Diego Rodriguez will spend the next five years behind bars for having sex with a 16-year-old boy three times last year and attempting to meet up with another teenager for sex who was actually an undercover detective running a sting operation.
Rodriguez, 21, was sentenced April 4 in Waukesha County Circuit Court by Judge Ralph Ramirez, court records show. Rodriguez, a Waukesha resident and former church leader, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of using a computer to facilitate a child sex crime in January.
He was originally charged in July 2015 with three additional misdemeanor counts of having sex with a child age 16 or older; those charges were dismissed but read into the court record as part of a plea agreement.
Rodriguez was a youth leader at Apostolic Faith Church in Racine when he used the Grindr phone app to meet up with the 16-year-old for sex. He was using the same app when he was arrested as part of a sting operation, according to the criminal complaint.
In addition to prison time, Ramirez sentenced Rodriguez to five years of extended supervision.
Rodriguez is prohibited from contacting the now 17-year-old boy and is not allowed to have any unsupervised contact with anyone younger than 18 as conditions of his probation. He's also required to undergo sex offender treatment, court records said.
Rodriguez met up with the then 16-year-old boy in 2015 after the two met through Grindr, which is generally used by males looking to have sex with other males.
Rodriguez and the boy had sex at the boy's town of Waukesha home, Rodriguez's home on Cottonwood Drive in the city of Waukesha and in a car behind Target at 1250 W. Sunset Drive, according to the complaint.
He was charged after attempting to meet with an undercover detective posing as a 15-year-old on Grindr in June 2015. Rodriguez requested pictures of the detective, asked if he would like to have sex and told the detective he was looking to set up a "three-way."
After his arrest, Rodriguez said he knew it was illegal have sex with a minor, but he wanted to have a consensual encounter and would have stopped if the boy told him to, according to the complaint.