Timothy McDarrah

Timothy McDarrah (born 1962 as Timothy Swann McDarrah) is a former magazine editor and gossip columnist from New York City who was convicted and imprisoned after a U.S. federal sting operation for soliciting sex with a minor in September 2005.

Before his arrest, he co-authored three books -- Kerouac and Friends: A Beat Generation Album, Gay Pride: Photographs from Stonewall to Today, and Anarchy, Protest & Rebellion—with his father, Fred McDarrah, a longtime staff photographer for the The Village Voice.

From 2002 to 2004, he wrote a gossip column for the Las Vegas Sun newspaper titled "VegasBeat." Before going to the Sun, he had been a writer since 1985 for the New York Post's "Page Six" column and a writer for a chain of community newspapers in Long Island, New York. McDarrah left the Sun to take a position as editor of the "Hot Stuff" column for Us Weekly. He was suspended without pay from that job after his 2005 arrest.

McDarrah was arrested after an investigation by the FBI Crimes Against Children Squad in New York in June 2005 on charges related to solicitation of sex with a 13-year-old. His attorney blamed his client's conduct on an Internet addiction.

The criminal case was heavily covered by the national media, including entertainment news outlets, because McDarrah, a high-profile gossip writer, had himself become the subject of entertainment news he would typically cover.

He was convicted in December 2006 of one count of attempted enticement of a minor to engage in sexual activity after an eight-day jury trial. He was sentenced in April 2007, at age 43, in Manhattan federal court to 72 months in a federal prison for the attempted enticement of a minor to engage in sexual activity. He was a Federal inmate at the Loretto Federal Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania. McDarrah was released from prison on March 23, 2012, at age 50, to begin serving a four-year supervised release.

After his release, McDarrah returned to New York.