NEW DETAILS: West Boca Raton Man Arrested For Luring A Child

Boca Raton’s Fernando Ricart Arrested After Using MeetMe and SnapChat To Lure Underage Girls, Purchase Prostitutes

UPDATE – 11/15/2023

Fernando Ricart, who has been living in Boca Raton while on in-house arrest while he awaited his trial, was recently ordered to register as a sex offender. According to records, the court has ordered pre-sentence investigation just before ordering Ricart to register as a sex offender. Ricart rejected several plea offers before filing motions for an acquittal and a mistrial, which were both denied.

Originally reported by Boca Post

BOCA RATON, FL (Boca Post) (Copyright © 2022) — Fernando Ricard of West Boca Raton has been arrested and charged with using a computer to lure a child, according to jail records released to Boca Post by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.

Fernando Ricart, 37, of the 10000 block of Serene Meadows Drive in the Meadow Lakes community located in West Boca Raton, has been arrested by the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office. Boca Post has been notified that the charge filed is “OBSCENE COMMUNICATION – USE COMPUTER TO SEDUCE SOLICIT LURE CHILD”.

According to a lengthy probable cause affidavit submitted by the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office, Ricart, a 37-year-old car salesman, initiated a conversation with an undercover agent with the Sheriff’s Office who was pretending to be a 15-year-old girl.

The undercover agent says that she signed up on MeetMe as an 18-year-old; however, she used a photo of herself from when she was 15 years old and immediately told Ricart that she was actually 15 years old. The 37-year-old car salesman then took the conversation to SnapChat where he engaged in sexual and graphic conversations with the undercover back in September.

In October, the two planned on meeting up but the meeting fell through while PBSO TAC was surveilling him. Ricart then abruptly disabled his SnapChat account. PBSO investigators later retrieved the contents of both accounts, which included all of the conversations and photographs sent between the undercover agent and Ricart. Ricart’s account also contained several conversations between himself and other females where it appears he is paying for prostitution as well as videos and photographs. Detectives located three accounts he was communicating with in a sexual manner in which the users identified as being between 15 and 17 years old.

Ricart was booked into the Palm Beach County Jail at 8:37 AM on Wednesday, October 19th, 2022.