US man gets nearly 20 years for Thailand pedophilia
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NEW YORK — A US court has handed 19-and-a-half years in prison to an actor convicted of abusing children as young as six on trips to Thailand and posting the images on the Internet.
Wayne Nelson Corliss, 60, was also ordered to pay a 5,000-dollar fine. The federal court in Newark, New Jersey said on Monday Corliss -- who reportedly played Santa Claus for children -- would be under supervision for life.
Corliss was arrested in May last year in Union City, just outside New York, after a two-day global manhunt called by Interpol after Norwegian police spotted online images of his sex acts with children as young as six.
Interpol had sent a cropped photo of Corliss from the pornographic images to police around the world.
"Wayne Corliss is a determined sexual predator who traveled the world to engage in horrible conduct with helpless young victims," Paul Fishman, the US attorney for New Jersey, said in a statement.
"The length of the sentence will ensure -- as it should -- that Corliss will never have the opportunity to prey on anyone else," he said.
Corliss pleaded guilty to traveling to Thailand annually from 2000 to 2002 with an intent to abuse children and to storing images of child pornography on his home computer, prosecutors said.