North Dakota
Graphic emails from Ray Holmberg outline sex crimes, years of preying on children
BISMARCK — New court documents allege that former North Dakota State Sen. Ray Holmberg targeted the “most vulnerable” while committing his sex crimes against children.
According to federal court papers filed late Wednesday, March 19, officials detail that, for years, Holmberg targeted children in foreign countries, preyed on local students where he worked as a high school guidance counselor and abused his political power to exploit adolescent boys and men.
“You’d be amazed what you could do with a 12-year-old boy,” Holmberg allegedly told a former student of his.
Chris Flynn / The Forum
Now 81, Holmberg spent over 46 years in the North Dakota Senate as a Republican who represented Grand Forks.
Holmberg resigned
as a lawmaker in 2022 after
The Forum reported his connection
to
another man
who faced and was eventually sentenced on federal charges that said he traded child sex abuse materials online.
Holmberg has
pleaded guilty
to a charge that said he traveled multiple times to Prague between June 24, 2011, and Nov. 1, 2016, “with the motivating purpose of engaging in commercial sex with adolescent age individuals,” according to a plea agreement. The charge carries a maximum punishment of 30 years in prison.
Holmberg is scheduled to appear at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 26, at the federal courthouse in Fargo for a sentencing hearing, according to a notice filed Friday, Feb. 7. Barring any changes in scheduling, North Dakota U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland will hand down Holmberg’s punishment that day.
“Holmberg has a long history of leveraging his power and influence as a North Dakota Legislator over young men to obtain sexual favors,” court documents filed Wednesday said.
Holmberg didn’t commit one criminal act, prosecutors allege, but persistently and pervasively sought out and targeted young boys for sex.
Beyond paying for sex with children abroad, Holmberg targeted boys and young men throughout the state and surrounding region, prosecutors allege, by grooming them or pressuring them into sex acts.
Holmberg groomed children at Grand Forks Central High School for years, court records state, and “leveraged his influence and power to obtain sexual favors” from students at the University of North Dakota.
Investigators found strings of emails from Holmberg under the alias “Sean Evan” in which he described going abroad to “look for some young kid” as “fun,” court papers said.
These correspondence contain sexual comments about children so graphic that The Forum has elected not to print them.
“If you think I travel thousands of miles to have sex with a 16-year-old, you’d be right,” Holmberg said, according to the report.
Once, he emailed a friend that he’d only come visit him abroad on the following conditions: “You have to guarantee that I will have a boy to have sex with when I am there,” court documents allege.
“The boys and young men with whom Holmberg sought to engage in commercial sex were some of the most vulnerable in the world,” the report said. “Especially in Prague, they were homeless boys and men.”
Holmberg’s crimes will have lifelong impacts on all his victims, according to the report.
Holmberg also targeted people closer to home. According to court documents, Holmberg routinely paid people in the Midwest to have sex with him.
He also tricked a 16-year-old Canadian boy to send him child sex abuse materials of himself. Holmberg pressured the boy for months to send him photos of his genitals, even asking him explicit questions about sexual acts. The child died by suicide years after the abuse, the report said.
The former senator also sent and received child sexual abuse materials over the years, court papers allege.
In Wednesday’s court papers, the United States attorney asked the judge to sentence Holmberg to 37 months, or just over three years, and lifetime supervision when his sentence is handed down next week.
Troy Becker / The Forum
Reporter working the night shift 👻. I cover Fargo city government, Cass County government and underserved populations in the area.
FARGO, N.D. (KELO) — The Sioux Falls Stampede staved off elimination with a 2-1 overtime win over the Fargo Force in game four of the USHL Western Conference Finals Saturday night.
Thomas Zocco scored the game-winner 12 minutes into the extra period. Arseni Marchenko put Fargo on the board first in the first period. Noah Mannausau tied the game for the Herd in the second period.
Sioux Falls outshot Fargo 53-49, including 9-5 in overtime. Linards Feldbergs made 48 saves.
Three of the four games of the series have gone to overtime. The winner-take-all game five is Tuesday at the Premier Center.
New ballot measure guide to be mailed to North Dakota voters ahead of election
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BISMARCK (North Dakota Monitor) — A federal district court judge indicated he will nullify a nearly $28 million judgment against the federal government related to costs North Dakota incurred during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests so the parties can reach a settlement.
North Dakota is still set to receive a payment Attorney General Drew Wrigley described as satisfactory, but attorneys would not disclose the amount during a Friday hearing.
Attorneys for the United States and North Dakota said the settlement would allow the parties to avoid litigating the case in appeals court,putting the nearly seven-year-old lawsuit to rest.
“We’re hoping we really don’t need to fight any further,” Department of Justice attorney Jonathan Guynn said during the hearing.
The lawsuit, filed in 2019, concerns demonstrations against the construction of the crude oil pipeline, also known as DAPL, that took place in rural south-central North Dakota in 2016 and 2017.
North Dakota claims the federal government caused the protests to grow in size and intensity by unlawfully allowing demonstrators to camp on federal land. The state says it had to pay millions of dollars on policing and cleaning up the encampments as a result. The United States denies the state’s allegations.
North Dakota U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Traynor in April 2025 sided with the state and ordered the executive branch to pay North Dakota the $28 million sum, a decision the U.S. Department of Justice later appealed to the 8th Circuit.
If the settlement moves forward, North Dakota would receive a “substantial monetary payment” from the United States, attorneys said Friday. As a condition of the agreement, the Department of Justice wants Traynor’s judgment and three other orders in which he ruled against the United States to be voided. That includes the court’s 120-page ruling from April 2025.
Both parties said Friday that having the rulings nullified wouldn’t have a significant negative impact on the public, since the documents could still be cited even if they no longer hold the weight of court orders.
At the same time, Guynn said the Department of Justice wants the orders vacated because it doesn’t want the legal conclusions Traynor made to influence the outcome of future lawsuits.
“The downstream consequences of keeping these on the books is troublesome for the United States,” he said during the hearing. If Traynor does not agree to axe the rulings, the United States would likely no longer be willing to settle and move forward with its appeal instead, Guynn added.
Traynor’s orders make findings about the federal government’s responsibility under the Federal Tort Claims Act — the law North Dakota filed the suit under — which the state noted previously in court filings “could have utility holding the federal government to account” in the future.
Still, attorneys for the state said they believe this trade-off is outweighed by the time and money the public would save by not going through the appeals process. North Dakota would also avoid the risk of having Traynor’s judgment overturned by higher courts.
Wrigley said the settlement will be made public once it’s finalized.
The United States’ appeal of Traynor’s decision has been on hold since last summer, when the state and federal government informed the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals they had started settlement negotiations and wished to pause the case.
The 8th Circuit will have to first send the case back to Traynor before he could grant the parties’ requests.
The case went to trial in Bismarck in early 2024. During the four-week trial, the court heard from witnesses including former governors Doug Burgum and Jack Dalrymple, Native activists, federal officials and law enforcement.
The Dakota Access Pipeline carries crude oil from northwest North Dakota to Illinois. It crosses the Missouri River just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, which prompted the tribe to begin protesting the pipeline on the grounds that it poses a threat to its water supply and sovereignty.
North Dakota’s lawsuit originally requested $38 million in damages from the federal government. Traynor ordered the executive branch to pay $28 million since the U.S. Department of Justice previously gave the state $10 million as compensation for costs it spent related to the protests.
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