San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s officials arrested 45-year-old Roberto MercadoLeonardo last month on suspicion of having over 600 images of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
In his arrest photo, he was wearing a Mercado Gardening and Hauling hat, a local Cambria company.
The company released a statement on Facebook saying that he is “no longer involved in day-to-day operations,” and although he “shares the same first and last name as the companys founder,” they are different people.
KSBY News reached out to the company for comment but has yet to hear back.
The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office is part of the Central California Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force, which receives tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
Sheriffs officials said that the tip on MercadoLeonardo originally went to the San Luis Obispo Police Department, which wrote the warrant but turned it over to the sheriff’s office since it was out of their jurisdiction.
Since this is an active case, San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow couldnt share information on it, specifically, but he was able to talk about the general investigation process.
Our forensic computer investigators, our special victim crimes detectives are working very hard to hunt down those that are abusing children, trying to hide in the dark shadows of the dark web on the internet, Dow said.
Dow said that the DA’s office and sheriff’s office have committed specific people to work as part of a team on human sex trafficking and child sexual abuse material investigations.
He added that since these can be produced from anywhere, its often hard to track down victims, but through a database logged by the FBI and the National Crimes Against Children Task Force, sometimes they can.
Our investigators can compare what weve retrieved to this database that does a comparison and we can find out if indeed theres been a live victim that has been discovered, Dow said.
MercadoLeonardo is set to be arraigned on July 22. He has not yet entered a plea and is out on bail.