Prison ordered in underage sex sting
Vermont man who had intended to meet girl in hotel met police instead
A federal judge sentenced a self-described “pervy” Vermont man to three years and 10 months in prison Wednesday for traveling to Lake George in 2020 intending to have sex with a teenage girl in a hotel room.
Robert Mcadam, 49, of Rutland, who described himself as both a “gentleman” and “scumbag” and highlighted Elvis Presley to justify sex with underage girls, will be on supervised release for 15 years after he is released from prison. He will have to register as a sex offender.
In November 2021, Mcadam pleaded guilty to one count of traveling with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct.
On June 16, 2020, police arrested Mcadam following an undercover sting conducted by an FBI task force. Starting in February 2019, Mcadam exchanged messages with an undercover State Police investigator who told Mcadam that he and his 14-year-old stepdaughter sought a sex partner.
“Elvis saw a 14-year-old girl and he married her bro,” Mcadam added. “Women mature at a younger age. So I’m OK with that. I’m a gentleman.”
(Elvis met his future wife, Priscilla, when she was 14 but they did not marry until she was in her early 20s.)
The undercover investigator and Mcadam met in a Mcdonald’s in Queensbury. There, the undercover officer showed Mcadam a digitally altered image of an agent made to resemble a 15-year-old girl. At that point, the would-be stepdaughter was supposed to have turned 15.
The undercover investigator asked Mcadam if he thought he was a “scumbag.”
“No ‘cause I’m just as big of a (expletive)-ing scumbag,” Mcadam replied.
Police arrested Mcadam in a Best Western hotel room in Lake George. Mcadam had brought alcoholic seltzer, beer, condoms and a laptop to the would-be encounter.
In a presentencing memo to U.S. District Judge Mae D’agostino, Mcadam’s attorney, Manhattan-based Oliver Storch, said that Mcadam had surgery to remove a brain tumor in 2008 and has since been unable to work. His client, a native of Huntington, Long Island, has been isolated and depressed since living in Vermont.
On Wednesday, Storch appeared virtually joined in court by attorney Thomas Capezza. They argued for a two-year sentence, which would be tantamount to time served since Mcadam has been jailed since his arrest.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Rachel Williams recommended that Mcadam be sentenced to at least three years and 10 months behind bars and as high as four years and nine months.
“The defendant’s crimes and relevant conduct are serious and extremely troubling,” Williams told the judge in a memo. She highlighted a number of portions of Mcadams’ conversations with the undercover investigator, including one in which the defendant said “I’m just pervy.”
The judge recommended that Mcadam participate in sex offender treatment while in prison.