(Alexandria, VA) -- Timothy Lynn Brumit, age 48, of Aiken, South Carolina, pled guilty today to attempting to entice a person he believed to be a 13-year-old boy to engage in illicit sexual conduct and to transporting child pornography, via the Internet. Chuck Rosenberg, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Kevin S. McDonald, Acting United States Attorney for the District of South Carolina, Joseph Persichini, Jr., Assistant Director in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington Field Office, and Calvin L. Johnson, Chief of Police, Dumfries Police Department, made the announcement following Brumit ‟s guilty plea before United States District Judge Liam O„Grady.

Brumit, who will be sentenced on June 6, 2008, faces a mandatory minimum prison sentence of ten years and a maximum sentence of life on the child enticement charge. Brumit faces a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years and a maximum sentence of twenty years on the child pornography charge. Upon his release from incarceration, Brumit will remain under Court supervision for a term of at least five years to life. Brumit also will be required to register as a sex offender in any jurisdiction in which he lives, works, or attends school.

According to court documents and proceedings, between January 2 and January 23, 2008, Brumit used “Hello.com” to communicate with a person whom he believed to be a 13-year-old boy located in Stafford, Virginia. Brumit, who used the screen name “charmingtim75” online, actually was communicating with an undercover detective from the Dumfries Police Department. The online service enables users to trade and view digital pictures and videos while chatting in real time about the images. During the course of more than 15 online chats, Brumit distributed more than 600 files containing graphic images and movies of child pornography to the undercover detective. The images included depictions of boys under the age of 12 engaged in sexual acts with other minor boys or with adult males. Some of the images that Brumit distributed to the undercover detective depict violence and sadistic and masochistic abuse of young boys.

As they viewed the images of child pornography, Brumit instructed the undercover detective to engage in sexual acts and encouraged him to obtain a webcam. Brumit also discussed traveling from his South Carolina home to Stafford, where he would meet the fictitious boy, take him to a motel room and engage in sexual activity with him. Brumit also wanted the fictitious boy to leave his family and live with Brumit in his South Carolina home. In one of the last online chats prior to his January 24, 2008 arrest in South Carolina, Brumit instructed the fictitious boy to bring his original birth certificate and social security card when Brumit met him in Virginia. Brumit also instructed the fictitious boy to bring the laptop that he had been using to communicate with Brumit, which Brumit planned to destroy to conceal his connection to the fictitious child.

At the time of his January 24, 2008 arrest, Brumit was employed as a high school English teacher at Batesburg-Leesville High School, in South Carolina.