A married father from western Pennsylvania will spend 14 to 28 years in prison for using phony Facebook profiles to pose as two different Florida surfers to solicit sexually graphic messages and photos from seven teenage girls.
Fifty-four-year-old William Ainsworth, of Mars, was sentenced Monday by a Butler County judge. The state attorney general's office charged that the elaborate ruse also resulted in two of the girls eventually agreeing to meet for sex with the surfers' middle-aged "friend" — which was Ainsworth, albeit using yet another phony persona.
Ainsworth has been in custody since he was arrested in September 2011 on charges of traveling to the home of a 14-year-old girl for sex.
That led investigators to the scam in which Ainsworth concocted profiles depicting two 15-year-old high school dropouts who had run away to become surfers.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.
