Local Sting Operation Sent Multiple Sex Offenders to Prison

Editor’s Note: This is a follow-up article that provides a summary of what transpired after the initial arrests were reported. 

Four men remain in prison, and two are dead after a series of sting operations in 2023 by local law enforcement that led to seven arrests when the men responded to a fake online ad and corresponded with officers posing as a mother whose daughters were available for sex. 

Undercover police told the men that the girls were between 9 and 13 years old, according to police reports and court documents. The sting involved federal, state, and local police, including the Stevens County sheriff’s office, which led the investigation. The ads were placed on a website that advertises escorts. Police used age regression technology to make officers appear underage, according to police reports.

“They are gorgeous!” Jason Foster Frank, 54, texted an officer posing as the mother, according to a transcript of texts contained in a police report. “I want this to be real so bad.”

Along with at least one other person arrested in the sting, Frank, who lived in Spokane, suggested an online video chat to ensure no police were involved, according to text transcripts. He and others went ahead despite undercover officers refusing video chats with the fictitious mother and her fake daughters. 

Frank had previously been convicted of two counts of unlawful carnal knowledge of a child between 13 and 15 years old, one count of attempted carnal knowledge of a child between 13 and 15 years old, and three counts of using communications systems to facilitate offenses involving children in Virginia in 2008. Frank was required to register as a sex offender.

On the morning of his arrest on June 8, 2023, a probation officer granted Frank a permit to travel outside Spokane County to visit relatives. Instead, following directions from undercover police who told him to expect a 9 and 11-year-old girl, he traveled to the Wilderness Inn in Loon Lake, where officers who arrested him reported finding candy, a sex toy and two phones – one that he used to communicate with his probation officer, the other loaded with more than 180 images of child pornography – in his vehicle, according to police reports and court documents.

Frank pleaded guilty to attempted online enticement and possession of child pornography and was found guilty of commission of a felony sex offense by a registered sex offender following a bench trial in federal court in Spokane after federal prosecutors took over. U.S. District Court Judge Mary K. Dimke sentenced him to 35 years in November 2023, the longest prison sentence received by anyone arrested in the sting. Prosecutors had asked for 40 years. Frank is appealing his conviction, according to the federal court docket.

Others arrested in the sting operation were Travis Jeff Hiibner, 51. Hilbner committed suicide with a rifle after he was released from jail following his arrest on June 3, 2023, according to court records and the Spokane County medical examiner’s office. Police arrested Hiibner outside the Chewelah Creek Inn, where an undercover officer had told him that two girls he thought were 11 and 12 would be waiting, according to court documents. Hiibner, who lived in Spokane Valley, showed up with $500, a condom, beer, and medication that resembled Viagra, police reported. Charged with attempted rape of a child, attempted child molestation, and commercial sexual abuse of a minor, Hiibner bailed out of jail with a $50,000 personal check that bounced, according to an affidavit from Stevens County Prosecuting Attorney Erika George. In her affidavit seeking a bench warrant, George wrote that Hiibner was released because the court clerk’s office filed paperwork showing that bail had been posted. Hiibner killed himself on July 6, 2023, the day after George signed the affidavit, according to court documents.

Thomas Albert Riehl of Ellensburg died pending trial, according to a motion for dismissal of charges filed last May by the Stevens County prosecutor’s office. According to the motion, Riehl, who was 45 when police arrested him on suspicion of attempted rape of a child, died in Pierce County. The motion does not indicate a cause or date of death. The Pierce County medical examiner’s office told the Statesman-Examiner that it has no record of a death investigation involving Riehl; the Stevens County coroner’s office, which confirmed the death to prosecutors, according to court documents, could not be immediately reached for comment. According to George, prior court hearing records indicate Riehl had a serious heart-related medical condition and that his death was the result of heart failure. Five months after Riehl’s arrest, former Superior Court Judge Jessica Reeves, who retired in 2025, ruled in Riehl’s favor when his attorney challenged police seizure of his phone upon his arrest. Police didn’t have a warrant to search Riehl’s vehicle or the phone inside. There were no circumstances allowing a Washington State Patrol trooper who entered the vehicle and took the phone to conduct a search absent a warrant, Reeves decided, and so nothing found on the phone could be used as evidence against Riehl. Riehl’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a follow-up with George, the Stevens County prosecutor said this part of the case was rather complex, explaining that, “At the scene of Riehl’s arrest, the trooper could see a cell phone through the open window of the vehicle. At the time of arrest, the undercover chatter sent a text to the number he had been using to communicate with Riehl. The trooper at the scene observed the phone light up when the text was sent. He opened the door to the truck and seized the phone in order to enable phone settings that would prevent remote manipulation of data on the phone. Judge Reeves ruled that opening the truck door for seizure was an improper, warrantless search and suppressed the actual seizure of the phone. The truck and phone were both actually searched pursuant to a valid warrant later. Other items located in the truck were not suppressed. The only thing suppressed was the phone itself, because it was seized prior to the warrant to prevent the destruction of evidence. It’s important to note we still had the evidence of the chat logs from the chatter, as well as the visual observation of the trooper seeing the phone receive the test text from the chatter after the arrest.” 

Spencer Schuster Voice, 57, of Colville, pleaded guilty to attempted rape of a child and possession of depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct on June 17, 2024, a bit more than a year after his arrest. Schuster was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison and is currently being held at Coyote Ridge Corrections Center in Connell.

A Stevens County jury in October 2023 convicted Kaleb E. Grimm, 45, of attempted rape of a child in the second degree and communication with a minor for immoral purposes. According to a police report, Grimm, an Addy resident, exchanged texts with an undercover officer he thought was a 13-year-old girl and said that he would help her learn how to drive. Reeves sentenced him to seven-and-a-half years in November 2023. He is being held at Airway Heights Corrections Center.

Scot Guy Jackson, 68, pleaded guilty to two counts of commercial sexual abuse of a minor and received a three-year sentence. According to court records, he agreed to pay $200 to have sex with two girls he was told were 11 and 13 years old. He had also expressed interest in having sex with the fictional mother, according to police reports and court documents. Police arrested him on June 3, 2023, outside the Colville Park apartments, where undercover officers instructed him to travel, according to police reports and court documents. Prosecutors dropped two charges of attempted rape of a child. Jackson, who lived near Addy, is being held at Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen.

Matthew Aaron Roque, 34, successfully completed 12 months of probation after pleading guilty to communication with a minor for immoral purposes, according to a report from the Washington State Department of Corrections filed last April in Stevens County Superior Court. Roque lived in Colville when he was arrested in May 2023, according to a press release issued by the Stevens County sheriff’s office.