documents say prosecutors have been able to identify 26 children between the ages of 11 and 16 years old in Minnesota and Wisconsin who were victims of McLaughlin.

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Federal prosecutors say McLaughlin would also coerce his victims to meet him in person so he could sexually abuse them. They say he would offer them drugs, alcohol, vape pens, cash, and gift cards in exchange for sex acts that he would document by producing child pornography videos.

McLaughlin entered into a plea agreement and admitted to two counts of production of child pornography, one count of receipt of child pornography, one count of distribution of child pornography, and one count of coercion and enticement of a minor. The judge who sentenced him stated that it was one of the longest he had ever imposed and described McLaughlin's behavior as, "shocking, even to someone like me, a federal judge who has been sentencing child sex offenders for over two decades."

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