Date: March 10, 2011
For Immediate Release
Contact: Jose Arballo, SWRNN
Police: Man arrested in San Jacinto after soliciting, trying to extort sex from teenage girl.
A man who investigators said attempted to solicit and extort sexual favors from a 16-year-old San Jacinto girl he met through a “party-line” has been arrested after attempting to meet the victim, said Sgt. Bruce Smith.
Colton resident Juan Francisco Jimenez, Jr., 26, was taken into custody from a San Jacinto commercial business Wednesday by members of the Riverside County’s Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement Task Force, Smith said in a news release. Jimenez apparently went to the Ramona Boulevard business believing he would be meeting the victim for sex, Smith said.
Jimenez repeatedly attempted to solicit, and then extort sexual favors over the past year from the teenage victim before the task force was notified about the crime, Smith said.
Investigators learned the girl talked regularly with Jimenez after “meeting” him on a telephone “party line” service and then the two exchanged text messages through a cellular phone, Smith said. Jimenez knew the girl was 15, Smith said, but he solicited sexual favors from her and transmitted illicit sexual images to her cellular telephone.
After being rebuffed in his sexual advances, Smith said, Jimenez threatened to harm the girl by reporting her conversations with him to her family members if she did not provide him sexual favors.
Investigators from the task force’s Sexual Predator Internet Decoy Enforcement for Riverside posed as the girl in text messages with Jimenez, who sought to meet the girl in San Jacinto and engage in sexual activity with her there, Smith said. Investigators arranged this meeting for March 9 at a commercial business establishment located at north State Street and north Ramona Boulevard in San Jacinto. When Jimenez arrived to meet the girl, Smith said, he was arrested.
Jimenez was subsequently booked at the Riverside County Sheriff’s Robert Presley Detention Center, with bail set at $250,000.
The task force includes the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office, Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, Riverside County Probation Department, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, California Department of Justice and Corona Police Department.