Texas Man Sentenced to 13 Years in Prison for Enticing Minors to Engage in Sexual Activity over the Internet

John H. Durham, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that TRAVIS W. McCOY, 24, of Houston, Texas, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Michael P. Shea in Hartford to 156 months of imprisonment, followed by a lifetime of supervised release, for enticing minors to engage in sexual activity over the internet.

According to court documents and statements made in court, between approximately August 2015 and March 2017, while he was attending college and living in New London, McCOY used internet-based video chatting services, including Kik and Google Hangouts, and internet-based gaming systems, such as Xbox Live, to entice four minor males between the ages of 9 and 14 to engage in sexually explicit conduct over video-chatting services, such as Skype.  McCOY either took screen shots of the minors engaged in sexual activity, or requested and received from the minors digital images and videos in which the minors are depicted engaging in sexual activity.  McCOY also sent sexually explicit images and videos of himself to the minor victims.

The investigation revealed that McCOY initially met one of the minor victims at a summer camp in Texas where McCOY had worked as a camp counselor.

The investigation further revealed that McCOY maintained three Dropbox accounts and gave the password to one of the accounts to a person living in Los Angeles as a way to share and receive child pornography.  The Dropbox accounts contained 684 images and more than 89 hours of videos of child pornography, and were accessed by people around the world.  There is no evidence that McCOY distributed any of the images or videos he received from the four minor victims he enticed.

McCOY has been detained since his arrest on June 28, 2017.  On June 27, 2018, he pleaded guilty to one count of enticement of a minor to engage in sexual activity.

This matter was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations, the New London Police Department and the Houston Police Department.  The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy V. Gifford.

This prosecution is part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Project Safe Childhood Initiative, which is aimed at protecting children from sexual abuse and exploitation.  For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.

To report cases of child exploitation, please visit www.cybertipline.com.