Colorado sheriff’s deputy gets nearly 22 years for coercing NC girls into making porn
A former Colorado sheriff’s deputy was sentenced in Charlotte to more than 21 years in prison for using the internet to entice two 14-year-old Union County girls to commit sexual acts then send him explicit photos and videos to create child pornography.
Vincent Potter, 38, was a 16-year veteran of a Denver-area sheriff’s office when, posing as a much younger man, he began the illicit online relationship with the girls in January 2021.
His indictment later that year charged him with nine counts of sexual exploitation of children, two counts of coercion and enticement of a female, and one count of child pornography.
Under an agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte, Potter was allowed to plead guilty to one count of sexual exploitation.
The punishment remained significant. The U.S. Probation Office recommended 360 months; Potter’s Denver-based attorney half that amount.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn settled for a sentence in between: 262 months. Upon his release, Potter must also register as a sex offender.
U.S. Attorney Dena King welcomed the judge’s decision.
“Potter is an online predator who contacted vulnerable children via social media and used deception, pressure and threats to coerce his young victims to send him sexually explicit images and videos of themselves,” King said. “Potter was a sworn officer of the law, which makes this case particularly disturbing.”
Defense attorney Benjamin Hartford of Denver told The Charlotte Observer in a phone interview after the hearing that the sentence was excessive given that Potter had admitted responsibility early on and had provided information to Union County law enforcement that had led to the arrest of a man who was having sex with one of the girls.
King’s prosecutors had failed “to act in good faith” by failing to give his client sufficient credit for helping get a sexual criminal off the streets, he said.
Snapchat used to reach teens
According to court documents in the case, Potter used Snapchat to meet one of the 14-year-olds, then began cajoling and pressuring her into having sexual acts and sharing explicit photos and videos of herself and others.
Using multiple Snapchat profiles, the sheriff’s deputy presented himself as a 15-year-old and a 23-year-old. First he attempted to entice the girl. Then, he threatened to post the sexual images and videos she had sent if she did not comply with his demands.
During that same time period, Potter began chatting with the second 14-year-old in Union County, eventually coercing her to send her explicit images and video of herself.
Potter pleaded guilty in March. According to documents, he resigned his job with the Adams County, Colo., Sheriff’s Office upon his arrest.
In a presentencing filing, Hartford contrasted Potter’s crimes with those of celebrity sexual abuse defendants, R&B singer R Kelly and Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime companion of financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in prison after being arrested on charges of sex trafficking and abusing young women.
Unlike Potter, Hartford wrote, Kelly and Maxwell had each abused at least six victims over extended periods of time, showed no remorse and retraumatized some of their victims by forcing them to testify at trials.
Kelly was sentenced to 360 months, the same penalty the government sought against Potter despite the fact that “Vincent’s case pales in comparison to R. Kelly’s case on every level in breath and scope,” Hartford said.
The same applied to Maxwell, who received 240 months.
“My client took responsibility from the start and did everything he was supposed to do,” he said.
The government, he said, “failed to operate in good faith,” by failing to reach a “fair and equitable resolution based on the cooperation that was offered.”
This story was originally published August 22, 2022 at 7:07 PM.
