Wilmette Man Sentenced For Interstate Sex With Minor

WILMETTE, IL — A Wilmette man was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for travelling across the country to have sex with a 15-year-old girl he met in an online game. Arturo Castro, 53, has been detained since his arrest last December. He pleaded guilty June 5 to one count of using an interstate facility to persuade a minor to engage in unlawful sexual activity.

According to court documents and statements made in federal court, Castro started communicating with the 15-year-old Connecticut girl through the game "Chess with Friends," around December 2013. He asked the girl to send naked photos of herself, talked her into sending him explicit videos and sent sexually explicit pictures and videos of himself to the juvenile.

In March 2014, Castro traveled from Illinois to Connecticut in order to have sex with the girl and created explicit images while there, prosecutors said. Child pornography charges were dropped when Castro pleaded guilty.

The crime was only discovered about two years later when the girl's mother contacted the local police department in Clinton, Connecticut and informed an officer that she found inappropriate conversations between her daughter and an AOL user — later identified as Castro — while looking through an old iPhone. (Get Patch real-time email alerts for the latest news for Wilmette — or your community. And iPhone users: Check out Patch's new app.)

Castro is a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. and a citizen of Mexico. In addition to 10 years of supervised release, he faces immigration proceedings once he is released from prison. The 10-year sentence is the minimum sentence allowed by law.

Castro was formerly a professor with a major Mexican university and ran its cultural outreach operations in Chicago. He also worked as a management consultant since 1989, according to his Linkedin profile. It lists his specialties, including "golf course management solutions", "interpersonal, cultural and personal opportunities" and "sexual harassment prevention".

» Read more: Wilmette Professor Traveled To Connecticut To Have Sex With Teen