D.C. Lawyer Pleads Guilty To Distributing Child Pornography

ALEXANDRIA, VA — A Washington, D.C. lawyer pleaded guilty to distributing videos of child pornography and faces up to 20 years in prison, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Dana J. Boente said.

Jason Mark Sims, 35, pleaded guilty Friday. According to court documents, Sims replied to an advertisement placed by an undercover FBI agent on Craigslist that solicited a 10-year-old girl for sex.

Sims and the undercover agent discussed meeting so that Sims could sexually abuse the undercover agent's purported daughter. Although Sims ultimately declined to meet the undercover agent in person, he did send the agent links to videos depicting the sexual abuse of girls as young as four years old, prosecutors said.

According to the website Above The Law, Sims was a Paul Weiss staff attorney. He started working there in Nov. 2011.

Sims faces a mandatory sentence of five years and a maximum of 20 years in prison when he's sentenced on Dec. 1, 2017. This case is part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.

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