Former Honolulu police officer Mason Jordan, indicted in 2022 and accused of committing a range of child sex crimes such as recruiting underage children to work for him as prostitutes, pleaded guilty to four counts in U.S. District Court Thursday. 

Jordan, who resigned from the police department amid an internal investigation in 2021,  pleaded guilty to one count of sexual exploitation of a child, two counts of coercion and enticement and one count of cyberstalking, according to a federal plea agreement. The government agreed to dismiss two counts of sexual exploitation of a child and two counts of sex trafficking of a child after sentencing. 

Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested Jordan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on June 2, 2022.

A motion to detain Jordan, filed by the government the following day, says he posed “an extremely serious danger to members of the community, including those he had previously victimized.” 

He used “elaborate ruses” to gain access to children and utilized “burner” emails and multiple social media accounts to try to hide his identity, the motion says. 

Jordan was later transferred to the federal detention center in Honolulu, where he has been held since. 

Prosecutors say Jordan cyberstalked a woman he met while working as a police officer and threatened to circulate naked photographs of her to her family, coworkers and friends if she did not send him new naked photos.

Investigators also found memory cards in his police station locker containing videos created in 2016 with a hidden camera showing a child naked in a bedroom getting dressed after taking a shower, the motion says. Jordan’s face could be seen in the videos recovering the hidden camera after the child left the room. 

In addition, prosecutors say he used an Instagram account in January 2020 to impersonate one of his victims and solicit an underage girl to work as a prostitute. He arranged to meet the girl near a bathroom of a public park and assaulted her. He knew she was under 18 because he’d looked her up in a police database, the motion says. 

He used an Instagram account to solicit another minor that same month and told her to contact a “fictional pimp named ‘Joey,’” the motion says. He then communicated with the minor while pretending to be Joey and claiming to be 18 years old. He made arrangements to meet the girl at a shopping mall, where he assaulted her and offered her money, the motion says. 

The Honolulu Police Department initiated an internal investigation of Jordan in February 2021 after it got a tip about him acting inappropriately toward a child while he was on a trip to Florida. 

Jordan was accused of pressuring the minor to drink and take shots while they were home alone together on Feb. 19, 2020, according to an HPD disciplinary report. The juvenile later got sick and blacked out and woke up wearing only a T-shirt and underwear, the report says. 

Jordan refused to cooperate or speak with internal investigators and resigned from the department on March 26, 2021. HPD investigators turned their findings over to the Honolulu Prosecutor’s Office, which declined to take the case. 

HPD spokeswoman Michelle Yu did not respond to a request for comment. Jordan’s attorney, Caroline Elliot, declined to comment.

Jordan faces 15 to 30 years in prison on the sexual exploitation of a child count. The coercion and enticement counts carry penalties of 10 to 20 years in prison and cyberstalking carries a term of up to 5 years. All counts also carry possible fines of up to $250,000, according to the plea agreement. 

Jordan will be required to pay restitution to his victims as well as register as a sex offender, the agreement says. 

He is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 21.