Photo: Stock photo
Image of suspect Samuel William Lafond| Ventura County Sheriff’s Office
Once an individual is in the law enforcement database as a suspected child pornographer or sex offender, the cloud of suspicion of additional violations has a way of lingering when future crimes are suspected.
Evidence of that comes with the December 5th arrest of 35-year-old Santa Barbara resident Samuel William Lafond at the hands of the Oxnard Police Department’s Family Protection Unit. Lafond, who had been the subject of an undercover operation conducted by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, had been arrested and charged with multiple child pornography crimes in September, 2021. According to Santa Barbara Police Department spokesman Sgt. Ethan Ragsdale, Lafond was also charged with “several assault and battery cases” at that time and joined the roster of California’s registered sex offenders.
That history clearly gave Lafond something of a profile with the VCSD Task Force which had recently been investigating “sexual conversations with underage children” on social media. When Lafond allegedly “traveled to Ventura County for the purposes of engaging in sex acts with a teenage girl,” the Oxnard cops made contact with him and took him into custody.
Lafond was transported to Ventura County Jail, where he was booked on a felony charge of luring a minor for sex, with his bail set at $500,000.
