Former Horizon High teacher Ricardo Ortiz gets life in online teen sex case

Daniel Borunda, El Paso Times
·2 min read

A former Horizon High School teacher was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday after trying to seduce online a 14-year-old boy who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas said.

An investigation found that 31-year-old Ricardo Ortiz had past sexual encounters with three minors in the El Paso area and child pornography also was found on his electronic devices, prosecutors said.

"Ricardo Ortiz, a local teacher in El Paso, was trusted by students and parents alike to serve as a role model and not a sexual predator going after teens," Jeffrey R. Downey, special agent in charge of the FBI El Paso Division, said in a statement.

In March, Ortiz pleaded guilty to three counts of coercion and enticement of a minor and one count of possession of child sexual exploitation materials.

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Court documents stated that Ortiz began communicating with an undercover FBI agent posing as a 14-year-old boy on the Grindr dating app in 2020. In explicit messages, Ortiz asked the boy for photos and went into detail of the sex acts he wanted to do with the teen.

FBI agents greeted Ortiz at the door and arrested him after he arrived at a home to have a sexual encounter with an undercover agent posing as the boy in July 2020.

Ortiz allegedly brought sex toys and condoms to the house, confessed to messaging who he thought was an underage boy, telling FBI agents that he knew it was wrong but that “curiosity had gotten the best of him,” court documents stated.

The former technology education teacher was arrested as part of Operation Cerberus, an undercover FBI online sting to stop the sexual coercion and enticement of children, federal authorities said.

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This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Ex-Horizon High teacher Ricardo Ortiz gets life in child sex case