Queen Creek baseball coach pleads guilty to exploiting children

QUEEN CREEK, Ariz. — A baseball coach from Queen Creek has pleaded guilty to partaking in a “catfishing scheme” that targeted children online, officials said. 

Donald Michael, 47, pleaded guilty last week to all the charges filed against him last year for his role in the exploitation of minors, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

According to prosecutors, Michael conspired with Andrew Wolf, a former teacher, and Kray Strange to target current and former students of Wolf’s.

The defendants created fake online profiles where they posed as teenage girls and coerced boys into providing sexually explicit materials, prosecutors said.

If the boys tried not to engage, then the defendants reportedly used “blackmail and extortion” to manipulate them.

After the other defendants were arrested, prosecutors said Michael continued the catfishing scheme by targeting boys who were baseball players. Michael had reportedly coached baseball for several years.

“Donald Michael and his co-conspirators strategized at length about how to ‘bait’ young boys into taking and sending explicit images of themselves,” U.S. Attorney David Metcalf said in a statement. “They reveled in the anonymity that the internet provided them to target and catfish their young victims.”

After pleading guilty, Michael faces a prison sentence ranging between 15 and 110 years. He’s scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 14. 

Wolf was previously sentenced to about 38 years in prison. Wolf had apparently also coached baseball, according to USA Today.

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