FBI Catches Bastrop ‘Sugar Daddy’ Preying on Monroe-area Schoolchildren in Sex Scheme
MONROE, La. (KPEL News) - A "sugar daddy" from Bastrop, Louisiana, is set to spend the next couple of decades in prison after a joint investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office caught him carrying out a sex scheme on middle and high school females.
According to the US Attorney's Office, over 25 female schoolchildren from the Monroe-area were victimized by 33-year-old Gary Landon Harper, Jr., who utilized Snapchat to lure the girls in and exploit them. Investigators say during a 10-month period (January 2021 to October 2021), Harper was able to target these girls between the ages of 13 and 16 who were attending Monroe-area middle and high schools, paying some of them for their Snapchat login information that he would use to impersonate them and direct other females in their contact lists to "friend" accounts that he controlled. This was all under the guise of making money from a "sugar daddy."
Harper then paid girls to send him sexually explicit videos and images, and to meet up with him for sex. During this time, Harper arranged a meet-up with a 16-year-old girl, who he paid $150 to in exchange for sex he filmed them doing inside his pickup truck. That film from Harper's cell phone positively identified the girl as investigators eventually learned of the broad scope of his scheme.
Harper pleaded guilty to the one count of production of child pornography in this case on April 5, 2023. This month, Harper was sentenced to 25 years in prison for production of child pornography.
The case was investigated by the FBI and Ouachita Parish Sheriff’s Office and
prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Mike Shannon.
