Palmetto State News

(COLUMBIA, S.C.) - South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson announced the arrest of Michael Patrick Lies, 31, of Walterboro, S.C., on 10 charges connected to the attempted sexual exploitation of a minor. Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force investigators with the Mount Pleasant Police Department made the arrest. Investigators with the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office, Charleston County Sheriff's Office, and U.S. Marshals Service, all also members of the state's ICAC Task Force, assisted with the investigation. 

 Investigators state Lies solicited a person he believed to be a minor for sex, encouraged them to produce child sexual abuse material, and sent sexually explicit images to a person he believed to be a minor. 

Lies was arrested on June 7, 2023. He is charged with three counts of criminal solicitation of a minor (§16-15-342), a felony offense punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment on each count; one count of attempted sexual exploitation of a minor, first degree (§16-15-395), a felony offense punishable by up to 20 years imprisonment; and six counts of attempted dissemination of obscene material to a person under age eighteen (§16-15-345), a felony offense punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment on each count.  

This case will be prosecuted by the Attorney General's Office.

 Attorney General Wilson stressed all defendants are presumed innocent unless and until they are proven guilty in a court of law.

 * Child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, is a more accurate reflection of the material involved in these heinous and abusive crimes. "Pornography" can imply the child was a consenting participant.  Globally, the term child pornography is being replaced by CSAM for this reason.

Original source can be found here