Two more men were recently convicted in a North Georgia child exploitation sting, authorities said.
Andrew Leo Schafer, 53, of Winder, pleaded guilty to a count of using facilities to transmit information about a minor, receiving three years and 10 months in prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia said in a Friday news release.
Fredrick Lamar Smith, 28, of Royston, also pleaded guilty to the same charge and faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, the release said. His sentencing is scheduled for June 3.
Schafer, Smith and seven other suspects were arrested in July 2019 after FBI and GBI investigators said they traveled across northeast Georgia to meet up with minors to sexually abuse them, AJC.com previously reported.
RELATED: 9 arrested on child exploitation charges after GBI, FBI sting
The multi-agency sting operation was called Operation End Game and was based out of Athens.
Investigators seized 13 cellphones and had more than 200 exchanges with people on social media platforms over a three-day period that month.
“Many of those were exchanges in which the subject initiated contact with whom they believed to be a minor and directed the conversation towards sex,” GBI spokeswoman Natalie Ammons said at the time.
In some cases, the men would send lewd content or pornography to the person they thought was a minor, or ask them for nude photos. Ammons said some of the men were communicating with multiple investigators posing as minors at the same time.
The suspects were all booked into the Clarke County jail. One suspect, James Morriss Jr., 50, of Dacula, pleaded guilty in his case last month, receiving the same sentence as Schafer. He’s a former youth umpire in Gwinnett County.
MORE: Former Gwinnett youth umpire to serve nearly 4 years in child sex case
Credit: Athens Banner-Herald
Credit: Athens Banner-Herald
Schafer is in federal custody and will have to register as a sex offender when he finishes his prison sentence. In addition, he will serve 10 years on supervised release and will have to undergo computer and phone monitoring.
The other suspects’ cases are pending.
In other news:
