Troy man gets over 15 years for child sex crimes
ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — A Troy man was sentenced to 15 years and eight months in prison on Wednesday, for trying to get a child to have sex with him. Lawrence Belcher, 37, admitted in an earlier guilty plea that he sent sexually explicit texts to someone he thought was a 13-year-old boy between January and April 2022.
Belcher asked to meet up with the child for car sex. On Apr. 14, 2022, Belcher drove to a motel parking lot in Schenectady County for the meetup. He was instead greeted by law enforcement and arrested.
Belcher has a prior misdemeanor conviction for sexually abusing a child younger than 14 years old and was a registered sex offender at the time of his arrest. He also has two misdemeanor convictions for failing to comply with New York State sex offender registry requirements.
Belcher will be on probation for 15 years and will have to register as a sex offender when he gets out of jail. This case was investigated by the FBI and its Child Exploitation Task Force and was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Michael Barnett as part of Project Safe Childhood.