Summerset Woman Sentenced to 40 Years in Federal Prison for Multistate Sexual Exploitation of Minors

RAPID CITY - United States Attorney Alison J. Ramsdell announced today that U.S. District Judge Karen E. Schreier has sentenced a Summerset, South Dakota, woman convicted of seven federal criminal offenses, including Enticement to Travel for Illegal Sexual Activity, Travel with Intent to Engage in Illicit Sexual Activity, Possession of Child Pornography, Obstruction of Justice, Tampering with a Witness, and Transfer of Obscene Material to a Minor. The sentencing took place on January 3, 2025.

Emily Nicole Yeary, 26, was sentenced to a total of 40 years in federal prison, which will be followed by five years of supervised release. She will pay a $700 assessment to the Federal Crime Victims Fund and $3,000 in restitution to one of her victims. Another victim’s family will make a later restitution request. Yeary will also pay restitution to the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force for forensic examinations of Yeary’s phone and other devices.

“This is among the most heinous cases of child exploitation our office has prosecuted,” said U.S. Attorney Alison J. Ramsdell. “The lengths to which Emily Yeary went to groom and then manipulate these young girls is reprehensible, and the use of these minor victims as pawns in a game of sexual abuse and terror is unforgivable. Yeary earned herself every month of today’s federal sentence. Let us all be grateful for the expertise of DCI’s Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce and the coordinated efforts of law enforcement agencies throughout South Dakota and other jurisdictions. Law enforcement’s thorough investigation exposed Yeary’s criminal activity and allowed the U.S. Attorney’s Office to seek justice in federal court.”

“I commend the State Trooper, the Division of Criminal Investigation, and South Dakota law enforcement for working with law enforcement across state lines to protect a young victim and hold a serious offender accountable. Human trafficking and its young victims remain a national concern that we unfortunately are not immune from in South Dakota,” said South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley.

In July of 2022, a federal grand jury charged Yeary with multiple crimes arising out of her criminal conduct with minors, including Attempted Exploitation of a Minor, Transportation of a Minor with Intent to Engage in Criminal Sexual Activity, Enticement of a Minor Using the Internet, and Travel with Intent to Engage in Illicit Sexual Activity. The multistate investigation revealed Yeary offended against multiple victims, all of whom were minors from Mississippi, Kentucky, Florida, and Missouri. Yeary pleaded guilty to seven federal offenses on November 1, 2024.

On June 25, 2022, Yeary was arrested by the South Dakota Highway Patrol after being pulled over for speeding. Yeary had a 14-year-old female in her vehicle who had been reported missing from Mississippi. When Yeary bonded out of jail days later, she immediately contacted the same minor, spray painted her truck to avoid detection, and returned to Mississippi, where Yeary removed the child from her home a second time and took her to Kansas.

The investigation revealed that Yeary routinely presented herself to be an underage male named “Riley” and used Tik Tok and other cell phone apps to obtain access to minor females. Over the course of three years, Yeary traveled to multiple states to meet her victims and convince them to run away with her. Yeary crossed state lines intending to engage in sex with her victims, and then took her victims across state lines with similar intentions. Yeary sexually abused at least one of her victims, using a prosthetic penis, after giving alcohol to the minor. Yeary possessed sexually explicit photos of another minor female from Kentucky, with whom Yeary had an illegal sexual relationship with and to whom Yeary sent sexually explicit photos of a prosthetic penis. Yeary had another illegal relationship with a minor from Missouri, whom Yeary hid from police in a college fraternity house. After Yeary was arrested in Rapid City, and while she was in custody at the Pennington County Jail, she attempted to persuade one of her victims not to testify against her and used the same victim to try to persuade the Missouri victim to similarly not cooperate with the prosecution.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the DOJ’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children, as well as identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit https://www.justice.gov/psc.

The investigation was led by the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation and Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Instrumental to the investigation were the Simpson County Mississippi Sheriff’s Office, South Dakota Highway Patrol, Galena Kansas Police Department, Santa Rosa County Florida Sheriff’s Office, Rapid City Police Department, Pennington County Sheriff’s Office, Homeland Security Investigations, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Marshals Service, Rankin County Mississippi Sheriff’s Office, Mississippi Bureau of Investigations, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, Missouri State Highway Patrol, Knox County Missouri Sheriff’s Office, Kirksville Missouri Police Department, Hannibal Missouri Police Department, U.S. Postal Inspector’s Service, Cherokee County Kansas Sheriff’s Office, and the Quapaw Nation Marshal Service. Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather Knox prosecuted the case.

Yeary was immediately remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service.