Sentencing of a senior Northern Ireland civil servant who admitted arranging to meet a girl for under age sex in the United States was tonight delayed for 24 hours.
Stan Mallon (62) the ex-chief executive of the Ulster Scots Agency, from Crumlin, Co Antrim, faces a maximum of four years and three months in jail.
The father of five changed his initial plea of not guilty to guilty before a Chicago court last October to a charge of using the Internet to attempt to persuade, induce and entice a juvenile to have sex.
Mallon, once a senior executive with Northern Ireland's former jobs creation agency, the Industrial Development Board, had been due for sentence today but the judge at the US District Court in Chicago said she was not sufficiently briefed on the case to pass a jail sentence and delayed to tomorrow to give her time to study the file.
The 14-year-old girl, "Marny", whom Mallon had arranged to meet after making contact on an Internet chat line, was in reality an FBI agent working on another case.
He arranged to meet her at his Chicago hotel while on his way to a St Patrick's Day conference in Washington.
The 'girl' was bombarded with 17 emails in 24 minutes by a man claiming to be a rich 42-year-old president of a biotech company.
AFP