50-year-old NC man convicted of traveling to Nashville to have sex with 15-year-old girl
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NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV) — A 50-year-old man will spend 26-1/2 years in prison for child exploitation and sex crimes after he was found guilty of traveling to Nashville to have sex with a 15-year-old girl.
According to US Attorney Don Cochran’s Office, James Frei of Union Mills, N.C. was found guilty by a federal jury in February 2019 on four counts of production of child pornography, one count of enticing a minor to engage in sexual conduct, two counts of traveling in interstate commerce for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a minor, and one count of transporting child pornography.
In July 2016, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a cyber tip from Facebook regarding in Frei engaging in sexually explicit conversations with the minor female. The conversations indicated that Frei may have already traveled to Nashville to have sex with her.
An MNPD detective interviewed the girl who told them that she met Frei in May 2016 through a teen chat room on Facebook and that he had traveled multiple times to Nashville to go to her house after her father had left for work, where they had sex. The girl was then driven to a nearby park where they again had sex.
Frei returned to Nashville for a few days in June 2016 and on two occasions, he took the girl to a hotel near the airport and had sex. Frei also reportedly recorded the encounters with his phone.
A search warrant of Frei’s home resulted in the seizure and examination of his phone which was found to have numerous videos and images of him having sex with the girl and over 500 images and videos of child porn. The investigation also found Frei had been downloading child porn for nearly 10 years and had participated in hundreds of sexual conversations with underage children.
Frei had previously been convicted of criminal offenses involving children in North Carolina and Michigan.
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