Man arrested in Santa Cruz after soliciting federal agent posing as teen girl
A Yuba County man was arrested this week after arriving in Santa Cruz, where deputies said he’d arranged to meet a 13-year-old girl for sex.
The “teenager” that 54-year-old Joseph Mantz had contacted on the Internet was actually an undercover Homeland Security agent.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s deputies say Mantz drove his work truck from a job site in Berkeley on Tuesday to Riverside Drive in Santa Cruz to meet the person he though was a teenage girl.
As Mantz drove into the area, he was taken into custody by sheriff’s detectives and Homeland Security agents. The arrest came after a four-week long cooperative investigation between the two agencies.
Mantz was booked into Santa Cruz County Jail for attempted lewd acts with a child under 14 years of age, arranging to meet with a minor and sending harmful material and images to a minor. His bail was set at $50,000.
