COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Federal agents arrested a New Lexington High School assistant volleyball coach on Friday on child pornography and exploitation charges.
Junction City man Clay Thomas Wolfe, 28, had received child pornography from more than 100 victims through the app Snapchat since 2018, according to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio. Wolfe appeared in federal court in Columbus at 1 p.m.
U.S. Attorney Kenneth Parker’s office listed sexual exploitation of a minor and distribution and receipt of child pornography as the specific charges Wolfe faced, and also went into detail about the evidence against him. It said that on Snapchat, Wolfe pretended to be a 15-year-old girl and coerced middle and high school boys from Chillicothe and other Ohio cities, as well as in nearby states Minnesota and Pennsylvania, to send him child pornography. He would send stored nude photos of a young girl in order to convince his victims.
When federal investigators looked at Wolfe’s Snapchat account, they said it contained sexually explicit photos and videos of minors as young as 10 and 11 years old. Snapchat records indicated he spoke with more than 100 other users between March 2022 and January 2023, and a forensic review of his iCloud account revealed more than 100 photos of child sexual abuse material, according to Parker’s office.
If convicted of sexual exploitation of a minor, Wolfe would see a mandatory federal prison term between 15 and 30 years. Conviction on the distribution and receipt of child porn charge would mean an additional prison sentence between five and 20 years.
Alongside federal charges, Wolfe is also facing a state case over a similar incident. A receptionist at the Southeastern Ohio Regional Jail confirmed to NBC4 that on Feb. 8, the Perry County Sheriff’s Office took Wolfe into custody on charges of pandering obscenities involving a minor and pandering sexual matter involving a minor.
Neither Perry County Common Pleas Court nor the online public access portal for federal courts had any records related to either of Wolfe’s cases.
