Tri-Cities man caught in ‘Net Nanny’ sex sting didn’t learn his lesson the 1st time
A Kennewick man who traveled to Yakima to have sex with an 11-year-old and 13-year-old was sentenced this week to 13 years in a federal prison.
A jury found David Elmo Curry, 28, guilty in December of two counts of attempted enticement of a minor after he borrowed a car from his girlfriend in November 2019 to drive the 90 miles.
He lied to his girlfriend about why he was traveling to Yakima and he took sexual items with him.
There he was caught in a “Net Nanny” sting by the Washington State Patrol’s Missing and Exploited Children’s Task Force. Detectives posing as parents offered to allow sex with their fictional children, leading to the arrest of 16 men.
Curry was the only Tri-Cities-area suspect arrested in that sting, which was similar to a previous Tri-Cities Net Nanny operation. He moved to Clarkston, Wash., before his sentencing.
Curry had responded to an ad posted on Craigslist and communicated with an undercover officer who presented herself as a mother. Federal prosecutors said their text and email exchanges included the purported mother’s interest in finding a man to have sex with her children.
After Curry went to the Yakima house where they arranged to meet, the undercover officer said she was going to get the kids. That’s when Curry learned he had been caught in a WSP sting.
The month after he was released on bail in that case, he placed an adult ad and began chatting with a Homeland Security Investigations Task Force officer, who responded as a 13-year-old girl.
He exchanged hundreds of texts and emails with her, including asking for nude pictures of her and sending nude images of himself, according to the Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Murphy in court documents.
The day before their planned meeting, Curry again bought sexual items. His attorney Craig Webster of Yakima said his client stopped the conversation and the meeting never happened.
Webster argued that in both cases his client was seeking a sexual relationship with an adult female and that there was no evidence that Curry ever acted on his fantasies.
His attorney said in court documents that Curry has since been diagnosed as autistic and is easily taken advantage of by others.
The defense argued for a 10-year prison term for the crimes he was convicted of. Prosecutors asked for 25 years.
The 13-year sentence handed down by U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Bastian this week at the Yakima Federal Courthouse will be followed by 10 years of probation.
“Predators like Mr. Curry are motivated to target their victims through mouse clicks and keystrokes, and any sentence punishing his perverse actions is an important step in ensuring cyberspace is kept free of those that seek to exploit children,” said Robert Hammer, the special agent in charge overseeing Homeland Security Investigations in the Northwest, after the sentencing.
The case was part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in 2006 by the U.S. Department of Justice to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse.
