The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that a 68-year-old Sayre, Pennsylvania resident pleaded guilty today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Karoline Mehalchick in Scranton, to possessing child pornography and participating in a wire fraud scheme.
According to United States Attorney Peter Smith, the defendant, Harold Schrader, pleaded guilty to charges filed in November 2014. Schrader admitted that he possessed child pornography on a computer in 2012, and participated in a fraud scheme during 2008-2011. The fraud scheme involved using the internet to solicit overseas loans from others totaling more than $200,000. Those loans were never repaid.
The charges against Schrader resulted from an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security and the Pennsylvania State Police.
Schrader faces up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine for wire fraud, and up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the child pornography charge. Schrader will be sentenced by Senior U.S. District Court Judge Richard P. Conaboy at a future date.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc For more information about internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab "resources."
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Francis P. Sempa.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
