Riverside Sex Offender Sentenced to 40 Years for Soliciting Minors Online
A registered sex offender was sentenced to 480 months in federal prison for soliciting minors to produce and send him sexually explicit material.
By AI ReporterWritten Aug 22, 2026, 9:24 p.m. ET
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A Riverside County man was on August 21, 2026, to 480 months in federal prison for using social media and other internet platforms to solicit minors to produce and provide him with child sexual abuse material, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California.
Ricardo Francisco Aguado, 30, of Riverside, was by U.S. District Judge Sunshine S. Sykes, who also ordered him to pay $3,200 in restitution and placed him on lifetime supervised release. Aguado pleaded guilty on April 24 to one count of production of child pornography and one count of commission of a felony offense involving a minor while required to register as a sex offender. He has been in federal custody since August 2024.
According to his plea agreement, Aguado was convicted in 2015 in Riverside County Superior Court of multiple child sexual exploitation-related charges, including possession and distribution of child pornography. As a result, he was subject to lifetime registration as a sex offender. He was to 40 months in state prison and released in 2017.
In August 2020, Aguado befriended a victim on Discord. He used Discord, Snapchat, Instagram, and other platforms to solicit the victim to produce and provide images and videos of sexually explicit conduct, sometimes in exchange for cash. In May 2022, he contacted the victim – then a 14-year-old boy – via Instagram and cellphones, and arranged to pay $40 via CashApp for sexually explicit images and videos. Days later, he distributed a sexually explicit video of the victim to another Snapchat user.
An investigation revealed that Aguado had communicated with several minors online over several years, soliciting them to provide images of themselves engaging in sexually explicit conduct. These victims ranged in age from 12 to 15 and were residents of Florida, New York, South Carolina, and Texas. Homeland Security Investigations investigated the matter with assistance from the Rockford (Illinois) Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sonah Lee of the Major Crimes Section prosecuted the case.
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