6-3-2019
TACOMA, Wash. — A registered sex offender was sentenced in the U.S. District Court in Tacoma to fourteen years in prison after law enforcement discovered he was secretly using a cell phone to communicate with minors via social media.
The DHS reports 47-year-old Peter Hufferd was on federal supervision living in sex-offender housing in Seattle when he used apps like Snapchat, Instagram and Tumblr to convince teens to send him sexually implicit images.
Hufferd was previously convicted in 2003 in Clallam County Superior Court of three counts of possession of child pornography after he was discovered posing online as a 15-year-old girl in an attempt to get minors to send him explicit images.
He had completed a ten-year prison term by April 2017 before investigators discovered him now using an unmonitored phone.
“Repeat child offenders truly are the worst of the worst . . . . these criminals must not be allowed to continue to prey on our children,” said the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations Seattle.