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Richard Gabriel Piedra Ordonez, 37, must serve out just about all of the plea-bargained sentence because there’s no parole in the federal prison system.
Piedra pretended to be 19 when he began communicating with the under-16 girl on Snapchat and other social media and messaging platforms, U.S. Attorney Phillip Sellinger said.
Over the next several months, by his own admission, Piedra drove to New Jersey for sex and twice took her back to his home for the same purpose.
He also gave the victim a cellphone so they could communicate with one another, a complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Camden says.
Federal agents said the phone had photos of the two of them, along with a video of them having intercourse.
The girl’s mother alerted police about their relationship after finding messages between them, one of which confirmed that Piedra knew her daughter’s age, the complaint says.
Piedra broke federal law by crossing state lines with the minor for sex, so the FBI took the case, Sellinger said.
Agents who conducted a warranted search on an apartment he shared with family members found "sexually explicit images and videos of minors on a hard drive located in Piedra’s bedroom,” he said.
They soon discovered that he’d also communicated online with an Indiana resident who was under 15 while again posing as a 19-year-old.
“Piedra requested and received sexually explicit images and videos from this victim,” the U.S. attorney said.
Piedra took a deal from the government rather than go to trial, pleading guilty during a video-conferenced hearing in U.S. District Court in Camden in December 2020 to coercion and enticement of a minor, transporting a minor to engage in criminal sexual activity and receiving child pornography.
In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Court Judge Noel L. Hillman sentenced Piedra to 10 years of supervised release and ordered him to register as a sex offender.
Sellinger credited special agents with the FBI’s Atlantic City Child Exploitation & Human Trafficking Task Force, the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office, and New Jersey State Police with the investigation leading to the guilty plea and sentence, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel A. Friedman of his Criminal Division in Camden.
The U.S. attorney also thanked the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office for its assistance.
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