This is the case in which the defendant, a Mission Hills attorney, argued successfully that "enticing" an undercover cop posing as a 14-year-old girl online was not a crime; an appeals court disagreed.
- Jan Pleasant Helder, Jr., 43, was sentenced Wednesday to five years in federal prison without parole.
- In April 2004, Helder chatted up the person he thought was a 14-year-old girl online, prosecutors said. He suggested meeting for sex, and about an hour later drove from his office near the Country Club Plaza to the Northland apartment complex. Helder drove through the apartment complex, but left without stopping at the apartment.
- “What possesses a man upon whom life has bestowed so many personal and financial rewards to jettison virtually everything by engaging in such contemptible behavior? What a sad and pathetic stain on his life,” said U.S. Attorney Bradley J. Schlozman.
- News release
