Missouri man charged after La Salle sexual conduct investigation

A Missouri man was indicted on sexual conduct charges including several counts stemming from an investigation in La Salle, La Salle police said in a news release sent Tuesday.

Reginald M. Miller, 56, of Park Hills, Missouri, was picked up Monday by Park Hills police on a federal warrant issued through the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri, based in St. Louis. He later was transferred to a federal detention center in St. Louis.

Miller was apprehended five days after he was indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri on six federal charges. They include enticement and coercion of a minor as a repeat offender, attempted travel with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct as a repeat offender, solicitation of child pornography as a prior offender, receiving child pornography as a prior offender, transfer of obscene material to a minor and penalty for a registered sex offender.

Federal sentencing guides are complicated; however, two of the charges carry sentencing ranges of life in prison or the equivalent of a life sentence, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney said Tuesday.

The indictments were handed down after a two-month investigation launched April 23, when the La Salle Police Department received a report of a juvenile from La Salle exchanging inappropriate photos and messages via phone and social media with a man from Missouri.

The investigation was initiated by the La Salle Police Department’s Investigation Division with assistance from the La Salle County State’s Attorney’s Office, the Park Hills (Missouri) Police Department, the FBI’s field offices in Orland Park and St. Louis, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri.