A man who posed as a teenager to lure a 14-year-old girl from Utah to Los Angeles for sex is expected to be sentenced Thursday to a multi-year federal prison term with lifetime supervision.
Donny Larnell Wade, 35, of Pomona pleaded guilty last July to one federal count of transporting the girl between states with the intent of having her engage in criminal sexual activity.
Federal prosecutors are recommending that U.S. District Judge George Wu sentence Wade to 7 1/2 years in prison, with supervised release and sex offender registration for life.
The Thursday sentencing hearing is sealed, meaning no members of the media or public will be admitted.
According to court papers, in March 2013, Wade used the persona of a 17-year-old female he named Hanna Leak to meet girls he thought lived nearby via the Internet, asking several whether they liked “black guys.”
Around that time, federal prosecutors said, Wade encountered the victim on the social networking site MeetMe.com and persuaded her to leave home, buying her a one-way bus ticket to Claremont.
When the girl arrived, the two went to a motel, where Wade had sex with her, according to documents filed this week. Police tracked Wade and the teen by following her computer use, and she was returned to her family.
Wade’s attorneys are asking for a four-year sentence, followed by a 10-year period of supervised release.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Dore wrote that Wade is “unquestionably a predator.”
“The presence of adult pornography on his phone, and not child pornography, actually makes this clear,” the prosecutor wrote in sentencing papers. “Defendant was not acting on impulses. He did not necessarily want to have sex with a child. But he knew that children were more vulnerable and more likely to fall for his ‘Hanna’ ruse.”
— City News Service