TAMPA, Fla. – A federal judge sentenced a Florida lawyer on Thursday to nine years in prison after he sexually abused children in Cambodia, prosecutors said.
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Rugh James Cline, who is no longer a licensed attorney in Florida, graduated from the University of Miami School of Law in 2010 and lived in Hillsborough County, records show.
Federal prosecutors accused Cline, 44, of paying to sexually abuse four children in Cambodia and using a laptop to keep hundreds of images of child sex abuse.
Activists with the Action Pour Les Enfants, a non-governmental organization in Cambodia, identified Cline as a pedophile who had paid $120 to abuse three girls under 15 years old.
In 2019, a Cambodian court in Siem Reap sentenced Cline to over two and a half years in prison for sexually abusing three girls and ordered him to pay about $3,750 in compensation to each victim.
In 2021, in the U.S., Cline was indicted on five counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place and one count of possessing child exploitation materials. He pleaded not guilty.
The FBI and the U.S. State Department worked with the Cambodian National Police on the case.