A federal judge sentenced a Pierce County man to 15 years in prison Monday after he was convicted of multiple sex crimes involving children.
Randy Lee Young, 40, was arrested Nov. 16, 2024, and brought into federal custody April 24, 2025. He was ultimately convicted of attempted enticement of a minor and production of images of child sexual abuse, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release.
DOJ officials said an undercover investigation led to Young’s arrest. Investigators then found images of child sexual abuse on Young’s phone. Young created the images.
During the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Lauren King commended the victim for her “truthfulness and assistance with law enforcement,” adding that she hoped the sentencing brings a “sense of some closure” as “the only blame here lies with Mr. Young and Mr. Young alone.”
King ordered Young to 20 years of supervised release following his prison term. Restitution owed to the victim will be decided in a hearing in February 2027.
According to court records, Young began communicating with an undercover officer posing as the mother of 8 and 11-year-old daughters in 2024. The two texted multiple times between Nov. 8 and Nov. 15, 2024. Young, believing he would meet the two girls, drove from his home in Pierce County to Marysville. He was arrested and held in the Snohomish County Jail until the filing of federal charges.
According to the release, Young allowed law enforcement officers to review his cell phone during the investigation. The investigators found images of sexual abuse of a child. In October and November 2024, Young had reportedly met a 13-year-old girl online, traveled to her hometown in southwest Washington seven times and videotaped the sexual abuse.
According to the release, the victim had told Young her age over text messages.
“The community is safer with this defendant off the street,” Acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd said in the release. “Mr. Young made his intentions clear while communicating with the undercover officer. Then when he was arrested law enforcement discovered a 13-year-old had already been victimized. This lengthy sentence is the appropriate result.”
“He stole more than her innocence,” the mother of the 13-year-old said in her victim statement. “He stole her sense of safety, her ability to trust, and parts of a childhood that she cannot get back … As her mother, one of the hardest parts has been knowing that I cannot go back, that I cannot undo what happened, and that I cannot give her back the innocence and sense of security that were taken from her.”
Prosecutors wrote to the court that Young had been “provided opportunities to disengage and instead doubled down by informing the undercover he wanted to follow through with his ‘fetish.’”
“The law must send a clear and unmistakable message of specific and general deterrence — that society simply will not and cannot tolerate such perverted abuse — and those that engage in it, will be met with lengthy custodial sentences,” prosecutors wrote.
W. Mike Herrington, special agent in charge of the FBI Seattle field office, said they hoped the sentence “sends a strong message to other would-be predators that they cannot hide behind supposed anonymity online.”
“The FBI and our partners will pursue these offenders and hold them to account for the lifelong harm they have inflicted on our children,” Herrington said.
The FBI Seattle’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, with assistance from the Renton Police Department, investigated the case.
Assistant United States Attorney Cecelia Gregson prosecuted the case.
