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First Posted: 9/4/2014

SCRANTON — Gregory Boone, 30, of Pittston, pleaded guilty today before Senior U.S. District Court Judge Edwin M. Kosik to conspiring with others to recruit, harbor and transport minor females to engage in commercial sex acts for

money in Luzerne and Dauphin counties, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania has announced.

U.S. Attorney Peter Smith said Boone admitted to participating in a scheme to use minor females to engage in prostitution. Boone and his co-conspirators used cell phones to produce and transmit photographs of the females, which were posted on a website to facilitate prostitution activities in motels in Luzerne County and in the Harrisburg area of Pennsylvania. the crimes occurred during the summer of 2013, Smith said.

Boone was indicted by a federal grand jury in December 2013 as a result of an investigation by U.S. Immigration and

Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations, the Pennsylvania State Police, Pittston Police and the

Luzerne County District Attorney’s Office.

Boone faces a potential maximum sentence of life in prison and a $250,000 fine. Judge Kosik ordered a pre-sentence

investigation to be completed. Sentencing will be scheduled at a later date.

The case, prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Francis P. Sempa, 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, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Led by the U.S. 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.”