Former attorney gets 14 years for sex trips
A former Oklahoma City attorney was sentenced Wednesday to 14 years in federal prison for repeated trips to Peru to have sex with children.
Michael Dean Billings, 61, quit practicing law in November 2015 and pleaded guilty to the federal crime of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places.
He had traveled to Peru 37 times since February 2003, the FBI reported in 2013. His destination was Iquitos, Peru, a poverty-stricken city along the Amazon River that has been described by the FBI as a known child sex-tourism site.
“I’ve made terrible choices. I should have stayed home, been with my wife, been with my family, but I didn’t,” he told an Oklahoma City federal judge Wednesday. “Society has a right to be mad at me because I did wrong.”
He asked the judge to sentence him to only four years in prison, saying he didn’t deserve to have his life taken away from him. He claimed he had sex with only one Peruvian girl, one time.
U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange rejected his request for mercy and instead chose the 14-year sentence.
The judge pointed out an investigation determined Billings had been traveling to foreign countries for at least a decade to have sex with children and that he had “introduced others to this practice.”
An investigation in 2013 by the FBI and the Peruvian National Police identified three specific victims — girls who were 16 at the time. Two are twins. The judge called that finding only a snapshot of Billings’ crimes. She said it is impossible to know the true extent of his victimization of young girls.
Assistant U.S. Attorney David Petermann told the judge Billings
paid for sex with cash or cheap gifts, bragging that he could get one sex act for as little as $10. The prosecutor quoted Billings as saying “you could live like a Roman god on a budget in Iquitos.”
The prosecutor said Billings as an attorney had a dubious reputation and had owned two strip clubs before being jailed. “This man is a sexual deviant,” Petermann said. “Something broke in this man a long time ago and the result is what we have here.”
Billings has been in the Logan County jail for more than a year while awaiting sentencing. He has lost considerable weight and he came to court Wednesday in a wheelchair. He said he no longer has use of his legs due to illness in jail. The prosecutor suggested Billings was faking, saying if the courtroom caught on fire Billings would be the first one on his feet leaving.
During his guilty plea and again Wednesday, Billings admitted only to paying a 16-year-old Peruvian girl for sex on one occasion. He claimed she solicited him by a hotel swimming pool. The prosecutor told the judge the girl actually asked for money to buy medicine for her sick mother and that Billings said he would give her money only for sex.
Billings will be required to register as a sex offender for life after his release.
Awaiting sentencing in federal court is Robert Earl Pierce, a former Ada bail bondsman who had traveled to Peru with Billings more than 20 times.
Pierce, 63, admitted in a guilty plea in May that he had traveled to Peru to have sex with a girl. Pierce was detained by Peruvian law enforcement authorities in September 2013 after he was seen taking two girls, then 13 and 17, into his hotel room.
In the room, investigators found 22 condoms, Viagra tablets, four large bags of candy, 26 U.S. $100 bills, gift books and extra small Victoria’s Secret female undergarments, the FBI reported.
He told the FBI in 2014 that he also took trips to Mexico and Costa Rica with Billings to have sex with prostitutes, according to reports of his interviews. He said he also had traveled with Billings to Thailand.