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18 Men Arrested In Sacramento Region Child Sex Predator Sting

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — A child sex predator sting resulted in 18 men from ages 19-57 being arrested from around the Sacramento region, authorities announced on Wednesday.

The men were booked into the Sacramento County Main Jail on several felony charges relating to arranging to meet with a child for sex.

According to the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office, the arrests happened between August 23-27 as a result of an undercover operation: Operation Catch-A-Predator.

The sheriff's office said one of the most notable arrests was 56-year-old Ronald Ray Lovell who worked for the Tracy Unified School District and coached girls sophomore basketball at Kimball High School from 2010-15. Following that, Lovell was a varsity girls basketball coach at West High School from 105-19 before resigning from the district in September 2019.

The remaining suspects were identified as:

Sahan Wanithunga, 24
Nader Bassam Ayesh, 27
Michael Andrews, 32
Jose Alvarado, 21
Eric Stinson, 53
Jose Antonio Cabulajtzip, 23
Andrew Coleman, 22
Jeffrey Feldman, 57
Dandrei Jackson, 19
Eric Olmos, 29
Robert Martinez, 34
Isaiah Chacon, 22
Jamie Gipson, 20
Ian Kelley, 51
Edward Ashburn, 34
Ranjit Singh, 27
Vicente Ramirez-Solano, 29

Detectives posed online as underage boys and girls to engage with the suspects. The suspects would say explicit things and send graphic photos to the undercover detectives, the sheriff's office said.

Once the suspects made an attempt to meet the children, the undercover detectives would wait at the predetermined meeting location to arrest them. No actual children were involved in the arrests.

The sheriff's office Internet Crimes Against Children task force has already made 54 arrests this year in connection to child sex predators. In 2020, the task force made 55 similar arrests.

The Sacramento County Probation Department, Homeland Security Investigations, California Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney's Office assisted with the investigation.

Anyone with information relevant to the investigation is asked to contact the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office.

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