Former Seattle man receives 10 years for traveling to Colorado to have sex with teen

SEATTLE – A former Seattle man was sentenced Sept 1 to 10 years in federal prison and a lifetime of supervised release for traveling to Colorado to groom and sexually molest a teenager he met on the internet.

Gregory L. Bridges, 38, was residing in Seattle and working as a senior program manager for Amazon.com when he first came to the attention of special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) who suspected him of possessing thousands of images depicting child sexual abuse.

According to records filed in court, Bridges’ use of Dropbox to upload images of child sexual abuse in December 2013 prompted a deeper look into his criminal activities. Further investigation revealed that he had preyed on teen boys he met via social media for more than 10 years.

Assisted by the HSI’s offices in Denver, Chicago, Buffalo, and New York, Seattle-based HSI special agents discovered that Bridges pursued relationships with and engaged in sexual activity with at least four known minor males. Most recently, he interacted with a 14-year-old resident of Colorado, traveling there three times to have sex with the child victim. Bridges pleaded guilty to the resulting federal charges in June 2016.

Court records show that Bridges was grooming his victims for sex, even taking advantage of one boy’s difficult childhood and home life by buying him gifts and paying for hotel stays and meals. Despite knowing the boy’s young age and history of prior sexual abuse, Bridges pursued the sexual contact.

Following his release from prison, Bridges will be required to register as a sex offender. He was also ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution to some of the victims depicted in his child pornography collection.

“I commend the good work of Homeland Security Investigations and the Seattle Police Department in uncovering the full extent of the criminal conduct in this case,” said U.S. Attorney Annette L. Hayes. “They looked beyond the voluminous amounts of child pornography to uncover all the other victims impacted by this defendant.”

This case was investigated in collaboration with the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force, including agents and officers from the Seattle Police Department. Victims were identified by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Prosecutors of the case include Special Assistant United States Attorney Cecelia Gregson and Assistant United States Attorney J. Tate London.

The charges in this case are a product of Project Safe Childhood, a Department of Justice initiative launched in 2006 to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, and HSI’s Operation Predator, an international initiative to protect children from sexual predators.

Led by the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute those who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims.

Since the launch of Operation Predator in 2003, HSI has arrested more than 14,000 individuals for crimes against children, including the production and distribution of online child pornography, traveling overseas for sex with minors, and sex trafficking of children. In fiscal year 2015, nearly 2,400 individuals were arrested by HSI special agents under this initiative and more than 1,000 victims identified or rescued.

For additional information about wanted suspected child predators, download HSI’s Operation Predator smartphone app or visit the online suspect alerts page.