BOISE, Idaho. (AP) — A former school counselor from Meridian will spend 30 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to sexual exploitation of minors. Mark Alan Saltzer was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise.

Saltzer has acknowledged producing sexually-explicit images of kids, chatting online with boys between the ages of 10 and 17 in Internet chat rooms and persuading them to engage in sexual acts which he recorded and shared with others.

The 46-year-old Saltzer, arrested in August 2012, was for years a member of a private Internet group that traded pornography. In addition to working as a counselor in the Marsing and Caldwell school districts, Saltzer was a counselor for abuse victims at the Idaho Youth Ranch and at a treatment program in Ontario, in western Oregon.

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