Seattle – A 29-year-old Brooklyn, New York man was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Seattle to ten years in prison for attempted enticement of a minor, announced U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. Rajesh Singh pleaded guilty on April 25, 2022. He has been in custody since his arrest on April 22, 2021. At the sentencing hearing U.S. District Judge Richard A. Jones said, “I’m grateful that we have law enforcement officers that go online and find these people who want to hurt children.”
“The conduct in this case paints a disturbing picture of those who sexualize children and seek to abuse them for their gratification,” said U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. “In this instance, fortunately, the child was a fiction – but Mr. Singh’s fantasies about sexual abuse were all too real. This sentence should serve as a warning to those tempted to act on such dark desires.”
According to court documents, Singh began communicating with an undercover officer in August 2020 about his desire to travel to Washington State to sexually abuse a child. The undercover agent created a fictitious daughter and Singh communicated extensively about his desire to rape the child and film the sexual assault. At various times in the chats, Singh indicated he had previously molested children. Singh was observed in New York getting on a flight to Seattle, arrived at Sea-Tac, and took a shuttle to an area hotel and was arrested there by agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
In asking the court to impose a 14-year sentence, Assistant United States Attorney Matt Hampton wrote, “Rajesh Singh travelled thousands of miles with a singular purpose: to commit unspeakable violence against a small child. This trip was not a lark or a whim but the culmination of extensive planning and chats with someone Singh thought was going to help him realize his dreams of abusing a child.”
“The fact that Singh was willing to fly across the country to complete his enticement of a 12yr old minor speaks to the danger he poses to all of our children,” said Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Robert Hammer, who oversees HSI operations in the Pacific Northwest. “HSI’s undercover operations in the cyber-realm are important to identify these predators and hopefully stop them before they are able to sexually abuse a child.”
Judge Jones sentenced Singh to 15 years of supervised release to follow the prison term.
Agents with Homeland Security Investigations investigated the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Hampton prosecuted the case.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ 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 www.justice.gov/psc.