A former Lake Elsinore Unified School District janitor has pleaded guilty to molesting two girls and possessing child pornography, closing out a case that began with an online tip nearly two years ago. David Robledo Jr., 38, of Homeland, admitted to two felony counts of lewd acts on a child and one felony count of possession of child pornography under a pretrial agreement with prosecutors.
The plea deal, reported by MyNewsLA.com, resulted in the Riverside County District Attorney's Office agreeing to drop four related charges against Robledo. The agreement also addressed a sentence-enhancing allegation that he had targeted multiple victims. Court minutes did not indicate a prospective sentence, and Superior Court Judge Jeff Zimel has scheduled a sentencing hearing for October 2 at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta.
The case traces back to December 2024, when the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children sent an online tip to the Riverside County Child Exploitation Team reporting that a county resident was uploading explicit images of minors to a cloud-based storage platform. RCCET investigators identified Robledo as the account user, obtained warrants, and served them at his property on Collin Drive, where they seized evidence. He was taken into custody without incident on March 20, 2025, and has been held without bail at the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility.
What Investigators Found
The molestation acts occurred in 2018, according to the case timeline. A Menifee police detective's sworn court declaration, detailed by the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, described the victim as a girl who was 10 to 11 years old when the abuse occurred in 2018 and 2019, during which Robledo rubbed his genitals against her. The same declaration stated that Robledo admitted to using his mobile phone camera to record images inside a girls' bathroom, though he was not formally charged with that specific act — an admission that remains an investigative statement rather than a formal conviction.
Separately, Patch reported that law enforcement seized and reviewed digital media linking Robledo to more than 600 child pornography images stored across hard drives and cloud platforms. Whether the children he molested were students within Lake Elsinore Unified School District has not been confirmed by the article, and the district has declined to identify the campuses where Robledo worked. Hoodline previously reported that a March 2025 letter from Cottonwood Canyon Elementary School Principal Dr. Fernando Betanzos had informed families of Robledo's recent placement on that campus, though it remains unclear whether that assignment connects to the charged conduct.
District Response and Background
Lake Elsinore Unified School District terminated Robledo following his arrest. The circumstances surrounding the molestation itself have not been disclosed by the article, and no documented prior felony convictions exist for Robledo in Riverside County. Hoodline covered the case in March 2025, when Robledo was charged and pleaded not guilty to the original counts.
The Riverside County Child Exploitation Team, which led the investigation, is a multi-agency task force run by the District Attorney's Bureau of Investigation. Its ranks include officers from municipal police agencies such as Menifee, Murrieta, and Riverside, along with sheriff's personnel, prosecutors, staff from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the FBI, and U.S. Marshals, according to the Riverside County District Attorney's Office.
A Task Force With a Busy Record
RCCET's enforcement footprint in the region has been substantial. In a single monthlong operation in April 2022, the task force conducted 52 sex offender compliance checks and executed search warrants across several Riverside County cities, including Lake Elsinore, leading to 26 arrests for child sexual abuse material and related violations, per the District Attorney's Office. The following year, a separate operation involved more than 500 suspected offenders and resulted in 42 arrests.
Under California Penal Code Section 288(a), a lewd act on a child under 14 is a felony punishable by three, six, or eight years in state prison per count, according to FindLaw. The supplied materials do not establish whether California's Senate Bill 384 would require a particular sex-offender registration tier for Robledo.
Robledo's sentencing hearing is scheduled for October 2, 2026, at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta. It remains unknown whether Lake Elsinore Unified School District has faced civil liability or conducted an internal audit of staff site access in the wake of the case, and whether RCCET's broader investigation identified any additional victims has not been reported.
