Priest Lake businessman sentenced in sex sting case
A Priest Lake businessman who made headlines taking on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was ordered to serve a year and a day in prison after being targeted in a sex trafficking sting in North Dakota.
Michael Thomas Sackett was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland on Aug. 25 in Bismarck, N.D., federal court records indicate. Sackett was originally charged with attempted sex trafficking, but pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of coercion and enticement.
Sackett, 48, faced up 71 months in federal prison, but Hovland departed from the sentencing guidelines in the case due to his lack of a prior criminal record, long history of gainful employment and compliance with his conditions of release while the case was pending, according to a Bismarck Tribune report.
Sackett was arrested in 2013 after responding to an ad posted to Backpage.com, a website commonly used for prostitution. Sackett exchanged several text messages with an undercover officer and agreed to pay $150 for 30 minutes with what he believed to be a 12-year-old girl, the Tribune reported.
James Siebe, Sackett's defense counsel, said there was considerable delay from when his client arrived at the rendezvous to when he got in the undercover agent's vehicle, indicating Sackett was grappling with the morality of his actions, according to the Tribune report.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Gary Delorme chalked the delay up to Sackett's efforts to determine if he was being set up by law enforcement. In addition to the custodial sentence, Hovland ordered Sackett to register as a sex offender and serve five years of probation upon his release from prison.
The court recommended Sackett be placed either in a residential re-entry center in North Dakota with work-release privileges or low-security lockups in the Dakotas or Minnesota, court records indicate. He was not immediately ordered into custody and was not listed as an inmate with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons on Wednesday.
Sackett took on the EPA over the development of property he owns at Priest Lake's Kalispell Bay. The agency accused him of filling wetlands on the parcel and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Sackett had the authority to challenge the EPA. Sackett's case against EPA is pending.
His counsel in that matter filed an amended complaint for declarative and injunctive relief in April. Sackett argues his parcel is not subject to the federal Clean Water Act and he is entitled to relief from a $37,500 daily penalty for each day the fill remains in place.
Sackett and his excavation company were sued by the Cincinnati Insurance Co. in 2012 for allegedly failing to pay $512,784 to subcontractors on the Granite-Reeder Bay Water & Sewer District collection system. That case was stayed after Sackett and his wife, Chantell, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2013, federal court records show.