KIDDIE PORN CASE NETS MAN 5-YEAR PRISON TERM.

Byline: Staff and Wire Services

A Sand Canyon man who admitted seeking sex with an FBI agent posing online as a 13-year-old girl was sentenced Friday to more than five years in prison for distributing kiddie porn.

U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz sentenced Christopher Rajlal to three months more than the five-year mandatory minimum for the charge.

Matz said he was "troubled" by the other conduct to which Rajlal admitted, but that the defendant's background was otherwise "admirable."

In addition to the prison time, Rajlal must pay a $12,000 fine and spend 10 years on probation after his release.

"I doubt if you'd ever do this again. I think the remorse is genuine," the judge told the defendant.

Rajlal, 52, who used the screen name "looks10," pleaded guilty March 7 to a single count of distribution of child pornography in exchange for federal prosecutors dropping charges of attempting to entice a minor for sex.

Rajlal had been free on $500,000 bail.

He was arrested in December without incident outside a West Los Angeles shop where he went to meet the "girl," actually a male FBI agent.

Among the evidence were the scores of sexually explicit posts from Rajlal to the agent posted from July 2006 to December. The pair communicated some 20 times a month.

In the course of their online communication, Rajlal sent the "girl" nude and explicit pictures of a female he said was 15. He also told "her" he wanted to have sex with her, but worried that she was "so young and innocent," according to the federal affidavit filed in the case.

Rajlal told his chat-room partner he was a 40-year-old resident of Santa Clarita with a career in international sales. He suggested he might take her to Paris.

The investigation was conducted by a task force focusing on crimes involving sexual exploitation of children that includes FBI agents, state law enforcement agencies, Los Angeles police and Los Angeles and Orange county sheriff's deputies.