A 72-year-old former Arizona state trooper was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison after he tried to coerce a 15-year-old Montana girl into a sexual relationship, then flew to Montana believing he was about to meet her in person. Instead, FBI agents were waiting for him at the airport.
Manuel Flores pleaded guilty to attempted coercion and enticement of a minor, according to AZ Family. The girl was the daughter of a years-long family friend, and Flores had arranged for her to travel from Montana to his Scottsdale home in June 2024, the outlet reports. While she stayed with him that summer, Flores allegedly sent her text messages expressing sexual interest, which the teen rejected. Before his arrest, Flores had spent 23 years working as a state trooper, according to Spartan Scoop.
A Family Friendship Turned Into Months of Coercion
The messages didn't stop when the girl returned home to Montana at the end of the summer. Per the AZ Family report, Flores continued sending her texts and began urging her to come back to Arizona so they could pursue a romantic relationship. He also asked her for nude photos and told her he would fly to Montana and refuse to leave until he had her, the outlet notes.
Eventually, the girl told her mother what was happening, and her mother contacted law enforcement. That tip triggered a joint investigation by the FBI's Montana Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force and the Missoula County Sheriff's Office, according to the Department of Justice.
FBI Agents Took Over the Teen's Account to Set a Trap
Once investigators were involved, FBI agents took control of the girl's online account and continued communicating with Flores while posing as her, the AZ Family report states. Flores kept pursuing the ruse, and on August 18, 2025, he boarded a flight to Montana still believing he was going to bring the teen back to Arizona. Law enforcement was waiting for him when he landed, and he was arrested immediately.
Flores's initial court appearances, including his detention hearing, arraignment, and change-of-plea proceedings, were handled by U.S. Magistrate Judge Kathleen L. DeSoto in Missoula federal court, per the same Justice Department account. His defense had earlier filed a motion to dismiss the indictment, which U.S. District Judge Dana L. Christensen denied on January 5, 2026, according to court records reviewed by CaseMine. Flores changed his plea to guilty during an open court hearing on February 12, 2026, and Judge Christensen formally adopted the findings on February 27, 2026.
Mandatory Minimum Reflects Strict Federal Standard
The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian C. Lowney under Acting U.S. Attorney Mark Steger Smith in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Montana, the Justice Department said. Flores's 10-year sentence represents the mandatory statutory floor for convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b), which carries a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of life in prison regardless of whether physical harm occurred, according to the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute. Judges have no discretion to go lower without a specific motion from the government.
Beyond the decade behind bars, Flores was also sentenced to a lifetime of supervised release. Convictions under this statute require mandatory sex offender registration and impose lifetime supervision conditions restricting internet access and any direct or indirect contact with minors, per Eisner Gorin LLP.
Part of a Broader Federal Crackdown
The prosecution falls under Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide Department of Justice initiative launched in May 2006 to combine federal, state, and local resources against online predators targeting children. The scale of the problem the initiative was built to address is enormous: in 2023 alone, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's CyberTipline received more than 36.2 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation nationwide, according to the organization's own data.
Flores will now spend the next decade in federal prison, followed by a lifetime of court-ordered supervision once he's released.
