A man who posed as a college softball coach to solicit pornographic photos from teenage athletes has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
As reported by the Macon Telegraph, former Northview High School teaching assistant Jason Ford, who was also a travel girls softball coach, has been sentenced to 15 years in a federal prison for impersonating an assistant softball coach at the University of North Florida and the University of South Carolina as a means to solicit pornographic photos and possibly more from high school softball players in Florida, Tennessee and Alabama.
The sentencing came 10 months after Ford was initially arrested and charged.
Here are more specifics about Ford’s alleged identity scheme, as outlined by the Telegraph:
In 2017, he started posing as North Florida assistant Jeff Conrad and South Carolina’s Matt Lisle in emails from addresses Jconrad17@yahoo.com and coachlislesoftball@yahoo.com, respectively.
According to Ford’s admission of facts, he asked high school players in Florida, Alabama and Tennessee about their clothes sizes and to keep their conversations private or “he would go on to the next girl on the list.”
Once each school learned of an electronic imposter, it contacted its local FBI office. The FBI’s Miami office got involved in 2018 as “one of the few FBI offices that conduct online undercover operations.”
With Ford firmly identified, the Miami office laid a trap, impersonating a high school pitcher who engaged with the coach and eventually drew him into a sting operation where he offered to exchange three Amazon gift cards for photos of the pitcher’s genitalia.
In addition to the 15 years in prison that Ford is scheduled to serve, he will also endure 20 years of supervised release and a lifetime as a registered sex offender, all connected with charges of attempting to produce child pornography.
