(Mirror Daily, United States) – A 23-year-old man from Ohio was sentenced to seven days in prison after trying to lure an underage boy into having sex in December.
The man pleaded guilty to allegations that he tried to pay the teen for sex with a bottle of Sprite and a chicken Alfredo.
Little did the man know is that the 15-year-old boy was an undercover cop. Albert Maruna will now spend seven days in the county prison and four months on house arrest. He’ll stay on probation the next three years, and will feature as a Tier 1 sex offender in the state register.
The man agreed to meet with the teen in Austintown after the two met on a dating app. The police officer reportedly told Maruna that he was 15. The predator replied that age was not something he believed in.
Police records show that Maruna told the undercover cop that he’d want to marry him one day. “You are my one and only,” one of Maruna’s messages in the dating app reads.
Online Predator Busted in Sting Operation
The officer said the man had sent him nudes before they arranged a date. Maruna promised to bring a chicken Alfredo, soda, and lubricant on the date. In exchange, he asked his date to wear a jock strap.
After he was arrested, the man admitted that he wanted to have sex with the teen. Upon his arrest, cops found lubricant, a chicken Alfredo, two bottles of Sprite, and Vaseline lotion on the man. He also carried a MacBook, an iPhone, and several zip drives.
Earlier this year, the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office took arrested ten online predators who were seeking underage girls and boys. The suspects were interested only in 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds.
Some of the men were already sex offenders, and investigators said they were sickened by what they found. Police caught them through a similar sting operation. One deputy posed as an underage boy who agreed to meet one of the suspects while another police officer posed as an Uber driver and gave the predator a ride.
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