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Former Chesapeake Fire lieutenant sentenced for online coercion of minors

Posted at 11:08 PM, Mar 02, 2017
and last updated 2017-03-02 23:08:15-05

CHESAPEAKE, Va. – A former Chesapeake Fire lieutenant was sentenced Thursday.

50-year-old Thomas Almberg, 50 was sentenced 10.5 years in prison for charges of coercing and enticing minorsto engage in illegal sexual activity.

thomas almberg pic

Thomas Almberg

He was also sentenced to 25 years of supervised release and ordered to register as a sex offender upon release from prison.

Almberg pleaded guilty on Oct. 18, 2016.

According to court documents, Almberg, a former lieutenant in the Chesapeake Fire Department, visited several social media sites looking to chat with teenage girls.

In January 2016, he met a 15-year-old boy pretending to be a 16-year-old girl on the interactive video game Clash of Clans and the two began chatting and text messaging.

Over the next two months, the two exchanged over 8,000 text messages, often while Almberg was on duty and at his fire station.

The conversations quickly grew to be sexually graphic, including Almberg sending sexually explicit photographs and requesting that the teen reciprocate.

In April, Almberg met a 16-year-old girl on a different mobile chat application and their conversations quickly became sexual in nature, including the exchange of sexually explicit photographs.

In May 2016, Almberg traveled to this victim’s workplace in North Carolina and propositioned her for sex.

She declined, he left, and was taken into custody shortly thereafter.