By Mike Brunker
Projects Team editor
MSNBC
Updated: 10:51 a.m. CT Dec 6, 2006
The operators of dozens of teen and preteen “modeling sites” that critics say are nothing more than eye candy for pedophiles have been indicted by a federal grand jury in Alabama for allegedly trafficking in “visual depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct.”
The indictment, unsealed this week in Birmingham, Ala., charges Webe Web Corp. of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and its principals, Marc Evan Greenberg and Jeffrey Robert Libman, with 80 counts of conspiracy and interstate trafficking of the images of teen and preteen girls on dozens of Web sites operated by the company. Both men were arrested Tuesday in Fort Lauderdale and are due to be arraigned on Friday.
Photographer Jeff Pierson of Brookwood, Ala., also was charged with two counts of using a computer to “transport child pornography in interstate commerce” from January 2003 through 2004. Authorities said Pierson is cooperating with prosecutors.
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“The images charged are not legitimate child modeling, but rather lascivious poses one would expect to see in an adult magazine,” U.S. Attorney Alice H. Martin said in a statement announcing the indictments and the closure of all the Webe Web sites. “Here lewd has met lucrative, and exploitation of a child’s innocence equals profits.”
In an e-mail interview, Martin told MSNBC.com that prosecutors will press charges against the defendants for photos showing the young girls scantily clothed but not nude under a federal statute that deems images that “show lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area” to be child pornography.
No nudity, but ‘sexually suggestive poses’
“There are no semi-nude or nude images,” she said. “The children are dressed in underwear, adult lingerie, high heels, etc., and placed in sexually suggestive poses which focus the viewer's attention on the genital or pubic area. Some are posed with facial expressions and in positions that suggest a willingness to engage in sexual activity.”
If convicted of all charges, Greenberg and Libman could be sent to prison for up to 20 years and fined up to $250,000 for each count. They also face forfeiture of all proceeds from the Web sites.
Phone calls to the company offices and the homes of Libman and Greenberg were not answered.
MSNBC.com interviewed the woman whose complaint triggered the investigation of Pierson and Webe Web, who agreed to talk on the condition that neither she nor her daughter be identified.
She said she naively answered an online advertisement for preteen models several years ago so that her then-10-year-old daughter could begin to build a portfolio.
She and her daughter drove to Pierson’s home studio, where they met the photographer, his wife and the couple’s 12-year-old daughter.
“They seemed like perfect people,” she recalled. “They said she would have a Web site so that people looking for models would offer her jobs.”
Mother recounts her horror
The woman said that everything seemed on the up and up during the initial visit, which included some test shots of the girl wearing different outfits, so she signed a contract.
But on the second visit, she said, Pierson kept her out of the studio, asking her to remain in an adjacent room where she could see him but not her daughter.
“He said it makes the models nervous,” she said.
The woman said she sat chatting with the photographer and his wife during the daylong shoot and had no inkling what was going on until she walked into the studio when Pierson had left the room for a moment and saw her daughter wearing only a thong and a halter top.
“That feeling is a feeling I don’t wish on anybody,” she said.
The woman said that she and her daughter were frightened to leave because Pierson had earlier displayed a handgun he kept in the house, so they endured several more hours in the studio.
“I said ‘We can’t do this,’ but my daughter said she was scared to leave and let’s get through this and then we won’t come back,” she said. “It was really hard.”
Once they left, the woman said she “went straight to the FBI” in Birmingham and told them what Pierson had done.
complete story here: msnbc.msn.com/id/15977010/