Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) State Crime Alerts (b)
WASHINGTON – Nathaniel Lamar Nelson Scott, 36, of Bowie, Maryland, was sentenced today in U.S. District Court to 96-months in federal prison in connection with traveling to sexually abuse a six-year-old girl in the District of Columbia.
The sentence was announced by U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr., FBI Special Agent in Charge Sean Ryan of the Washington Field Office Criminal and Cyber Division, and Chief Pamela Smith of the Metropolitan Police Department.
Scott pleaded guilty October 16, 2024, to one count of travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct. In addition to the prison term, the Honorable Dabney L. Friedrich ordered Scott to serve a lifetime term of supervised release and to register as a sex offender.
According to the government’s evidence, in May 2024 Scott began communicating via an encrypted messaging application with a man he met on a fetish website. Scott believed the man to be a pedophile who was sexually abusing his six-year-old daughter. The man actually was an undercover officer with the MPD–FBI Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force. Over the next several days, Scott engaged in graphic conversations with the undercover officer about sexually abusing the purported child. On June 5, 2024, Scott arranged to meet for the purpose of engaging in sexual acts with the child. He traveled from Maryland to a pre-arranged meeting place in the District where he was arrested.
This case is being brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.
This case was investigated by the FBI Washington Field Office and MPD’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force. The task force is composed of FBI agents, along with other federal agents and detectives from northern Virginia and the District of Columbia. The task force is charged with investigating and bringing federal charges against individuals engaged in the exploitation of children and those engaged in human trafficking.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jocelyn Bond and Paul V. Courtney.
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