An Arizona baseball coach pled guilty to multiple crimes related to child pornography, U.S. Attorney David Metcalf said in a news release.
Donald Michael, also known as “Baseball Fun,” 47, from Queen Creek, pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to manufacture child pornography, one count of conspiracy to receive and distribute child pornography, one count of distribution and attempted distribution of child pornography and two counts of receipt of child pornography.
Michael worked as a boy’s baseball coach for more than 20 years.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Michael and two other men, Andrew Wolf and Kray Strange, who have both been convicted and sentenced in the case, worked together to coerce boys to send them sexually explicit images.
The three men catfished boys who were students at the school where Wolf worked in Philadelphia by creating fake social media profiles claiming to be teenage girls and would contact the boys and engage in sexually explicit conversations, as well as send pornographic images of children to the boys, officials said. The men would ask the boys to send their pictures in return.
If the boys refused to continue, the three men would blackmail and extort them to manipulate them into continuing to send images, officials said. After Wolf and Strange were arrested and incarcerated, Daniel continued to catfish boys, targeting children who were playing in the Little League World Series.
“Donald Michael and his co-conspirators strategized at length about how to ‘bait’ young boys into taking and sending explicit images of themselves,” U.S. Attorney Metcalf said in a statement. “They reveled in the anonymity that the internet provided them to target and catfish their young victims. Unmasking these predators is a priority for my office and the FBI, as we work to protect children everywhere from sexual exploitation.”
Michael’s sentencing was scheduled for August 14. He faces a mandatory minimum term of 15 years of imprisonment and five years of supervised release and a maximum term of 110 years of imprisonment and lifetime supervised release. He will also be required to register as a child sex offender under both state and federal law.
The case was part of Project Safe Childhood, an initiative to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse. The FBI investigated the case and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kelly Harrell and Michelle Rotella.
Corina Vanek covers development for The Arizona Republic. Reach her at cvanek@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X @CorinaVanek.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona baseball coach blackmailed boys for sexually explicit content