OKEECHOBEE — On Friday, Sept. 5, Elmer Ponce, 26, of Okeechobee, was placed under arrest by OCSO Deputy A. Esquivel and charged with directly promoting sexual performance by a child, use of a computer to seduce/solicit/lure a child, contributing to delinquency or dependency of a child, and transmission of material harmful to a minor by electronic equipment.

On Aug. 26, Det. Ashley Rojas received a cyber tip from ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) that was assigned to Deputy Esquivel for investigation. The cyber tip case file included information regarding the Instagram accounts of a female minor and what was believed to be an adult male that she had been interacting with. A conversation had taken place between the two individuals that had been flagged as online enticement of children for sexual acts due to the dates of birth of the account holders.

A warrant was issued on Sept. 2 for both Instagram accounts associated with the incident and Deputy Esquivel was able to review the actual texts that had been exchanged between the two.

The exchanged texts contained explicit sexual language and descriptions of sexual acts. At several points during the conversation, the adult male tried to persuade the minor female to leave her residence to meet him. The account that is believed to belong to Ponce sent one text that reads, “Are you even 18?” to which the other minor account replies, “Nope.” The sexually explicit texts continued after the minor admitted that she was not yet 18.

Based on photos and the dates of birth associated with the accounts, Deputy Esquivel was able to identify and locate the two individuals believed to be the account holders, one of which is Elmer Ponce, and each were brought in for questioning by Detective Rojas and Cpl. Varnadore.

According to the arrest affidavit, the minor female stated that she knew Elmer Ponce outside of Instagram and had met up with him in the past. Initially she refused to give any more information regarding their encounter but stated that she did want to pursue charges. She then advised that she would cooperate with anything further needed for the case and consented to the search of her cellphone.

When Elmer Ponce was interviewed on Sept. 4, he admitted that he had an Instagram account but stated that he couldn’t remember if the account in question was his. When  Rojas showed Ponce the photos on the Instagram account he said, “It looks like me.” When asked about the female victim, Elmer advised that he did not know anyone by that name. He stated that he did not know anyone who was 16 years old but that he never asks anyone their age. When he was shown a copy of the conversation that had been flagged by Instagram he claimed that he didn’t remember having that conversation at all and that he was “blacked out drunk.”

At that point Ponce stated that he did not want to answer any further questions and was released, however, he was placed under arrest the following day, Sept. 5, and charged with directly promoting sexual performance by a child, use of a computer to seduce/solicit/lure a child, contributing to delinquency or dependency of a child, and transmission of material harmful to a minor by electronic equipment. His bond was set at $200,000.

According to Ponce’s second arrest affidavit, approximately one hour after he had been arrested, Deputy Esquivel logged onto the jail call monitoring system to monitor Ponce's phone calls.

Ponce allegedly placed an outgoing call to his brother in which he is heard telling his brother “watch what you say on here.” Ponce can then be heard asking his brother if he knows his Instagram account password, and then proceeds to tell him in Spanish to delete certain people from his account. The affidavit explains that Ponce did not use names, only things like “those who we drank with.” Ponce then says, “I don’t want involve you in anything but you know what to do,” in Spanish. Poncer’s brother then asks him if he should tell all of their friends to delete what they have, to which Ponce replied, “Luis and them.”

Subsequently, Ponce was charged with tampering with evidence for asking his brother to destroy evidence. Bond for that charge was set at $5,000, making his total bond $205,000.