WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) - A former Bank of America executive faces a minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to trying to arrange a sexual encounter with a 13-year-old girl.
Kirk A. Simmons, 59, pleaded guilty Tuesday to attempted enticement and coercion of a minor. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison when he is sentenced on June 24.
In return for the guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to dismiss a charge of attempted production of child pornography. According to court records, Simmons intended to photograph his encounter with the girl.
Simmons was arrested in July 2013 outside a Newark hotel where he had arranged with an undercover state police detective assigned to Delaware’s Child Predator Task Force to have sex with the fictitious girl. Simmons began a graphic exchange with the detective last June in response to a fake ad posted on an adult social networking site.
“I reached out on the Internet to an advertisement that unfortunately turned out to be an undercover police officer,” Simmons explained in court Tuesday as his wife looked on. “We talked about meeting and having sex with his daughter.”
According to a law enforcement affidavit, Simmons pursued his plans to have sex with the girl despite expressing fears about being caught in an undercover police sting.
“I am a little nervous … trying to decide if this is a sting operation by local authorities,” he wrote to the detective on July 10, 2013. A week later, he wrote that the scheduled encounter “will be an amazing day or my worst day of my life.”
After his arrest, Simmons was fired from his job as a Bank of America vice president.
As part of his guilty plea, Simmons must forfeit computer equipment, a cellphone and a digital camera seized by authorities. But attorneys confirmed in court that an examination of his computer equipment did not uncover any evidence of child pornography, a factor that prosecutors weighed in agreeing to dismiss the charge of attempted production of child porn.
“Had we discovered child pornography, we would have evaluated the case differently,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Ed McAndrew.
Simmons’ public defender, Edson Bostic, declined to comment on the guilty plea.
A public defender was appointed for Simmons last fall after he filed an affidavit stating that he had no money in savings or checking accounts and did not own stocks, bonds or real estate.
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