Post Falls man Dustin Angele, 28, faces charges in First District Court

Post Falls residents were reminded again of the risks of online predation after First District Judge Barry McHugh sentenced 28-year-old Dustin J. Angele to up to 15 years in prison for enticing a child through the internet. The sentence, imposed March 4, 2026, carries parole eligibility after seven years, according to court reporting by NonStop Local.

Prosecutors say the charge stems from an April 2025 operation in which Angele arranged to meet someone he believed to be a 14-year-old; law enforcement arrested him when he arrived at the arranged location, the Coeur d’Alene Press reported. CdA Press also said Angele pleaded guilty in October 2025 to the felony count of enticing a child through the internet.

Prosecutors told the court Angele had engaged in other "sexually graphic" communications with minors, the CdA Press account said. NonStop Local reported Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney Stanley T. Mortensen thanked Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Molly Nivison and the Coeur d’Alene Police Department for their roles in the investigation and prosecution.

Court records and reporting indicate the court retained jurisdiction and ordered a treatment-first prison program commonly called a rider. As the CdA Press described the sentencing disposition, "The court opted to retain jurisdiction in the case and placed Angele in a prison treatment program, also called a rider. Upon the completion of the program, he was placed on probation again." That retained jurisdiction means the First District has conditioned part of the sentence on completion of a prison-based treatment program and potential later placement on probation.

Angele’s criminal history figures in the case record presented at sentencing. Prosecutors say that in 2018, when he was 19, Angele pleaded guilty to attempted injury to a child after soliciting a 15-year-old and received probation; that probation was later violated following a misdemeanor sexual battery conviction, according to CdA Press and NonStop Local reporting.

The Angele sentence joins several recent, separate prosecutions in Kootenai County involving child abuse and internet enticement. Christopher Daniel Hayes, age 40, was sentenced Sept. 12, 2025, by Senior District Judge John Mitchell to 15 years after an undercover Facebook sting in which Hayes communicated with what he believed was a 13-year-old; prosecutors said Hayes engaged in sexually explicit conversations, sent nude images of himself, and arranged to meet the undercover profile in Post Falls. Jeremiah D. Weaver, age 21, received a 15-year sentence in a felony injury-to-a-child case after a 4-month-old victim required emergency surgery at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane. In a separate Idaho Falls case, 33-year-old Elias Medina pleaded guilty to distribution and possession counts tied to cybertips from Snapchat and Kik and received concurrent determinate and indeterminate terms as described in the Post Register.

The Angele case was handled in First Judicial District Court under Judge Barry McHugh’s authority, and prosecutor statements credited Nivison and local law enforcement for investigative work. The court’s retained-jurisdiction order and rider leave open the possibility that Angele will enter a prison treatment program before any transition back to supervised probation.