Virginia man is charged with exploiting teen

Federal prosecutors issued a warrant last week for the arrest of a Virginia man who authorities say sexually exploited a young woman in Utah.

It began when a parent of a 15-year-old girl found a photograph of the man on their home computer. After asking the daughter if she could identify the man, and discovering an additional photograph of him on the girl's cell phone, the teenager divulged she had been in contact with him for more than a year and that they had engaged in sexual intercourse, prosecutors said.

According to an indictment returned last week, Montalvo Ramirez, 27, of Annandale, Va., contacted the Utah minor using a fake identification through MySpace.com, a global social networking Web site, a little over a year ago. Statements from the minor in the document stated she believed him to be Mario Montalvo, a 22-year-old male from West McClean, Va. She and Ramirez had been in "a relationship" through the Web site for almost one year, according to court documents.

According to statements by the minor in the document, Ramirez asked her to photograph herself naked and send the photos to him. From April 8-15, 2007, the man traveled to Utah to visit the girl. Court documents say the two engaged repeatedly in sexual intercourse, whereupon he also took illicit photographs of them.

Ramirez stands accused of federal charges of sexual exploitation of a child in the production of child pornography and coercion or enticement of a minor female. The crimes carry up to 30 years in prison.

MySpace and other social networking Web sites have prompted law enforcement officials to warn parents and teenagers about the dangers of posting too much personal information.

On Monday, top law enforcement officers from seven states issued a letter to MySpace.com, asking it to turn over the names of registered sex offenders who use the service.

The letter asks MySpace to provide information on how many registered sex offenders are using the site, and where they live. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper signed the letter, along with attorneys general from Connecticut, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Law enforcement agencies have identified more than 200 cases nationwide of children "lured out of their home by predators they met on MySpace," Cooper said in a written statement Monday.

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Contributing: The Associated Press

E-MAIL: nhale@desnews.com