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Richard Gabriel Piedra-Ordonez broke federal law by crossing state lines with the minor for sex, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said Wednesday.
Piedra-Ordonez faces an additional count of “traveling for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct,” the U.S. attorney said.
Piedra-Ordonez began communicating with the girl in May “using various social media and messaging platforms,” Carpenito said.
Over the course of the subsequent months, he said, Piedra-Ordonez “traveled to Cape May County to have sex with the victim and also drove the victim to his home in New York City, where he engaged in criminal sexual activity with the victim.”
He came to her home in New Jersey and took her someplace nearby for sex, then brought her to his home, where she stayed over twice, the FBI wrote in a complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Camden.
Carpenito credited special agents with 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 Piedra-Ordonez’s arrest.
He also thanked the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office for its assistance with the case, which is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel A. Friedman of Carpenito’s Criminal Division in Camden.
Piedra-Ordonez was scheduled for a first appearance Thursday afternoon in federal court in Camden.
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