Mom discovers man sending ‘explicit’ texts to 14-year-old daughter, WA cops say
A mother in Colorado discovered “sexually explicit” messages on her teenage daughter’s phone from a man, deputies said.
John Vargas-Lopez, 19, was arrested April 8 near his home in Peshastin, Washington, the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office said in an April 8 Facebook post.
Vargas-Lopez posed as a 15-year-old boy to text and Snapchat the 14-year-old girl, deputies said.
At one point, he told her he’d travel to Colorado to see her, deputies said.
But her mother found their conversations and reported him to the Colorado Springs Police Department, deputies said.
Colorado authorities then contacted the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office as it was believed he lived in that county.
Investigators said they learned Vargas-Lopez had been in contact with the girl since November.
They looked into his phone and social media records and discovered he had an “extensive pattern” of pretending to be a teenager while asking underage girls for “sexually explicit photos and videos” on Instagram and Snapchat, deputies said.
He was arrested on suspicion of the following charges:
Sexual exploitation of a minor
Communication with a minor for immoral purposes
Possession of depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct
Peshastin is about a 130-mile drive east from Seattle.
