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Samuel Schwinger, a 37-year-old British national living in Lakewood, was on 10-year probation for similar offenses out of Brooklyn when he posed as an 11-year-old girl to groom another pre-teen in Oklahoma in 2019, a federal complaint says.
"I'll send you a vid of what I'm wearing now and then u send me of u and then my turn again k?" Schwinger texted, according to the complaint filed in federal court in Trenton.
Schwinger then sent a video depicting an underage girl in a long sports uniform top before asking the girl to “send naughty ones,” it says.
“[B]ut it has to be our secret and we have to delete everything after k?" he added.
Schwinger convinced the girl to send a video of her pulling up her shirt to expose her bra, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Special Agent Patrick T. Glynn wrote in the complaint.
More explicit videos followed, Glynn added, including one of the girl naked from the waist down and bent over, another of her laying on her back displaying her genitals and another of her penetrating herself with her finger.
Authorities said the victim’s parents contacted the local sheriff near their home in Pottawatomie, Oklahoma, when they discovered what was happening.
Pretty soon, Lakewood police, the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office and the New Jersey State Police Internet Crimes Against Children’s Task Force were on Schwinger’s tail.
Investigators executed a search warrant at his home in April 2019, seizing an iPhone that they said he unsuccessfully tried to stash under the couch and a Samsung Galaxy.
Schwinger used the phones to send explicit texts instructing the girl to record herself doing sexual things, including telling her to “lay down on the floor and spread your legs and pee,” the federal complaint says.
In response, the girl “sent Schwinger multiple videos depicting the actions requested,” it says.
The phones seized from Schwinger contained more than 1,000 child porn videos along with direct evidence tying him to the communications with the victim, as well as to dozens of other apparent minors, federal authorities said.
“In many of these communications, Schwinger asked the other individual to send him sexually explicit images of themselves,” the complaint filed n U.S. District Court in Trenton says.
Rather than face the consequences of a trial, Schwinger took a deal from the government, pleading guilty on Wednesday, Feb. 22 to coercing a minor into producing images of child sexual abuse, U.S Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said.
U.S. District Court Judge Georgette Castner scheduled sentencing for June 27 in Trenton, Sellinger said.
ICE, meanwhile, has placed a detainer on Schwinger for a possible deportation hearing.
Sellinger credited special agents of the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations office in Cherry Hill, the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office and Lakewood police with the investigation leading to the plea, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Gasparian, Chief of his General Crimes Unit.
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