Man Sentenced for Internet Child Sex Solicitation

A Florida man who traveled to California after using the Internet to try to arrange sexual encounters with girls as young as 7 years old was sentenced Friday to 10 years in federal prison.

“I wish to say how very sorry I am,” Mark Douglas Poehlman told U.S. District Judge Shirley Wohl Kram, “and I wish mercy from the court.”

Poehlman, 38, was arrested in a sting operation on the Internet by agents from the Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement Team, a multi-agency task force based in Los Angeles that investigates child sexual exploitation crimes.

The undercover agents posted an ad on the Internet that read: “Divorced mother of three looking for someone who understands my family’s unique needs. Servicemen preferred.”

Poehlman, a former Air Force staff sergeant, responded and, in more than 100 e-mail messages, expressed an interest in having sex with the ad writer’s daughters, described as ages 7, 10 and 12.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Luis Li produced evidence during a four-day trial in May that Poehlman gave specific instructions on what kinds of sex acts he intended to perform with the girls.

He was arrested in January 1996, after he showed up at a Long Beach motel to meet an undercover Customs Service agent who posed as the children’s mother.

At that meeting, which was secretly videotaped, Poehlman again spoke in detail about his intention to molest the girls, prosecutors said.

Poehlman pleaded no contest to state charges in 1996 and served more than 250 days in jail. After his release, he was indicted on federal charges of interstate travel with intent to engage in sex acts with minors.

During a sentencing hearing Friday, defense lawyer Edward M. Robinson appealed unsuccessfully for a drastically reduced sentence, contending that Poehlman had assumed responsibility for his actions even though he claimed during the trial that he was illegally entrapped.

Robinson told the judge that Poehlman suffers from a variety of psychological and medical problems.

In sentencing him, Kram ordered Poehlman to stay off the Internet and away from child pornography when he gets out of prison.