- November 8, 2024
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A former Bunnell police sergeant convicted of soliciting nude photos from teenage boys will serve three years in state prison followed by five years of probation.
Michael Stavris, now 32, was originally charged in March 2014 with two counts of computer pornography under the Computer Pornography and Child Exploitation Prevention Act, and one count of criminal use of personal identification information. The charges were amended in a plea deal to two counts of felony chuld abuse and one count of fraudulent use of ID.
Circuit Judge Matthew Foxman sentenced Stavris to three years in prison in a July 26 sentencing hearing, 7th Judicial Circuit representative Ludmilla Lelis said. The reduced charges mean that Stavris will not have to register as a sex offender.
Stavris was arrested March 25, 2014, after Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigators found him passing himself off as a teenage girl on Facebook in order to solicit nude pictures from teen boys, according to an FDLE arrest report.
Investigators said Stavris used a local high school girl’s information to create the fake Facebook profile in 2013, then messaged the girl’s classmates through Facebook, asking the boys about what sex acts they’d committed in the past and asking them to send him pictures of their genitalia, according to an arrest report.
Posing online as the teenage girl, Stavris promised to commit sex acts on the boys later if they would send the pictures first.
Some boys sent Stavris photos, and between 30 and 40 kids “liked” Stavris’ fraudulent Facebook profile, according to an arrest report.
In a phone call that was recorded by law enforcement officers during the investigation, Stavris admitted to his girlfriend that he’d created the fake Facebook profile and related that he had, while identifying himself online as the girl, sent a boy a photo of a woman’s uncovered breast, saying it was the girl’s.
Law enforcement officers who checked information linked to the fraudulent Facebook user name found records of multiple conversations in which Stavris, using the fake user name, sought nude photos from teenage boys.
