Texas Man Sentenced to 18 Months for Attempting to Solicit Minor in Columbia

A Texas businessman was sentenced to 18 months at the Howard County Detention Center after sending sexually explicit messages online to a person who he thought was a teenage girl. 

In August of 2011, 50-year-old Jeffrey A. Kerber thought he was going to meet up with a 13-year-old girl at a Starbucks in Columbia after they had exchanged sexually explicit messages over the Internet according to Wayne Kirwan, a spokesperson for the Howard County state’s attorney’s office.

In fact, he had not been messaging with a 13-year-old, but a Maryland State Trooper who was working on an undercover online investigation to identify pedophiles on the Internet, according to Kirwan.

Kerber, of McKinney, TX., pleaded guilty to sexual solicitation of a minor on March 12. 

According to Kirwan, the trooper and Kerber first started chatting on August 22, 2011 in a “Dad & Daughters” Internet relay chat room and then later moved their conversation to Yahoo Messenger.

At Thursday’s sentencing hearing at Howard County Circuit Court, Kerber’s parents and wife addressed the court and asked for leniency, according to Kirwan. Kerber also spoke and apologized to his parents and his wife and reiterated that he understood his guilt, according to Kirwan.

Howard County Circuit Court Judge Timothy J. McCrone noted that Kerber’s offense cannot be ignored and sentenced the Texas businessman to three years,  suspending all but 18 months, according to Kirwan. McCrone also ordered Kerber to serve five years of suspended probation upon his release, to have no unsupervised contact with children other than his own and to register as a Tier II sex offender, according to Kirwan.