Miami Beach stepfather paid $50 for porn with a 9-year-old. Now, he’ll pay with prison
Jay Sall’s work in disaster recovery afforded him a classic 1930s Miami Beach home he shared with his wife and stepdaughter and a 39-foot boat.
But there was a darker side. Sall is accused of agreeing to pay $200 for sex with a prepubescent child and paid $50 for a custom pornographic video starring the child.
On Thursday, the 54-year-old Sall was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine after pleading guilty to attempting to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity.
The person Sall thought was selling him child rape and child porn was an undercover FBI agent. The agent reeled Sall in over two years of conversations via email and the Kik instant message app., on which Sall used the names “flboater123@gmail.com” and “flboater123.”
According to Sall’s admission of facts, in January 2016, he answered a backpage.com ad that hinted “gf out of town 4 a few weeks and the little gurls wanna play. Email me for details, rates and logistics very much what you want but usually can’t find.”
One of the photos in the ad was a playground see-saw.
From the flboater123@gmail.com address, Sall told the undercover agent he was looking for something “petite and fresh and taboo.”
After discussing the sliding price scale for age, the undercover agent emailed they had to have future communication by text or phone call but any “talk on the phone, we both gotta be somewhere private. ... I can’t risk people hearing me quote you prices to [have sex with] these kids. That would be bad for both of us.”
While Sall said “I appreciate your need for discretion and assure you of the same,” the two didn’t communicate again until May 2017 when Sall emailed “...you still around? Still in business?”
The agent moved their conversations to the Kik app. and told Sall (who used “flboater123” as his Kik name) he had a 9-year-old daughter to offer. Sall sent a photo of an Amazon gift card, saying “100 consider it a deposit of sorts.”
The agent replied, “100 more and you can do oral...”
The agent sent Sall pictures of a clothed girl, supposedly his 9-year-old daughter. As they began to discuss a place and time, Sall wrote he wanted “a girl about 12.” The agent wrote his daughter was 9 and “maybe this isn’t for you.”
Sall: “No, don’t get me wrong, I am very much looking forward to this.”
In September 2017, Sall told the agent of his profession, disaster recovery logistics: “you try to think of all the little details that it takes to mount a disaster response, well, those re the thing that I try to do. Very obscure, but I have been in it for a long time and the pay is good.”
Sall was working for a company helping with Hurricane Maria disaster work in Puerto Rico. That likely caused the decrease in messages before Sall made contact against in November 2017. As Sall carefully fenced in emails with the agent out of concern for being caught by cops, the undercover soothed his fears by mirroring Sall’s. The agent sent Sall another photo of his fictitious 9-year-old daughter.
“Wow, she is hot,” Sall answered.
To further gain the agent’s trust, Sall said he’d pay for more pictures and even a video as this will put to rest any lingering concerns.”
He requested a video with the agent and the 9-year-old engaging in sex. Sall paid with a gift card on Dec. 5, 2017.
According to court documents, when agents showed up at his Miami Beach home on Aug. 22, 2018, Sall admitted sending the agent money for the video. He said he wasn’t having sex with any children, it was all just fantasy.
Later, when agents hit Sall’s house with a search warrant, his wife pointed them to his laptop and iPhone. Investigators found pictures on the laptop that led them to places in the house where Sall had put since-removed hidden cameras.
This story was originally published February 24, 2019 at 1:28 PM.
