Fairfield man pleads guilty to federal child sex charge
Kevin Cline, 47, was busted in a decoy operation involving a federal law enforcement agent.
(Image courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Sacramento; Graphic by Solano NewsNet)
Two years ago, Kevin Cline drove to Pleasant Hill to meet a fellow father and his seven-year-old daughter, believing his fantasy was about to become a reality.
Instead, his life took a turn for the worst when a police detective greeted him at a pre-arranged rendezvous point.
This week, Cline entered a guilty plea to a charge of attempted online solicitation of a child stemming from the incident that took place in 2019, federal prosecutors announced on Wednesday.
The investigation into the 47-year-old Fairfield resident started around the holiday season when Cline posted a cryptic message to the social media application Whisper.
“Looking for dads who love their daughters near me — I have a question,” the post reportedly said.
Cline likely believed he would never get caught: Whisper is a pseudo-anonymous social media messaging service where users are allowed to drop their deepest secrets and confessions in a forum that is both underground and public.
Whisper does not require a person to register for their service, nor are they asked to give up their location. But few participants realize Whisper logs certain details about its users, including their Internet Protocol (IP) address and the type of device they use.
All it took was a search warrant to uncover Cline’s IP address, but even before then, investigators were hot on his trail.
An undercover Contra Costa County detective, who also works as a federal law enforcement officer, spotted Cline’s post on Whisper and reached out to the man. A conversation ensued over the course of two days, during which Cline reportedly exchanged images of child pornography with the decoy.
(Text courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Sacramento; Graphic by Solano NewsNet)
The decoy, in turn, offered up his seven-year-old daughter — a child who, in reality, never existed — if Cline was willing to drive out to Pleasant Hill in order to meet. Cline accepted, and soon the two were exchanging graphic communications about what the Fairfield man intended to do after the meeting.
“Cline planned a meeting with the dad and daughter in order to sexually molest her,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento said in a press release. “Cline then drove from Fairfield to Pleasant Hill to meet up with what he believed to be a seven-year-old girl; when Cline arrived, however, he was placed under arrest.”
After the arrest, Cline reportedly confessed to possessing more than 35 images of child pornography, some of which were located on a TCL smartphone that was seized from him as part of the investigation, according to documents obtained by Solano NewsNet.
That smartphone contained the Whisper app, and while the service doesn’t require users to register, Cline apparently did so under the name “curious_mage,” the documents said.
(Images obtained by Solano NewsNet)
Cline also confessed to communicating with the decoy and provided federal investigators with the passcodes to his TCL smartphone and a Samsung smartphone found in his car. A search of his car turned up lubricant, an unopened box of condoms and registration documents listing Cline as the owner of the vehicle, police said.
Cline was initially charged with three criminal counts related to online child exploitation. As part of a plea agreement, prosecutors will drop the child pornography charges and seek a sentence only on a single charge of attempted online coercion of a child.
Cline faces a potential prison sentence of life, but at sentencing, a judge will be required to consider guidelines that were established by Congress related to the severity of the offense and certain characteristics of the defendant, including any prior criminal record.
As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors say they will recommend a federal judge sentence Cline to the “low end” of the guideline range, which means the Fairfield man may get as little as 10 years in prison and could be out much sooner if he receives so-called “good time credit.”
Should he be released, prosecutors say Cline will have to register as a sex offender and could be subjected to as much as 15 years of supervised release. Prosecutors will recommend Cline agree to have his computers and other electronic devices be searched during his period of supervised release, but they stopped short of recommending Internet software monitoring, which is usually imposed on defendants who are charged with child sex offenses.
Cline is expected to be sentenced in October.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story said Cline was speaking with an undercover federal law enforcement agent. According to a search warrant obtained by Solano NewsNet, the law enforcement agent also works as a senior inspector with the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office. This story was updated from an earlier version to include information about the officer’s dual law enforcement roles.
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