SE Minnesota Sex Offender Sent to Prison for New Conviction

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Minneapolis, MN (KROC-AM News) - A convicted sex offender from southeastern Minnesota has been sentenced to federal prison.

The US Attorney for Minnesota says 63-year-old Richard Dean Vandeweerd has been ordered to spend 10 years in custody for committing a felony offense involving a minor while registered as a sex offender. The LeRoy man entered a guilty plea to the charge in April.

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According to his guilty plea and court documents, Vandeweerd attempted to transfer obscene material to a minor using the Meet24 chat app. Prosecutors say he contacted an undercover FBI agent pretending to be a 14-year-old girl from Tennessee named Becca.

He was accused of sending "Becca" photos of his genitalia while engaged in sexually explicit conversations with the FBI agent on multiple occasions in February and November 2020 while he was on probation for a child sex abuse conviction in Mower County.

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Vandeweerd was convicted of a third-degree criminal sexual conduct charge involving a 13-year-old girl in Mower County in 2015. He was given a stayed three-year prison sentence but was ordered to prison to serve the time in 2021 for violating the terms of his probation. He completed his sentence in August and was discharged from prison on supervised release.

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Gallery Credit: Jessica On The Radio

Filed Under: child sexual abuse, crime

Categories: Local News