A former Centre County journalist has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for attempted enticement of a minor after being arrested more than a year ago on charges that he sent sexual messages to an FBI agent posing as a teen and to a 14-year-old girl on a soccer team he coached.
Christopher Z. Morelli, 55, of Pleasant Gap, was sentenced on Thursday by U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann, who recommended that Morelli serve time in a prison as close to Pittsburgh as possible. Brann also ordered that Morelli be under supervised release for five years following his prison term and must register as a sex offender.
Morelli, a longtime area journalist who most recently was editor of the Centre County Gazette prior to his arrest, pleaded guilty in August to the felony charge in the U.S. Middle District Court of Pennsylvania.
The federal charge stemmed from an investigation that began in July 2022, when Morelli started communicating through private messages on social media with an agent from the FBI Pittsburgh Violent Crimes Against Children Task Force who was posing as a 14-year-old girl, according to a criminal complaint filed in December by Spring Township Police.
Over about a year and a half, Morelli made multiple attempts to meet with who he believed was a teenager for sexual activity, engaged in explicit conversations, sent lewd images of himself and attempted to solicit sexual images, police wrote.
The communications continued until December 2023, when he again suggested they meet near State College, according to the complaint. He was arrested that month by a Spring Township police detective, who was working with the FBI on the investigation on felony charges of unlawful contact with a minor and criminal use of a communication facility.
After he posted $250,000 bail, he was arrested again in January 2024 on charges accusing him of sending sexually explicit messages to a 14-year-old girl who was on a Bellefonte area youth soccer team he coached in 2011. A woman came forward with the allegations after reading reports about Morelli’s initial arrest.
Morelli, who was 43 at the time, provided the girl and her friend with alcohol while they went swimming at his house in September 2011 when no one else was home, police wrote. The following month, he sent her messages through Facebook Messenger first asking about her sexual experience, then discussing her breasts and describing sexual acts he would do with her, according to the affidavit.
During the conversation he confirmed the girl’s age, according to message transcripts. The girl stopped communicating with him “after the conversations become even more inappropriate,” police wrote.
Morelli was denied bail after being charged in that case with felony counts of criminal solicitation of statutory sexual assault and corruption of minors. He has been incarcerated since then.
