Mom who tried to sell child gets 20 years in prison
By Guillermo Contreras - Express-News
At a swanky Stone Oak steakhouse, Jennifer Richards confided to her date last August that her 5-year-old daughter loved seafood.
Between bites of her filet, Richards discussed arrangements for selling the girl to the date, an FBI informant posing undercover as a child predator.
If the date bought her a car and set her up in an apartment, Richards would grant the informant sexual access to the child, and, possibly later, to her younger daughter, who was 10 months old at the time, according to transcripts of the conversation that the informant helped record for the FBI.
Richards said she would slowly train the 5-year-old how to perform sex acts, “cause I want her to be comfortable with it all.”
On Tuesday, those secret recordings helped send Richards, 25, to federal prison for 20 years. Senior U.S. District Judge Harry Lee Hudspeth imposed the term after Richards agreed to it as part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors Sarah Wannarka and Tracy Braun.
Richards pleaded guilty April 22 to trying to sell the 5-year-old knowing that the child would be used for sex and that the acts would be photographed and videotaped. The penalty for that crime starts at 30 years and goes up to life.
Hudspeth also ordered Richards to serve 10 years of federal supervision once she’s released, and to register as a sex offender. The prosecutors wanted the judge to impose a life-term of supervision, while her public defender, Claire Koontz, argued for five years of supervision.
In the federal system, prisoners generally serve at least 85 percent of their terms. Prosecutors dismissed one count each of distributing child pornography and using interstate facilities to transmit information about a minor.
Richards, who’s been in custody since Aug. 18, told the judge she was sorry.
“Mostly, I want to apologize to my family and my daughters for everything they’ve had to go through,” Richards said.
Richards became a target as part of a probe that centered on Sean Michael Block, who Richards met while working at the Cheesecake Factory at North Star Mall. Block, at his trial in May, was convicted of helping set up the sale and also of distributing child pornography after Richards testified against him.
Block, 40, first came to the attention of authorities in 2004 after he made contact online with a retired Los Angeles police detective posing as a teenage girl. Block faces 30 years to life in prison during his sentencing in July.
Richards’ daughters (and Block’s own daughter) were found not to have been molested and are in the custody of relatives, prosecutors said.
