LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A Las Vegas man faces charges for allegedly trying to get a mother to bring her 4-year-old daughter to Nevada to engage in a sexual assault, but the parent was really an undercover agent, federal documents said.
Clifford Robert Sanchez, 43, faces one count of distribution of child pornography, documents filed Tuesday said.
Over the course of several weeks beginning in March, Sanchez chatted with an undercover Homeland Security Investigations agent whom Sanchez thought was the mother of a 4-year-old girl, documents said.
The undercover agent, posing as the mother who did not live in Nevada, told Sanchez she was interested in making the child “available for a sexual encounter with an adult male,” documents said. In the chats, Sanchez claimed to have had sex with a child in the past.
The undercover agent and Sanchez shared sexually explicit text messages, agents said. In one chat, Sanchez reportedly sent a message saying, “I’m looking forward to going to sleep [sic] last night I was thinking about it all last night you and your daughter.”
Agents later compared a selfie Sanchez shared with the investigator with his California driver’s license, documents said. Agents later learned Sanchez was arrested in Los Angeles in 2014 on a child pornography charge. He was later convicted of a less charge of possession of obscene matter, documents said.
The child pornography charge stems from Sanchez’s alleged sharing of the material with the undercover agent, documents said.
Sanchez and the undercover agent later agreed to meet in Las Vegas this month.
A warrant was issued for Sanchez’s arrest Tuesday but it was unclear if he was in federal custody as of Wednesday afternoon.
