WICHITA, Kan. — A Kansas man who offered money and marijuana to teen girls in exchange for child pornography videos pleaded guilty Tuesday to eight charges.
In exchange for his plea, seven other charges were dismissed against Austin Lee Ballew, 21, of Cherryvale, U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister said in a news release.
Ballew admitted in his plea that he posed as a teenager of young man named Deandre Johnson on Facebook to persuade to teenage girls in southeast and south-central Kansas to make sexually explicit videos. He then threatened to make the videos public if the girls stopped cooperating with him.
The crimes happened between August and September 2018.
Sentencing is scheduled for March 23. Attorneys for both sides agreed to recommend a sentence somewhere between 15 and 25 years in federal prison.
