CLEARFIELD- The first man caught in the web of the 814 Pred Hunters group was in court Tuesday.
Edwin Stick Gomez-Lamadrid, 28, from Columbia, South America, was charged with felony criminal attempt-corruption of minors and misdemeanor criminal solicitation after the group set up a meeting with him on Sept 20. Gomez-Lamadrid thought he was meeting with a 15-year-old girl.
On Tuesday, it was revealed that Gomez-Lamadrid has signed a plea agreement in which he will plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge with a time served sentence.
After a colloquy to put the plea on the record, President Judge Fredric J. Ammerman noted that Gomez-Lamadrid will have to be evaluated to determine if he is a sexually-violent predator before he can be sentenced.
Since September, the 814 group has caught over 40 men through their efforts with decoys who respond to men accosting them online.
After the first contact, the girls tell the men their age, but many continue to message them with increasingly sexual messages and photos/videos.
The decoys then set up meetings where the group confronts the men with copies of their messages and other media, which are then turned over to local law enforcement.
They have cases pending not just in Clearfield County, but Blair, Elk, Wyoming and Indiana counties and in neighboring states.
According to the affidavit of probable cause in the Gomez-Lamadrid case, he was staying at a Lawrence Township hotel while he was working in the area. He started messaging the girl, sent her a sexual photo and asked to meet her.
When he arrived, he instead met with the 814 Pred Hunters who had problems speaking with him because he did not speak English. He had been communicating with the girl through a translation application.
Later his boss arrived to help explain what he was happening for him and police took him into custody. He has been incarcerated on $75,000 bail since that time.