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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
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Secret Service Agent Faces Obscene Complaint

WILMINGTON, Del. (CN) - Federal prosecutors unsealed a complaint Thursday accusing a Secret Service of intending to send a minor a photograph of his penis.

The government filed its criminal complaint under seal Monday in Delaware as Lee Robert Moore, a U.S. Secret Service officer assigned to the White House, turned himself into the Maryland State Police Barracks. It charges one count of attempted transfer of obscene material to a minor.

Prosecutors say Moore, 37, of Church Hill, Md., used the social-media application Meet24 to chat with an individual whose profile described her as a 14-year-old girl.

In fact, the account belonged to an undercover detective with Delaware's Child Predator Task Force.

Prosecutors say Moore shaved a few off years off his age for his Meet24 profile, and that the photograph Moore transmitted to the undercover officer this past August matches those on his Facebook profile.

The Facebook profile indicates that Moore is married, and it "contained photographs of a white male with two young children," according to the complaint.

A few days after exchanging explicit messages with the undercover officer on Meet24 and the messaging app Kik, Moore questioned whether she was real, prosecutors say.

"Do you know how many fake female profiles are out there," he wrote on Sept. 1, according to the complaint. "A guy needs some reassurance that he is talking to who he thinks he is talking to, and not, I shudder to think."

Kik claims that 40 percent of its users are U.S. teens.

For the next few weeks, another undercover officer transmitted some pictures and engaged in video chat sessions with Moore, according to the complaint.

Prosecutors say Moore sent a picture of his erect penis on Oct. 6. He spoke about wanting to meet up and made several references to having sex with the supposed girl with whom he was chatting, making at least one explicit reference to her "cute young legs," according to the complaint.

When Secret Service told Moore he was being placed on administrative leave last week, Moore broke it off with his chat partner, prosecutors say.

"I don't think we should talk anymore," he wrote on Nov. 8, as quoted in the complaint. "I can't explain but I have too much going on, and I need to pull away from talking to people online altogether. This will be my last message. I'm sorry, but I won't be on kik or meet24 again."

After he followed orders to turn himself in Monday, Moore was arrested on Delaware state charges including solicitation of a minor, the federal complaint states.

Prosecutors say Moore admitted in the ensuing interview that he had sent sexually explicit pictures to a person he believed to be a 14-year-old girl, that he used Meet24 to chat with multiple underage girls, and that he was chatting while "on the job at the White House," according to the complaint.

Moore's arrest is the latest in a string of controversies the Secret Service has dealt with in the past year.

Last year a man wielding a knife hopped the fence around the White House, forcing the agency's first female director to resign. The agency also came under fire in September after the rejected application of Rep. Jason Chaffetz leaked.

Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, chaired a Congressional inquest into the agency in March.

A representative for the Secret Service said the agency could not comment on the pending legal investigation and noted that as soon as the agency was notified of the investigation they removed Moore's Secret Service equipment.

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