READING, Pa. \u2013 A Berks County man pleaded guilty on Thursday to enticing minors to engage in sexual conduct, according to the Pennsylvania Attorney’s Office.<\/p>\n
Carlos Rivera-Smith, 38, of Reading, pleaded guilty to four counts of use of an interstate commerce facility to entice a minor, and attempt to entice a minor, to engage in sexual conduct, and one count of commission of a felony offense by an individual required to register as a sex offender, according to officials.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The defendant has been detained in federal custody since January 14, following his arrest on a criminal complaint and warrant, the Attorney’s Office said. He was charged by information last month; with Thursday\u2019s plea, he has waived prosecution by indictment.<\/p>\n
Rivera-Smith directed four minor children over a social media app and paid money to via cash apps to produce sexually explicit images at his direction and to entice them to perform sex acts with him, authorities said. Records obtained by law enforcement show that he did so multiple times over more than two years, beginning in 2022, paying the children hundreds of dollars for them to sexually exploit themselves, according to officials.<\/p>\n
Rivera-Smith is scheduled to be sentenced on September 9 and faces a maximum possible term of life imprisonment.<\/p>\n
The case was investigated by the Reading Police Department and Homeland Security Investigations and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Jeffrey Dimmig, according to the news release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 A Berks County man pleaded guilty on Thursday to enticing minors to engage in sexual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[214,31,128,130,129,213],"class_list":["post-204767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-crime","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reading-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}