News Releases

Child predator watch: Homeland Security Investigations in tri-state area protects children in US and around the world

PHILADELPHIA – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) made a total of 52 criminal arrests, resulting in 35 indictments and 38 convictions of child predators in the tri-state area in 2011.

ICE HSI investigations protect children from sexual predators, including Internet child pornographers, child sex traffickers and those who travel overseas for sex with minors. The ICE HSI office in Philadelphia, which oversees investigations in Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia, investigated and concluded the following significant cases this year.

• Paul Edward Pavulak, 67, from Delaware and a registered sex offender, was sentenced to life in prison plus 10 years on child pornography charges in October. The ICE HSI investigation revealed that he developed an online relationship with a woman in the Philippines. After meeting the woman and her daughter, he and a Philippine national attempted to produce child pornography of the two-year-old girl via a web camera. Pavulak described the movie as the girl's "training video." ICE HSI agents seized his computers and discovered thousands of images of child pornography from infants to mid-teens engaging in sexual acts with adult males.
• Mark Anthony Permenter, 32, of Hampton Township, Pa., was sentenced to 30 years in prison in September. He pleaded guilty to the charge in January 2011. According to court documents, Permenter had contact with an undercover postal inspector and sent him a sample of his child pornography via the Internet. The investigation revealed that Permenter had taken photographs of multiple girls under the age of seven whom he had contact with or watched.
• Stacey Wright-Farmer of Squire, W.Va., was sentenced in February to the maximum statutory term of 20 years in prison for involving a minor in her care in child pornography. Farmer previously pleaded guilty in June 2010, admitting that from February through May 2009, she produced images of a minor in her care engaged in sexually explicit conduct at her home in McDowell County. Farmer was also sentenced to life on supervised released and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $982.53 to the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources.
• Kenneth Schneider, 47, of Philadelphia, was sentenced in December to 15 years in prison for sexually abusing a minor boy when they resided and traveled together. Schneider, an international attorney, shared his residence in Moscow with the 12-year-old boy, a former Russian ballet dancer.
• Mark Allen Heil, 42, of Bel Air, Md., was sentenced in July to 14 years in prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release for attempted enticement of a minor and possession of child pornography. He actively chatted online with an undercover Delaware state trooper for the purpose of traveling to Delaware and engaging in sex acts with the alleged child of the undercover officer. An ICE HSI computer forensics examination of Heil's computer revealed more than 9000 images of child pornography and 500 transcripts of chats between him and other child sex offenders in the three months preceding his arrest. Some of his chat partners purported to be adults with custody of children whom they were molesting.
• Christopher J. Stephani, 41, of Columbia Crossroads, Pa., was sentenced in August to more than 12 years in prison for receiving and distributing child pornography. Stephani used a computer to download and distribute more than 800 images and 35 movies of child pornography between 2008 and March 4, 2010.
• Thomas Gordon, Jr., 46, of Philadelphia, was sentenced in November to 11 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release on child pornography charges. Gordon, a former Transportation Security Administration screener posted multiple files depicting graphic child exploitation to his Facebook and Photobucket accounts.
• Steven Tadlock, 45, of Pennsylvania, was sentenced to six years in prison on child pornography and obstruction of justice charges. Tadlock distributed images over the Internet to other users and engaged in chats about how to groom children for sexual activity. He also destroyed a computer external hard drive to obstruct the investigation.
• Jamie Hall, 37, a former U.S. Air Force technical sergeant stationed at Dover Air Force Base, was sentenced to six years in prison and five years of supervised release in January. He engaged in online conversations with a New Hampshire detective who posed as an 18-year-old boy interested in trading child pornography. Hall sent numerous images of child pornography and posted additional images to a publically available website and expressed interest in identifying a young teenage boy with whom he could engage in a sexual relationship.
• Roger Wesley Farris II, 41, of Waynesboro, Va., was sentenced to 44 months in prison and 15 years of supervised release on his conviction related to attempting to arrange for sex with a minor child. The investigation began as an undercover operation in which Farris contacted an agent posing as the uncle of a 10-year-old child in an effort to arrange sex with the child. Farris told the agent that he would pay $700, plus $50 for gas money, if the uncle would bring the child from West Virginia to a hotel in Pittsburgh. Farris was arrested on March 5, 2008, at a hotel in Pittsburgh.
• Richard Boerckel, 68, of Pennsylvania, was sentenced in November to 30 months in prison and five years of supervised release. He was charged in August after ICE HSI conducted an undercover investigation into the operators and subscribers of websites containing child pornography.

"Sexual predators are exploiting and abusing our children for their own personal gratification," said John P. Kelleghan, special agent in charge of ICE HSI in Philadelphia. "HSI and our law enforcement partners will not tolerate this behavior and will use every tool at our disposal to stop them in their tracks."

Operation Predator is a nationwide ICE HSI initiative to protect children from sexual predators, including those who travel overseas for sex with minors, Internet child pornographers, criminal alien sex offenders, and child sex traffickers. ICE HSI encourages the public to report suspected child predators and any suspicious activity through its toll-free hotline at 1-866-DHS-2-ICE or by completing its online tip form. Both are staffed around the clock by investigators.

Suspected child sexual exploitation or missing children may be reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an Operation Predator partner, at 1-800-843-5678 or http://www.cybertipline.com.

For more information about ICE HSI's predator investigations, visit ICE.gov.