A 26-year-old Haverstraw man was sentenced Wednesday to 16 years in federal prison for enticing multiple underage girls into sexual activity, a scheme that spanned Rockland County, the Bronx, and Mississippi and in one case ended with him climbing through a 14-year-old's bedroom window. U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel handed down the sentence, which will be followed by 15 years of supervised release once Oscar Mata Lemus is freed.
Mata Lemus pleaded guilty on November 25, 2025, to a federal Information charging him with three counts of enticement of a minor under Title 18, United States Code, Section 2422(b), according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. The office's announcement was also shared via a post from US Attorney SDNY
, which quoted an official calling the case “the nightmare of any parent.”
Prosecutors say the pattern began at least as early as June 2023, when Mata Lemus, then in his early twenties, lied about being 17 years old to lure a 15-year-old girl in Mississippi. According to the same federal account, he convinced her to send explicit photos and perform sexual acts during live video streams, establishing a template he would repeat with younger victims closer to home.
A Window Broken, a Local Victim Targeted
A Local Victim Targeted The case grew more severe in April 2024, when a 23-year-old Mata Lemus falsely claimed to be 16 in order to groom a 14-year-old girl in Rockland County. The federal account says he persuaded her to meet him sometime between April 20 and 23, 2024.
On March 16, Mata Lemus engaged in sexual activity with a 14-year-old girl in the Bronx. Investigators later recovered illicit photos and videos of her on his phone, per the federal filing.
Statutory Minimums and a Judge Who Went Further
A conviction under Section 2422(b) carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years in federal prison and a maximum of life, according to Eisner Gorin LLP. Judge Seibel's 16-year sentence exceeded that floor by six years, a gap federal prosecutors tied directly to the number of victims involved and the physical intrusion into the Rockland County teen's home.
The prosecution falls under Project Safe Childhood, a Department of Justice initiative launched in 2006 to coordinate federal, state, and local agencies against online predators, as described by the Department of Justice. The Mata Lemus case is one of several recent prosecutions emerging from the White Plains federal division, which covers Rockland and Westchester counties.
Part of a Wider Local Pattern
This is not the first time a Haverstraw man has drawn a lengthy federal sentence for this type of crime. In April 2026, prosecutors in the same district secured a 135-month sentence against another Haverstraw resident, 135-month sentence for Haverstraw predator, for enticement and coercion of a minor.
Rockland County law enforcement has ramped up efforts to catch online predators in recent months. A July sting by the New York State Police led to the arrest of five men accused of soliciting minors online and attempting to meet them in the county, Hoodline previously reported. Nationally, reports of online child enticement rose 158 percent in 2025 to exceed 1.4 million, a spike tied to the 2024 REPORT Act's expanded reporting mandates for technology platforms.
