Timothy McDarrah, the Us Weekly "Hot Stuff" columnist arrested in June 2005 for arranging sex with a minor over the Internet, has been sentenced. United States district judge Paul A. Crotty ordered McDarrah to serve 72 months in prison plus a four-year period of supervision upon release.
McDarrah's arrest was the result of an FBI operation aimed at catching online sex predators. According to a release from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, it began when he answered an ad on Craigslist offering the "freshest, youngest girls" around, and culminated when he showed up for what he believed to be a meeting with a 13-year-old girl, whom he had wooed by bragging about his interviews with celebrities including Renée Zellwegger and Jennifer Lopez. (On the day of his arrest, McDarrah cancelled a lunch meeting with a reporter at a Manhattan newspaper, falsely telling her he had scored a last-minute interview with The Rolling Stones.)