Fort Worth Man Sentenced to 120 Months in Federal Prison for Enticement of a Minor

Fort Worth, Texas — A 49-year-old Fort Worth, Texas, man, Scott Brandon Tosch, was sentenced this morning by Senior U.S. District Judge Terry R. Means to serve 120 months in federal prison, following his guilty plea in December 2016 to one count of enticement of a minor, announced U.S. Attorney John Parker of the Northern District of Texas.

U.S. District Judge Means ordered Tosch to report to the Bureau of Prisons on June 26, 2017.

According to documents filed in the case, on August 16, 2016, Tosch responsed to a Craigslist ad entitled, “hey bored and lookin for somethin to do while still summertime... school coming up soon... hmu.” At the time, Tosch did not know that an officer with the Fort Worth Police Department was working in an undercover capacity and had posted the ad. The undercover officer responded to the email stating that he was 13 years old. The conversation continued and were sexually graphic in nature. The conversation then led to Tosch coming to pick up what he believed to be a 13-year-old female for sexual intercourse.

On August 18, 2016, Tosch arrived at the agreed location, and the Fort Worth Police Department took Tosch into custody.

This year marks the 10^th anniversary of the Project Safe Childhood (PSC) initiative. PSC is a department initiative launched in May 2006 to combat the proliferation of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation crimes against children. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, PSC marshals federal, state, tribal and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. Since FY 2011, the Department of Justice has filed 20,260 PSC cases against 19,111 defendants. These cases include prosecutions of child sex trafficking; sexual abuse of a minor or ward; child pornography offenses; obscene visual representation of the sexual abuse of children; selling or buying of children; and many more statutes. To learn more about PSC’s work, please visit: https://www.justice.gov/psc.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Assistant U.S. Attorney Megan Fahey was in charge of the prosecution.

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