A tattoo artist who was previously deported after serving time for child annoyance in Murrieta in 2004 was arrested Tuesday at Dana Point Harbor, where he thought he was meeting a 14-year-old girl he'd allegedly lured to his Mission Viejo home with promises of drugs, alcohol and free ink.
Waiting instead for 29-year-old Edder Giovani Nieves-Vera* were members of the Orange County Child Exploitation Task Force.
The task force is composed of investigators from the FBI, the U.S. Postal Service, the Orange County Sheriff's Department, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Orange County District Attorney's office. They sprang into action after the girl reported that Nieves-Bera had made new contact with her, according to the sheriff's department.
According to the task force account: Nieves-Vera first met the girl through Facebook last year and offered the drugs, drink and tattoo, which he normally applies to paying customers at a Santa Ana shop. She and a 14-year-old friend took him up on the offer, meeting at his residence in Mission Viejo where he made “inappropriate contact” and several sexual advances at both girls.
Indeed, Nieves-Vera was apparently so busy annoying—allegedly—that he did not finish the tattoo on the girl. She contacted law enforcement on Dec. 21, and members of the task force, posing as her, contacted Nieves-Bera on Friday so he could finish the tattoo.
That led to the Dana Point Harbor meeting and Nieves-Vera's arrest and new accommodations at Orange County Jail. Of course, he's used to life behind bars from his three-year stretch out of Riverside County, where he'd offered a teen girl a ride and asked her to touch him and let him take her picture.
Because of the evidence from two separate cases, authorities fear there may be other victims out there. Here is a better look at the suspect:
Has he messed with you? If so, contact the Orange County Sheriff's Department at
714.647.7000 or leave anonymous tips with Orange County Crime Stoppers at 855-TIP-OCCS (855.847.6227) or online at occrimestoppers.org.
*Name corrected since original posting. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.