A Victorville man was found guilty of transporting a girl to Mexico for illicit sexual activity just before her quinceañera, with evidence showing he wanted to “impregnate her,” the FBI announced Friday.
Court documents confirmed 41-year-old Daniel Navarro was found guilty on all federal charges late Thursday, three years after his July 2022 arrest. He was convicted of the following: two counts of sexual exploitation of a child to produce a sexually explicit visual depiction, one count of attempted enticement of a minor to engage in criminal sexual activity, one count of transporting a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, one count of distribution of child pornography and one count of transportation of child pornography.
The four-day-long trial found that Navarro, who sometimes went by the alias “Angel,” began this slew of crimes by posing online as a teenage boy to entice the teenage victim into having a sexual relationship.
Evidence pulled from one of Navarro’s Instagram accounts revealed his online conversations with the teenager, where he “professed his love for this victim and discussed having sex with her to impregnate her,” stated the FBI.
The victim, only identified as a 15-year-old girl from Arizona, was spending her summer in the Central Coast town of Nipomo at the time. It was not immediately made clear by officials how long the two had been communicating before she was taken.
During the same summer, Navarro brought the girl from San Luis Obispo County to Tijuana, Mexico, “with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity” — just before her quinceañera.
Authorities arrested Navarro 10 days later, when he entered the United States from Mexico. The FBI said Mexican authorities rescued the girl from a Tijuana residence after Navarro’s arrest.
The trial later revealed that Navarro also used Instagram to exchange child pornography with the victim and also carried those photos on his phone while traveling between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Luis Obispo County before returning to Tijuana. “The evidence at trial also showed that Navarro used Instagram to persuade, induce, and entice another second victim to send him sexual images,” stated the FBI.
A federal judge scheduled an Oct. 24 sentencing hearing, at which time Navarro will face a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in federal prison and a statutory maximum sentence of life in prison.
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