Posted October 14, 2021 • Upgraded on Oct 14, 2021 at 8:42 am
A Dallas man is sentenced to over 23 many years in federal prison for committing aggressive criminal activities against homosexual users for the online dating app Grindr, Acting U.S. Attorney Chad Meacham and Assistant attorneys standard Kristen Clarke launched Thursday.
The U.S. attorneys’s workplace mentioned 22-year-old Daniel Jenkins is the final of four defendants to-be sentenced in this instance.
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Per documents, Jenkins admitted he conspired to a target nine Dallas neighborhood guys for violent crimes, such as kidnapping, carjacking, and dislike criminal activities, due to their perception of the victims’ sexual direction.
Jenkins was sentenced to a federal prison phase of 280 months for their involvement for the plan.
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The U.S. Attorney’s Office said from December 2017, members of the conspiracy made use of Grindr, a social media dating program used mostly by gay boys, to lure men to a flat complex in Dallas.
Whenever men arrived, the conspirators held the boys at gunpoint and forced these to push to local ATMs to withdraw finances from their profile, the U.S. lawyer’s workplace said.
«This defendant singled-out sufferers centered on their own perceived sexual orientation, after that viciously assaulted them,» stated performing U.S. attorneys Chad Meacham when it comes down to north area of Texas. «The office of Justice will likely not withstand these kinds of heinous, hate-based assaults. Regrettably, despite our finest effort, bigots often lurk on line. We urge consumers of dating programs like Grindr to keep vigilant.»
«This defendant specific innocent sufferers for aggressive criminal activities due to the fact he believed they certainly were gay,» stated associate lawyer General Kristen Clarke associated with fairness Department’s Civil Rights unit. «This sentence affirms that bias-motivated crimes manage unlike the nationwide beliefs and underscores the Justice division’s commitment to aggressively prosecuting bias-motivated criminal activities, such as crimes from the LGBTQI https://hookupdate.net/nudistfriends-review/ area. We’ll continue steadily to go after justice for victims of bias-motivated crimes, anywhere they happen.»
In accordance with the U.S. attorneys’s workplace, while pleading accountable on June 2, Jenkins acknowledge to joining the conspiracy to target gay people for aggressive crimes.
Jenkins and a coconspirator created individual pages on Grindr and used the profiles to entice guys they seen to-be homosexual to a place to rob all of them, the U.S. Attorney’s Office stated.
Based on the U.S. attorneys’s Office, Jenkins in addition accepted that on Dec. 11, 2017, the guy and others lured numerous victims on house complex, indicated a handgun at all of them, grabbed their particular personal home, and assaulted them, hurting one sufferer.
The U.S. lawyer’s company stated Jenkins accepted that he knew people in the conspiracy used gay slurs and taunted the subjects, and therefore a minumum of one person in the conspiracy experimented with sexually assault a target.
Jenkins furthermore acknowledge to participating in the carjacking of at least one sufferer.
Jenkins was the final of four defendants to plead guilty in this instance.
Jenkins pleaded guilty to one matter of conspiracy to make hate criminal activities, kidnapping, and carjacking; one detest criminal activity amount; and something number of use of a firearm during as well as in relation to a crime of assault.
Under the plea contract, Jenkins encountered a maximum sentence of 26 years in jail.
His coconspirators, Michael Atkinson, Pablo Ceniceros-Deleon, and Daryl Henry, got formerly pleaded accountable. Atkinson had been sentenced to more than 11 ages in jail, Ceniceros-Deleon got sentenced to 22 years in jail, and Henry got sentenced to 2 decades in jail.