SAN DIEGO — A former San Diego County Sheriff's Department sergeant was in court Tuesday after pleading guilty to arranging a meeting for sex with a decoy pretending to be a 15-year-old boy.
Luis Rios, 56, was supposed to be sentenced but that all changed at the last minute.
In October, Rios pleaded guilty to a felony, admitting he met up with a decoy he thought was a teenager.
The charge stemmed from an undercover sting operation set up by an online vigilante group. The group's founder posed as a 15-year-old boy online and lured Rios to a parking lot in Mission Valley to meet for sex.
Rios was facing up to a year in jail at his sentencing hearing Tuesday. But his defense attorney asked for a continuance because Rios has moved to Nevada and wants to serve his sentence there.
“He wanted to see whether or not he could contact probation up in Nevada, and see what terms and conditions should be in Nevada, if he was sentenced in this case,” Deputy District Attorney Ramona McCarthy said outside the courtroom.
An arrest warrant in the case alleges Rios, who used to work in the downtown jail, engaged in sexually explicit text messages with the undercover decoy in 2021 and 2022. The subsequent meeting and confrontation were live-streamed on YouTube, leading to Rios' arrest in April.
Rios is no longer with the sheriff's department.
It will now be up to a San Diego judge to decide whether Rios gets jail time or probation. Under the terms of his plea deal, Rios will be required to register as a sex offender, the prosecutor said.
“If the court moves forward and grants the defendant probation, that probation could come with a certain amount of custody time, or a certain amount of conditions and restrictions,” said McCarthy.
Rios will remain out of custody on bail until his sentencing hearing now set for January 9.
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