A Long Beach man has pled guilty to federal charges after his arrest on suspicion of having sexual relations with a 14-year-old girl from Arizona he met online, drove her to his house, and had intercourse with her.
In March, the girl was discovered inside the apartment of Trevon Nathaniel Langstaff, 33, who was subsequently arrested.
Langstaff knew the girl he met on Reddit was young, so he drove to Peoria, Arizona, to pick her up a few days before he was arrested.
He “engaged in criminal sexual activity with her” after transporting her from Arizona to California, according to Friday’s announcement by the US Department of Justice. In California, the legal age of consent is 18.
After the girl’s friends and relatives were questioned, the girl’s family realized that she had been communicating with a man she had met online, who claimed to “harbored” teens, and they reported her missing.
After Langstaff was taken into custody, his phone was checked by the authorities, who found pictures of “two children engaged in sexually explicit activity,” the DOJ said.
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According to authorities, Langstaff admitted guilt on one count of planning to engage in sexually explicit conduct while abroad.
“Every day, sexual predators use the internet’s relative anonymity to prey on vulnerable youth,” said United States Attorney Martin Estrada. “Would-be predators should be aware that my office will use all of its tools to bring them to justice, and, as today’s sentence shows, the consequences will be severe.”
At his March 2019 court appearance, he will be subject to a maximum penalty of thirty years in federal prison.
Long Beach Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigations looked into the matter.