A Mount Joy man will spend two and a half to five years in state prison after pleading guilty last month to attempting to pay for sex with what he believed was a 14-year-old girl, only to discover it was an undercover officer with the Lancaster County Human Trafficking Task Force.

In addition to the state prison time, Judge Merrill Spah also sentenced Jeffrey McDonald, 39, to five years of probation on Nov. 26.

McDonald, of the 100 block of Farmington Way, pleaded guilty to felony counts of criminal attempt of patronizing a victim of human trafficking, criminal attempt of statutory sexual assault and criminal attempt of corruption of minors.

Speaking to the court prior to his sentencing, McDonald described his actions as “a monumental mistake.”

Human Trafficking Task Force agents launched the operation which eventually resulted in McDonald’s arrest as part of an effort to target individuals looking to pay for sexual services from juvenile victims of human trafficking.

Investigators began looking into McDonald in May after he responded to an online advertisement and agreed to pay $200 for a 14-year-old girl to perform sex acts. The advertiser, purporting to be one of the girl’s family members, was actually an undercover Human Trafficking Task Force officer.

The undercover officer met McDonald at a hotel in West Hempfield Township where he again verbally agreed to pay $200 to have sex with the girl for 30 minutes while walking to a hotel room before he was arrested.

Assistant District Attorney Fritz Haverstick prosecuted the case.

Detectives with the Lancaster County Human Trafficking Task Force filed the charges.