(WSYR-TV) — According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, a 35-year-old man from Los Angelos, California, Edward Mercado was sentenced to 7 years in federal prison for traveling to New York to try and engage in illicit sexual conduct with a 10-year-old child.
In Mercado’s previous guilty plea from May 2021 through June 2021, he had many telephone and text conversations that included sexually explicit content with an undercover officer posing as the mother of a 10-year-old girl.
In these conversations, The U.S. Attorney’s Office says Mercado expressed a desire to engage in sexually explicit content with the child.
Furthermore, on June 3, 2021, Mercado went to Syracuse, New York from California to meet with the child and engage in sexual content with her in Ithaca, New York.
Mercado was then arrested at the Syracuse airport and has been in custody since that date, the Attorney’s Office says.
Mercado will be imposed a 15-year term of supervised release, which will begin after he is released from prison, according to United States District Judge David N. Hurd. He will also have to pay a $3,000 fine, a $100 special assessment and be required to register as a sex offender.
This announcement today was made by United States Attorney Carla B. Freedman and Janeen DiGuiseppi, Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
