GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A man was sentenced Monday to more than 15 years in prison for planning a trip to West Michigan to sexually assault children.
Jonathan Ledoux was sentenced to 188 months in prison and 10 years of supervised release after accepting a plea deal with federal prosecutors. In exchange for pleading guilty to attempted coercion and enticement, a charge of interstate travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct was dropped.
Ledoux was arrested in March at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport after making arrangements to come to West Michigan to sexually assault to children.
Federal agents started investigating him after he sent a message to an undercover agent in an “incest chatroom” in November of 2018, according to court documents.
The documents say the agent implied he was a single mother with two young daughters, which led to conversations with graphic descriptions of sexually assaulting children. Ledoux told the agent he would like to pull the non-existent girls out of school and “teach them that if they told anyone that they’d be in serious trouble.”
The conversation eventually moved to Kik, where he made the plans to come to Grand Rapids to see who he thought were the woman’s children. Court documents say he sent videos expressing concerns he was being set up in “a lure to catch a predator,” but got on a flight anyway.
He was arrested once his flight landed at the Ford Airport.
