A 35-year-old University of Arizona employee is being held without bond in Tucson after Nebraska prosecutors filed 64 felony charges accusing him of trafficking and sexually exploiting a girl who was 14 and later 15 years old over the course of more than a year. Daniel Ray Contreras was arrested in Tucson on August 10 and now awaits extradition to Nebraska, where a Hall County judge issued the warrant the same day.
The charges stem from a Grand Island Police Department investigation that began in June 2025 and continued for nearly 14 months, according to Central Nebraska Today, which reviewed the 33-page arrest affidavit filed in Hall County Court. Investigator Cayla Larkins led the case, which culminated in an August 10 criminal complaint listing 64 felony counts across four categories: human trafficking of a minor, enticement by electronic communication device, using an electronic device to commit sexual assault, and visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct. Hall County Judge Bryan McQuay signed the arrest warrant that day.
Investigators Trace a Pattern of Daily Contact
According to the affidavit, Contreras first contacted a female who identified herself as 14 years old on June 2, 2025. Within days he was allegedly asking her to send bikini photos, and by June 23 and 24, 2025, he had received a photograph of her face and distributed four sexually explicit videos to her, per the affidavit cited by the same outlet. The affidavit states the criminal sexual conversations became an almost everyday occurrence during Monday-through-Friday business hours.
Investigators say Contreras discussed traveling to meet the girl on multiple occasions, including a June 2025 conversation about flights to Grand Island and hotels near her residence, and an October 2025 discussion about meeting at a local hotel. The girl told him in August 2025 that she would turn 15 in January, according to the affidavit. In February 2026, he allegedly asked her to be his official girlfriend, and by April 2026 he said he had been looking at houses for sale in south-central Grand Island, the affidavit states.
The affidavit also describes conversations in which Contreras told the girl she could not legally marry in Nebraska until age 19, then suggested in the same exchange that the two should move to Kansas, where the age is 15. In early August, according to the affidavit, he was advised the 15-year-old would travel to Tucson from August 7 through August 10 and allegedly planned to try to meet her while she was in Arizona.
Digital Trail Led Back to a University Network
Investigators built much of their case through search warrants targeting three Discord accounts and a Snapchat account tied to the exchanges. Discord warrant affidavits described sexually explicit activity from June 2, 2025 through April 8, 2026, while a Snapchat warrant affidavit described similar activity beginning the same June 2025 date, per the affidavit detailed by Central Nebraska Today. A subpoena response from CenturyLink on July 10, 2026 tied IP addresses used on one Discord account to Contreras, listing his home address and phone number, and Discord subscriber information reportedly listed the same phone number as a possible match.
Larkins obtained Contreras's Arizona driver's license photo on July 20, 2026, and wrote that photos sent by the suspect appeared consistent with it, according to the affidavit. Court affidavits also noted that three web accounts involved in the investigation used network infrastructure owned by the University of Arizona, where Contreras is listed in 2026 directory records as a Business Coordinator in the Department of Gender & Women's Studies. Larkins noted in the affidavit that she was not pursuing charges for every individual criminal act documented during the investigation, and wrote that grooming commonly precedes enticing victims to send sexually explicit photographs or videos.
Arrest and the Search for More Victims
Contreras was located and taken into custody in Tucson with assistance from the Tucson Police Department's Human Exploitation and Trafficking Unit, U.S. Marshals, and Homeland Security Investigations, according to the affidavit. At his initial court appearance in Pima County Consolidated Justice Court, a judge granted prosecutors' request to hold him without bond pending extradition, even as his defense argued against detention by citing his lack of a prior criminal record, according to KVOA.
Two days later, the Tucson Police Department's HEaT Unit issued a public statement saying detectives believe additional minor victims may exist in the Tucson area, and asked anyone with relevant information to contact 911 or 88-CRIME. Investigators identified concerns about additional local victims as part of the broader inquiry, the station's report notes.
What Contreras Faces Under Nebraska Law
Under Nebraska Revised Statute § 28-831, sex trafficking of a minor is a Class IB felony carrying a statutory penalty ranging from 20 years to life in prison, according to the Nebraska Legislature. Contreras faces six counts of that charge. The same statute explicitly bars an accused person from claiming the minor consented or that he believed the victim was an adult as a legal defense, eliminating a common line of argument in these cases.
He also faces 22 counts of enticing by electronic communication device and 33 counts of using an electronic device to commit sexual assault, along with three counts of visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct. Enticement under § 28-320.02 is a Class ID felony carrying a statutory sentence of 3 to 50 years. Before Contreras can be arraigned in Hall County, standard extradition protocol requires him to either waive or contest extradition from Arizona, a procedural step outlined by Sandhills News Channel Nebraska.
A Statewide Pattern of Enforcement
Grand Island's Hall County sits within the Central Nebraska zone of the state's Human Trafficking Task Force, a multi-agency network established in 2015 that unites local police, county prosecutors, state patrol officers, and federal agencies across five regional zones, according to the Nebraska Attorney General's Office. The task force's 2025 annual report shows its statewide hotline, 833-PLS-LOOK, generated 98 calls, 67 law enforcement tips, and 21 dispatches in a single year. A separate analysis from the Human Trafficking Institute found that all new federal human trafficking cases prosecuted in Nebraska in recent years involved sex trafficking rather than labor trafficking, underscoring how heavily state and federal resources are focused on cases like this one.
The investigation remains ongoing, and several questions are unresolved: whether Contreras will contest extradition, whether Tucson police uncover additional victims, and how prosecutors will use the trove of subpoenaed Discord, Snapchat, and university network records once the case moves forward in Hall County Court.
