Ponca City Man Sentenced To Prison In West Virginia Child Sex Sting
Tuesday, October 22, 2024, 5:45 P.M. ET. 2 Minute Read, By Art Fletcher: Englebrook Independent News,
CHARLESTON, W.VA.- On Monday, a 41-year-old Oklahoma convicted pedophile learned that he will be a senior citizen when he is finally released from federal prison, following being sentenced to decades after he messaged an individual who he thought was a West Virginia woman into letting him have sex with her two young children.
On Monday, October 21, 2024, Jerrod Lee Sharp, 41, of Ponca City, Oklahoma, appeared in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia and was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Robert Goodwin to 30 years in federal prison, to be followed by a lifetime of supervised release for his previously entered guilty plea for the charge of Attempted Enticement of a Minor. Upon his release from prison, Sharp will be required to register as a sex offender.
Charges Were Brought Under Project Safe Childhood
According To Charging Documents
According to U.S. Attorney Will Thompson and documents filed with the court, on July 17, 2022, Sharp began messaging a woman located in West Virginia on an online messaging platform whom he believed to be the mother of two minor girls.
Sharp repeatedly stated in his messages to the woman that he wished to engage in explicit sexual relations with both girls and that he wished to travel from Oklahoma to West Virginia to meet them.
Shortly over a year later, Sharped exchanged over 1,600 messages with the woman. Then, on October 30, 2023, Sharp boarded a plane in Oklahoma and flew to Charleston, West Virginia, where he anticipated meeting the woman and her two minor girls. Upon debarking the plane in Charleston, instead of being greeted by the woman and her girl, Sharp was met by federal agents and taken into custody.
U.S. Attorney Will Thompson commended the investigative work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation West Virginia Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Task Force and the West Virginia State Police.
The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the U.S. Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.
