A 34-year-old Fort Worth man who solicited sexually explicit images from underage girls by posing as a teenage boy was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.
Matthew Ray Flores was charged in January after allegedly pretending to be 15-year-old Ben Garcia and used that alias to target 12 to 17-year-old girls on various social media platforms, according to the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas.
In November 2019, Flores contacted a 14-year-old girl online and arranged to visit her in her home. Her family was inside the house when he visited, so he climbed through a window to get into her bedroom. When the girl saw that he looked different from the teen he claimed to be, she asked him to leave.
After that day, Flores asked the girl to send him sexually explicit photos of herself. She sent him photos in which she was partially clothed at first. But later, she sent nude photos to him. He then threatened her with the images, demanding that she let him back into her home or he would use them against her.
For the next three months, Flores threatened to send the girls’ nude photos to friends and neighbors if she refused to send him additional photos. He also said he would sell them online to “rapists,” the release stated.
Flores eventually showed up at the girl’s bedroom with a condom, but she pushed him back out the window after telling him, “We aren’t having sex.”
The girl said at the sentencing hearing that the situation with Flores left her traumatized. “I went through something no little girl my age should have gone through,” she said. “I was vulnerable and lonely, which made me an easy target.”
At the hearing, prosecutors claimed that the girl was not Flores’ only victim. They revealed that he allegedly exhibited the same pattern with at least seven victims within two years.