Lower Providence Sex Sting Leads to Prison Time for Philly Man

LOWER PROVIDENCE — A Philadelphia man who had explicit online chatter with a person he believed to be an underage girl, but who was actually a police officer posing as a young teen, was recently sentenced to between three and seven years in state prison following a guilty plea.

Shamsullah Basirat, 41, of the city’s Feltonville section, pleaded guilty in state court to various charges stemming from his attempted solicitation of who he thought was a 14-year-old girl, according to media reports and court records.

That “teen” actually turned out to be an undercover state law enforcement officer, who communicated with Basirat on the social media platforms Skout and KiK, according to a report in The Times Herald.

The paper reported that Basirat communicated to the target that he wanted to meet her in a parking lot on the 2600 block of Egypt Road in Lower Providence, and when he went to that location in early March of last year, he was arrested by police while standing outside his vehicle.

Records from Montgomery County Common Pleas Court show that Basirat pleaded guilty before Judge Thomas C. Branca on June 28 to charges of unlawful contact with a minor, criminal attempt to commit involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a person under 16 years of age, and criminal attempt to commit statutory sexual assault of a person 11 years or older.

The judge sentenced Basirat to state prison following a bench trial, according to court records.

The Times Herald reported that Basirat was also ordered to complete probation for a period of three years. The paper also reported that at the time of his arrest, Basirat admitted that he had made a mistake in communicating with who he thought was an underage girl, and that he would never do it again.