Project Safe Childhood
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Tammy Dickinson, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced today that a LaGrande, Ore., man has been sentenced in federal court for traveling across states lines to Missouri to engage in illicit sexual activity with two minors, whom he believed were the daughters of an undercover law enforcement officer.
Abdul Lamont Gamble, 41, of LaGrande, Ore., was sentenced by U.S. Chief District Judge Greg Kays on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2015, to five years in prison without parole.
Gamble, who pleaded guilty on May 18, 2015, admitted that he traveled from Oregon to Missouri between March 25 and April 9, 2014, to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor.
Gamble contacted an undercover law enforcement officer through an online social media site in October 2013 and offered to have sex with her fictitious 12-year-old and 15-year-old daughters. Gamble engaged in numerous conversations with the undercover detective through late 2013 and early 2014 via this social media site, email and text messages. Gamble described the specific sexual acts he intended on performing with and on the two minor females, for which he agreed to pay $250.
Gamble traveled to Kansas City, Mo., on a Greyhound bus and arrived on April 9, 2014. The undercover officer met him at the bus station. Gamble reconfirmed the sexual acts he intended on performing on and with the two minor girls.
Gamble and the undercover officer stopped at a CVS on Independence Avenue. Police officers arrested Gamble when he exited the car and began to approach the CVS.
This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick D. Daly. It was investigated by the Kansas City, Mo., Police Department and the FBI.
Project Safe Childhood
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."
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
