A pediatric nurse at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital started talking online with a secret FBI agent who was pretending to be a foster mother about having sex with her daughter, who was thought to be too young to be with her.
The first chat on the social media site Whisper turned into a series of chats between Rami Rotlewicz and three FBI agents who were not acting. Two of them were pretending to be foster mothers, and the third was pretending to be a foster kid.
Because of these online chats, police raided his Plantation home last month and arrested him on Tuesday. He was charged with getting and having hundreds of child pornographic images on his cell phone and trying to get a young girl to have sex with him.
This is Rotlewicz, 34, who has been fired from his job at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood. He is being held at the Broward Sheriff’s Office jail in a federal lock-up until his pre-trial detention hearing on Tuesday in Fort Lauderdale federal court. His arraignment is set for June 26 because a grand jury charge is still pending.
When the FBI tried to stop the spread of child porn crimes on the Internet, they arrested hundreds of people in South Florida. He was one of them.
An FBI affidavit that was attached to the lawsuit says that this is how the sting operation in South Florida has changed over the last year.
The nurse responded to an ad on the Whisper platform on May 5, 2023, by asking, “What is your role in the family?” This is when Rotlewicz started writing to the first FBI agent who was working undercover.
The worker who was being watched answered “foster mom” with an 11-year-old daughter, saying that she was looking to “add a dad type.” Rotlewicz told them his age and said, “I’d love to talk.” He then said, “I’d love to be her dad.”
They finally decided, after almost two weeks, to move their chat from Whisper to Telegram. Rotlewicz gave his Telegram name, “@tumtumice,” and his show name, “Ram Rod.” He sent a picture of himself and said his name was Rami and that he worked as a nurse.
When Rotlewicz and the so-called foster mother talked on May 16, 2023, he said he would like to talk to her foster daughter. After a few days, the mother added her daughter, whose name was “K,” to the Telegram group where “Ram Rod” was also a member.
Rotlewicz talked to the mother and daughter for the first time on May 20 as reported by Miami Herald.
The foster mother talked to Rotlewicz the next day about taking the daughter to Fort Lauderdale so he could have sex with her. They talked about how to get from New York to Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office and the Plantation Police Department got a state warrant from the FBI so they could search Rotlewicz’s home in Plantation. The FBI affidavit says that when they searched several electronic devices, including an Apple iPhone 12, they found 219 pictures and 85 movies that they thought were child pornography.
Rotlewicz was there during the search, waived his Miranda rights, and told police in a recorded statement that he had been talking to the two foster moms and foster child on social media before the search.
FBI agents and local cops arrested Rotlewicz near his home this week.
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