Former Turnpike Employee Pleads Guilty in Phone-Sexting Case

A former engineer with the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission admitted Thursday in federal court that he abused children by luring and extorting teenage victims to send him sexually explicit photos online.

Russell Freed, 43, formerly of Penn Hills, entered a guilty plea before U.S. District Judge Terrence F. McVerry in Pittsburgh. Freed pleaded guilty to four counts of production and attempted production of sexually explicit images of children; and to one count each of distributing, receiving, and possessing sexually explicit images of children.

Prosecutors told the judge that Freed coerced, tricked and induced or tried to induce 15-year-old girls to send sexually explicit photos of themselves to him in cell phone text messages between Sept. 1, 2010, and May 25.

After obtaining the photos, Freed coerced or tried to coerce the girls to send more explicit images of themselves by threatening to distribute the photos he already possessed to their families and friends, according to prosecutors.

In some cases when the girls did not accede to his wishes, Freed did distribute the photos to others, prosecutors said.

The judge scheduled a sentencing hearing for 9:30 a.m. June 29. Freed could be sentenced to spend at least 15 and up to 170 years in prison and to pay a fine of up to $1,750,000, or both.

Authorities arrested Freed May 25 and a federal grand jury indicted him in July following an investigation that began with a report filed with .

Police said the case began Feb. 5, when a Ross woman and her 15-year-old daughter accused Freed of harassing the daughter on her cell phone. The mother and daughter are not named because Patch does not identify victims of alleged sexual abuse.

The teen told police she had been contacted via text message in September by a person she initially believed to be a friend, according to a complaint filed in federal court. The messages directed her to take and send pornographic photographs of herself and send them by text message to the person who contacted her.

The person who contacted the teen threatened to distribute her photographs to others if she did not send more, according to the complaint. He also contacted the teen's mother through Facebook and demanded explicit photographs of her in exchange for not distributing the photos of her daughter, the complaint states.

From that report, investigators developed evidence linking Freed's phone to an elaborate plot to extract more sexually explicit photographs from the teen, her mother and at least two others, according to the complaint.

The other two known victims were 15 years old and 14 years old at the time the photos were taken and were friends of the teen who filed the initial complaint.

According to police, Freed used social networks to contact youths and posed as one of their peers, using a phone number of someone he knew when he demanded that they send inappropriate photos of themselves to him. 

Freed told police that the owner of the phone number used to collect the images was not involved in any criminal activity, according to the complaint.

Investigators identified Freed after posing as the teen's mother online and tracing the phone used in the text-message exchanges with the help of information that Verizon Wireless provided, the complaint states. Freed worked at the New Stanton office of the Turnpike Commission, at 2200 North Center Ave., which cooperated with the investigation, police said.

A Ross investigator and FBI agent confiscated the phone May 25 when they stopped a Turnpike Commission vehicle Freed was driving and arrested him near his former home in Brentwood, according to the complaint. At that time, Freed acknowledged possession of that phone, investigators said in the complaint.