HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — Federal agents arrested a Hollywood man on Tuesday after accusing him of exchanging lewd messages and images with a 14-year-old girl on the messaging app Discord.
Authorities said Christopher Larry Richards III, 30, began communicating with the Washington, D.C. girl in December. The case is being prosecuted in the nation’s capital.
According to a federal criminal complaint, the teenage victim disclosed the online relationship to a counselor at her school in February, prompting a call to the Washington Metropolitan Police Department.
The case was turned over to the FBI, which extracted chats from the girl’s phone, the complaint states.
Authorities said the two communicated through Discord and the chats eventually turned romantic and sexual, with Richards telling the girl he wanted to be “more than friends.”
They said after the girl, at one point, told Richards that she had just turned 14 three months before they started chatting, he replied, “Thank you for reminding me. You literally just turned 14.”
The two exchanged sexual messages and videos afterward, the complaint states.
According to the complaint, data from Discord eventually connected Richards’ username, “HitDatShot#0,″ to his IP address at his home in Hollywood.
Following his arrest, he now faces federal charges of coercion and enticement of a minor, transfer of obscene material to minors and a charge related to the attempted receipt of child sexual abuse material.
Court records show he’s scheduled to appear in Fort Lauderdale federal court on Wednesday morning. It’s unclear when he is set to be extradited to Washington, D.C.
In the meantime, he was being held in the Broward Sheriff’s Office Main Jail facility on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service.
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