United States Attorney
United States Attorney Susan Lehr announced that John C. Shores, Jr., 54, of Omaha, Nebraska, pleaded guilty on May 30, 2024, in federal court in Omaha to one count of attempted sexual exploitation of a minor. Chief United States District Judge Robert F. Rossiter, Jr. scheduled Shores’ sentencing for August 23, 2024, at 2 p.m. Under the terms of the plea agreement, Shores faces a sentence of between 15 years and 20 years of imprisonment.
On August 4, 2023, through August 10, 2023, Shores used his cellular phone to engage in an online conversation via the chat application Whisper and text messages with an undercover officer who was purporting to be a 13-year-old girl. During the conversations, Shores asked the undercover officer to exchange naked and sexually explicit pictures for the purpose of masturbation. Shores also sent sexually explicit images to the undercover officer.
On August 10, 2023, Shores made arrangements to meet with the Whisper user he believed to be a 13-year-old girl and arrived at the meeting location in Omaha, as arranged. Law enforcement contacted Shores and seized four cell phones from Shores’s vehicle. Forensic examinations of Shores’s cell phones revealed numerous sexually explicit online conversations. In one such conversation that occurred primarily between July 7, 2020, and July 27, 2020, Shores contacted and conversed with a 13-year-old female who resided in southeastern Nebraska; this 13-year-old female has since been identified by law enforcement.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
This case was investigated by the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.