🔴 New Jersey man gets seven years after trying to meet teen for sex.
🔴 He drove to a home and was arrested by an undercover detective.
🔴 Case nearly collapsed after key evidence was lost by investigators.
STANHOPE — A New Jersey man has been sentenced to seven years in state prison for trying to have sex with a young teen.
Larry Noel, 49, also must register as a sex offender and is subject to parole supervision for life, the Attorney General’s Office said Friday.
Noel was sentenced in Superior Court in Bergen County on March 27. In November, he was convicted of second-degree luring, second-degree attempted sexual assault, and third-degree attempted child endangerment.
Online sting operation on dating app leads to arrest
Around 9 p.m. on April 11, 2019, Noel met an undercover cop on Adam4Adam, a dating website exclusive to adult men. The cop was posing as a fake 14-year-old named Kyle.
Noel lied about his age and told the supposed teen he was 29. Then he asked to meet the teen for sex, and offered to drive to his home in Upper Saddle River, according to court documents. At 10:10 p.m., Noel arrived at the address and was met by police officers.
A search result for Adam4Adam (Townsquare Media employee photo)
Lost evidence nearly derails prosecution
Noel was interviewed by two detectives at the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office. They asked if he planned on hooking up with the teen if he had not been arrested.
“I’m just gonna be honest, I don’t know,” Noel said.
Despite preserved chat messages from the night of the undercover sting, Noel nearly avoided prison. The investigating detective had lost the password for the fake teen’s dating site profile. And in an email to prosecutors, Adam4Adam’s attorney said that accounts inactive for 284 days were deleted.
In 2024, a court dismissed his indictment with prejudice. The ruling judge found that the loss of login information for the account, which was key evidence, was “bad faith or connivance or an extremely egregious carelessness on the part of the detective.”
However, appellate judges later overturned that decision. Prosecutors were allowed to move forward with the case, leading to Noel’s conviction.
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