A federal jury has convicted a 25-year-old West Palm Beach man of attempting to sex traffic a minor after prosecutors say he negotiated a price for sex with someone he believed was a 15-year-old girl, then drove more than an hour to meet her. Luis David Garrido-Garcia now faces up to life in federal prison, with a judge set to determine his sentence later.
According to WPEC, Garrido-Garcia agreed to pay for sexual activity with the girl despite being repeatedly told she was a minor. He was taken into custody as soon as he arrived for the meeting, the station reports.
The U.S. Department of Justice, Southern District of Florida says that, according to court records and evidence presented at trial, Garrido-Garcia negotiated a price for commercial sex with the girl before agreeing to pay for sexual activity. Prosecutors said he admitted he intended to engage in sexual activity with the girl in exchange for money.
Prosecutors Detail the Timeline Leading to Arrest
U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones said Garrido-Garcia was repeatedly told the girl was 15, negotiated a price, drove over an hour, and intended to proceed with the meeting anyway, per the station's report. That sequence of events formed the core of the case presented to the jury, which ultimately found Garrido-Garcia guilty.
The case was investigated by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and Homeland Security Investigations Miami, and prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida, the same report notes. No sentencing date was included in the announcement, and a federal judge will determine Garrido-Garcia's punishment after weighing federal sentencing guidelines along with other factors.
Part of a Broader Federal Child Exploitation Effort
The prosecution was carried out under Project Safe Childhood, a Justice Department initiative aimed at combating child sexual exploitation and abuse, per the same account. The department expanded the program in May 2011 to cover all federal crimes involving the sexual exploitation of a minor, including sex trafficking of a minor, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, Southern District of Florida.
The Southern District of Florida has pursued a string of similar prosecutions in recent years. In one case, a Tennessee man was convicted by a federal jury in February 2026 of attempting to sex traffic a minor living in Colombia and attempting to produce child sexual abuse material involving the victim, according to the department's account. That man was later sentenced to 30 years in prison for paying a minor in Colombia to produce sexually explicit videos and traveling overseas to engage in commercial sex acts with her, the department says.
Other cases out of the district include four defendants sentenced to prison terms ranging from 10 to 16 years in connection with the trafficking of a 13-year-old minor victim, and a South Florida man sentenced to 30 years in prison after a federal jury found him guilty of conspiracy and attempted sex trafficking of minor girls, per the department's records. Garrido-Garcia's case now joins that list as it awaits a sentencing date.
