The FBI announced it on Friday.
Court documents confirmed that 41-year-old Daniel Navarro was found guilty of all federal charges late Thursday, three years after his July 2022 arrest. He was convicted of: two counts of sexual exploitation of children to produce sexually explicit visual depictions, one of the attempts to seduce minors to engage in criminal sexual activities, one of the counts of transporting minors with the intention to engage in criminal sexual activities, one of the distribution of child pornography, one of the counts of transport of child pornography.
The four-day trial revealed that Navarro, who occasionally did with the alias “Angel,” began this many of this crimes by posing online as a teenage boy to have sexual relationships with his teenage victim.
Evidence drawn from one of Navarro’s Instagram accounts revealed an online conversation with the teenager, where he “published his love for this victim and discussed having sex with her,” the FBI said.
The victim, only identified as a 15-year-old girl from Arizona, spent the summer in the then central coastal town of Nipomo. The extent to which the two had communicated before she was taken was not immediately revealed by authorities.
During the same summer, Navarro brought the girl from San Luis Obispo County to Tijuana, Mexico “with the intention of engaging in criminal sexual activities” just before Quinchanella.
Authorities arrested Navarro 10 days later, 10 days after he entered the United States from Mexico. The FBI said Mexican authorities rescued the girl from her Tijuana residence after Navarro’s arrest.
The trial later revealed that Navarro used Instagram to exchange child pornography with the victims, and carried photos of them on his mobile phone while traveling between Tijuana, Mexico and San Luis Obispo counties before returning to Tijuana. “Evidence at the trial also showed that Navarro used Instagram to persuade, induced and seduce another second victim to send sexual imagery,” the FBI said.
The federal judge had scheduled a ruling hearing on October 24th. At that point, Navarro faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in federal prison and a statutory maximum sentence at prison.
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