Riverside County's "Operation Volcano" leads to dozens of child exploitation-related arrests
Dozens of arrests have been announced in Riverside County on the heels of a year-long law enforcement operation focusing on combating child exploitation, according to prosecutors.
In a news release, the Riverside County District Attorney's Office announced that "Operation Volcano," a collaboration between the county's Child Exploitation Team and the nonprofit O.U.R. Rescue, from March 2025 to March 2026, led to 42 arrests of people suspected of participating in online exploitation networks.
"Through coordinated investigative efforts, authorities identified more than 500 unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses associated with the distribution of child sexual abuse material on peer-to-peer networks," the news release says. "Each case was evaluated using a structured triage methodology to identify high-risk offenders, including individuals with prior sex offense histories, those under active criminal justice supervision, and individuals in positions of public trust or working in professions that serve children."
A total of 46 residential search warrants were served in that year, resulting in 42 arrests.
Of those arrests, 14 of the individuals were identified as "high-risk offenders," according to the DA's office. They included a child psychologist, a doctor, a retired law enforcement employee and two corporate vice presidents.
"It was really kind of eye-opening to see that so many people were taking advantage of kids," said Liam Doyle, the supervising investigator working with the DA's Office. "This is really all that this team does, is this type of work. ... At one point, we were at 563 IP addresses that we had identified."
He said that one of the most surprising things that they came across was how well-established some of the alleged suspects were in their communities, and how some are doctors, hold executive roles in their companies or have children.
"We assumed that we were going to find people that were already known in the system, you know, registered sex offenders and things like that. But then to come across people that are vice presidents of companies or doctors, just people in the community that we would look at as positions of trust," Doyle said.
He said that one individual worked in Riverside County's jail system, and that they took "terabytes and terabytes" of data from him.
The arrested individuals accused of distributing child sexual abuse material include:
Feliciano Chavarria, 62, of Lake Elsinore
Daniel Malcolm, 46, of Bermuda Dunes
Daniel Chico, 21, of Riverside
Anthony Ramirez, 39, of Nuevo
Richard Mckeehan Jr, 48, of Moreno Valley
Dustin Jenks, 56, of Palm Springs
Jeremiah Davis, 21, of Hemet
Jonathan Jordan, 27, of Moreno Valley
Chas Rico, 30, of Murrieta
Stacey Parker, 62, of Moreno Valley
Rickson Jao, 62, of Eastvale
Mark Tyler, 66, of Perris
Xinyi Su, 22, of Mira Loma
Jame Davis, 60, of Lake Elsinore
Stuart Triplett, 61, of Temecula
Victor Sepulveda, 60, of Moreno Valley
Robert Schaar, 53, of Temecula
Neftali Jimenez, 21, of Riverside
Kenneth Camron, 68, of Menifee
Adam Robinson, 38, of Riverside
Daniel Cunningham, 43, of Corona
Nicholas Williams, 39, of Norco
Jessie Bonales, 40, of Temecula
Ethan Conely, 29, of Menifee
Ray Kubal, 75, of Menifee
Zixiang Cheng, 32, of Murrieta
David Poggi, 59, of Menifee
Allen Cox, 81, of Menifee
Christopher Gibbons, 39, of Moreno Valley
Marcus Guevara, 21, of Winchester
Randolph Velasco, 44, of Lake Elsinore
Brian Erwin, 46, of Beaumont
Jason Lee, 51, of Banning
John Carrico, 52, of Murrieta
William Zahn, 48, of Riverside
James Munson, 32, of San Jacinto
Eric Thai, 43, of Menifee
Enrique Castaneda, 51 of Riverside
Other agencies that assisted with Operation Volcano included Homeland Security Investigations, the San Diego ICAC Task Force, the Los Angeles ICAC Task Force, and the California Highway Patrol.