Kyle Matthew Thompson, Travel with Intent to Engage in Illicit Sexual Conduct, Arizona 2022

A 47-year-old man from Mohave Valley, Arizona, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in two counts of Travel with Intent to Engage in Illicit Sexual Conduct with two 15-year-old girls.

Kyle Matthew Thompson, a registered sex offender, was convicted on February 24, 2022, by a jury for his crimes. According to the evidence, Thompson had prior conviction for Attempted Sexual Exploitation of a Minor from Mohave County Superior Court in 2013.

In November 2016, Thompson posed as a Hollywood movie producer and used social media to contact the two 15-year-old victims, Victim 1 and Victim 2. On December 26, 2016, Thompson departed on a cross-country trip to meet the minor victims. Thompson engaged in sexual intercourse with Victim 1 the morning after his arrival, and then socialized with the victims, their friends, and their unsuspecting parents.

Thompson repeatedly requested sex acts with Victim 2, and before and during his travel, he engaged in sexually explicit calls and messages with both victims. He even impersonated a famous actor in an effort to entice Victim 2 and encourage Victim 2 to engage in sex acts with him. Thompson photoshopped himself into celebrity photos and shared them to his social media account to further bolster his fame-adjacent persona.

“Social media makes children particularly vulnerable to sexual predators,” said United States Attorney Gary Restaino. “This sentence should send a powerful message to anyone who travels with the intent to abuse young people.”

The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the federal government.

The case was investigated by the Talladega County Sheriff’s Office, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Phoenix and Birmingham), with the assistance of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, the Mohave County Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the United States Postal Inspection Service (Birmingham, Alabama) and the Customs and Border Protection’s U.S. Border Patrol.

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