Kansas man, 70, posed as younger woman to send child porn online

He posed as a 46-year-old woman so he could send child pornography online and avoid getting caught. Now, prosecutors say, he’s going to federal prison.

Frank Joseph Kurtz, who is actually a 70-year-old Overland Park man, pretended to be a female called Lisa Lewis and used the alias “Lisayearning46” on a Yahoo email account to send several explicit images of children to a person thought to be living in Israel, according to U.S. Attorney Tom Beall and federal court records.

The Israeli National Police first identified emails where Kurtz posed as the woman while investigating a child porn case in 2013.

Kansas FBI agents then tracked the messages to Kurtz and found that he’d registered “Lisayearning46” email account using a fake name and profile photos he’d found on the Internet.

He chose a female persona “as a way to stay hidden and anonymous,” according to court records, and used other identities including “Elisabeth.lewiston,” “retiredtwice2” and “lisabimom.”

Law enforcement found hundreds of images of child porn on the computers and computer media seized from Kurtz’s home, according to court records.

Kurtz pleaded guilty to one count of distributing child pornography in March, according to federal court records. A judge on Monday sentenced him to 8 years, 1 month in federal prison, Beall said.

This story was originally published July 10, 2017 at 11:04 AM with the headline "Kansas man, 70, posed as younger woman to send child porn online."