ALBANY, NEW YORK – Jay Scott Cloutier, age 58, of Lyman, Maine, was sentenced today to 188 months in prison for child exploitation offenses, announced United States Attorney Carla B. Freedman and Janeen DiGuiseppi, Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
As part of his guilty plea, Cloutier admitted that between April 2019 and September 2019, he exchanged sexually explicit text messages with someone he thought was a 14-year-old child, in an attempt to entice the child into engaging in sexual acts with him. On September 20, 2019, he was arrested after he traveled from Maine to a prearranged meeting location in Colonie, New York, with the intent to engage in sexual acts with a 14-year-old child. Cloutier also admitted to having solicited and received a sexually explicit image of an actual 17-year-old child in November 2019 and a sexually explicit image of an actual 15-year-old child in February 2018.
This case was investigated by the FBI and its Child Exploitation Task Force, which includes members of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. This case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Dustin C. Segovia as part of Project Safe Childhood.
Launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, Project Safe Childhood is led by United States Attorney’s offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS). Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit https://www.justice.gov/psc.