A Long Beach resident and registered sex offender was arrested by Orange County authorities Friday for allegedly arranging to meet a 13 year-old girl who was actually an undercover agent posing as a teen in an online chat room.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department says that on August 21, Kevin Patrick Kendall, 40, sent an unsolicited message to who he thought was a 13 year-old girl using sexually explicit language. Eventually, he scheduled a rendezvous with her at the Huntington Beach Pier, but authorities say that Kendall—who used the screenname “Cali M.”—never showed.
Investigators linked the screenname to Kendall and arrested him at his Claremont workplace on Friday.
The OC Weekly reports that the sting is the work of The Orange County Child Exploitation Task Force (OCCETF)–whose members include officers from Homeland Security Investigations, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, the Orange County District Attorney’s office and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
He is scheduled to be arraigned today on charges of luring a child to commit a crime and having a prior arrest for arranging to meet with a minor, both of which are felonies.