Registered Sex Offender Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison for Enticing Minors via Social Media Platforms

Used SnapChat, Instagram and Tumblr to Convince Teens to Send Him Sexually Explicit Images

    A registered sex offender with two prior child pornography related convictions was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to fourteen years in prison and twenty years of supervised release for enticement of a minor, announced U.S. Attorney Brian T. Moran.  PETER JAMES HUFFERD, 47, was on federal supervision living in sex-offender housing in Seattle when law enforcement discovered he was secretly using a cell phone to communicate with minor females via social media.  HUFFERD convinced two of the minor females to send him sexually explicit images.  At the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Ronald B. Leighton said HUFFERD showed a pattern of criminal conduct that poses “a danger to society.”

  According to records filed in the case, HUFFERD had just completed a ten-year prison term in April 2017 when he began federal supervision.  HUFFERD was allowed one monitored cellular phone.  Beginning no later than October 2017, HUFFERD used an unmonitored cell phone to communicate with minors on SnapChat, Instagram and Tumblr.  HUFFERD began relationships with multiple minor females, convincing at least two of them to send him sexually explicit images.

 HUFFERD was convicted in 2003 in Clallam County Superior Court of three counts of possession of child pornography and was sentenced to 85 days in custody.  At the time law enforcement determined HUFFERD was posing online as a 15-year-old girl to try to get minors to send him sexually explicit images.  In 2008, HUFFERD was sentenced to ten years in prison after a father discovered his 12-year-old daughter was chatting online with HUFFERD. HUFFERD was using the same identity of a 15-year-old girl and engaging in sexually explicit talk with the 12-year-old.  HUFFERD was encouraging the child to cut herself.  A search of HUFFERD’s computer revealed more than 300 sexually explicit images of children.

  In the current case, in March 2018, U.S. Probation discovered the unmonitored cell phone in a search of HUFFERD’s sex offender residence.  A court-authorized search warrant revealed HUFFERD’s illegal communications via social media.