A man has been arrested and charged on suspicion of texting an undercover agent posing as a Longmont minor in a sexual manner and sending sexually explicit photos and videos.

Michael John Barcelona, 57, is charged with one count of internet sexual exploitation of a child.

He is in custody on a $10,000 bond in the Boulder County Jail and is set to next appear in court on June 9 for a preliminary hearing.

His arrest, on May 14, was a result of a human trafficking operation focused on identifying and detaining adults who responded to commercial sex advertisements about illegal activities with minors. According to the affidavit, Craigslist Ads were created for a girl advertising that she was housesitting in Longmont and was available to babysit.

On March 27, an individual, later identified as Barcelona, responded to the Craigslist ad and, after asking for the gender of the person he believed was a minor, asked her to text him.

The undercover agent and Barcelona then texted back and forth. The undercover agent wrote that she was 13, and then Barcelona asked about her sexual history and acknowledged that he could get arrested if they did anything sexual together.

“Later in the conversation, the suspect instructed who he believed to be a 13-year-old girl to state that she was actually 18 and proceeded to engage in a new conversation about topics that were already covered. This appears to have been an attempt to delete all of the previous text messages in the chance someone looked at his phone, so it would not reflect that he was speaking to a 13-year-old,” the agent wrote in the affidavit.

As the conversations progressed, Barcelona sent the agent sexually explicit videos and photos of himself. When police later interviewed him in person, he said he knew what he was doing was not okay and he could be in trouble. Barcelona told police he had never talked to a minor before and said he did it because he was lonely.