A US court has handed 19-and-a-half years in prison to an actor convicted of abusing children as young as six on trips to Thailand and posting the images on the Internet.

Wayne Nelson Corliss (60) was also ordered to pay a $5000 fine. The federal court in Newark, New Jersey said on Monday Corliss — who reportedly played Santa Claus for children — would be under supervision for life.

Corliss was arrested in May last year in Union City, just outside New York, after a two-day global manhunt called by Interpol after Norwegian police spotted online images of his sex acts with children as young as six.

Interpol had sent a cropped photo of Corliss from the pornographic images to police around the world.

"Wayne Corliss is a determined sexual predator who traveled the world to engage in horrible conduct with helpless young victims," Paul Fishman, the US attorney for New Jersey, said in a statement.

"The length of the sentence will ensure — as it should — that Corliss will never have the opportunity to prey on anyone else," he said.

Corliss pleaded guilty to travelling to Thailand annually from 2000 to 2002 with an intent to abuse children and to storing images of child pornography on his home computer, prosecutors said.

Corliss allegedly gained access to the young boys at the home in Thailand of Canadian John Wrenshall, who was extradited last year from Britain to the United States and awaits a separate trial in New Jersey.

The Newark-based Star-Ledger newspaper said Corliss played roles in small theater productions in Manhattan and at least three movies including the 1982 comedy 'Waitress'.

More recently, he made a living playing Santa Claus at children's birthday parties and fairs, the newspaper said.

It was Interpol's second public appeal for a suspected paedophile, a year after a high-profile operation that reconstructed computer images to track down suspected Canadian paedophile Christopher Paul Neil in Thailand.

AFP

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