ST. LOUIS — A California man was sentenced Tuesday to seven years in prison after he admitted to traveling from California to St. Louis to meet an underaged girl for sex in 2020.
Edson S. Ortiz, a 30-year-old resident of Napa County, pleaded guilty to one felony count of traveling with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct.
According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Missouri, Ortiz admitted that he started chatting with the Missouri teen over Snapchat and WhatsApp. On Oct. 23, 2020, he flew from California to St. Louis and met the girl in person the next day at a hotel in Chesterfield.
He was 27 at the time and the girl was 16.
According to the release, Ortiz recorded the sexual contact between him and the teen. Officers found that video and photos in January of 2021 during a search triggered after Ortiz uploaded "child sexual abuse material" to Snapchat.
Investigators from the St. Louis County Special Investigations Unit, the Napa County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI worked together on the case.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, according to the release. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Department of Justice Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.
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