A Scottsdale pervert was sentenced to prison and a lifetime of probation by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Karen O'Connor today for recording himself having sex with a then-14-year-old girl and concocting a kidnapping scheme that was foiled by federal law enforcement agents.
Michael Raymond Ward was sentenced to 18 years in prison for the sex with the child, and slapped with lifetime probation for conspiracy to commit kidnapping stemming from a failed plot to kidnap a wealthy Tucson woman and her daughter for ransom.
Interestingly, Ward's pervy antics were unrelated to the kidnapping plot, and probably would have gone undetected had his plan not been uncovered by federal authorities.
Ward was arrested on November 14, 2007, after trying to recruit a man to help in the kidnapping of the wealthy woman. The man Ward recruited turned out to be an FBI informant.
Ward told the informant he knew details of the woman's personal life. He told him he planned to use a car resembling a police cruiser to pull her over and then scare her and her daughter into getting into his car by threatening them with pepper spray and a Taser gun.
He then planned to ask the woman's family for $4 million ransom.
The informant told FBI agents who then arrested Ward.
Following his arrest, law enforcement agents obtained a search warrant for Ward's house, in which they found a DVD that showed him having sex with a 14-year-old girl.
The girl later told police she had been staying with Ward while her mother was out of town. She says he'd been molesting her since she was 10 or 11 years old.
Assuming Ward survives prison, he'll have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.