Ex-Canadian officer in court on Pa. teen sex case

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A former Canadian police officer is set for sentencing before a federal judge in Pittsburgh for his guilty plea last year to an online teen sex sting.

Fifty-nine-year-old Paul Maher, of Richmond, Ontario, will be in court today after pleading guilty in November to traveling with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, and coercion and enticement of a person he believed to be a 14-year-old girl.

In reality, Maher was corresponding online with a police officer from Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County, who was posing as the teen. Maher was arrested in June 2008 after he traveled to western Pennsylvania but didn’t go through with a meeting he had arranged with the “teen.”

Maher was an Ottawa police officer from 1974 to 1988.