Pinal sex offender suspect caught in Mexico

U.S. Marshalls have taken into custody a suspect who is wanted on eleven counts of sexual conduct with a minor.

Marshalls worked with the Mexican government to take 45-year-old Robert Guardiola into custody. Deputies in Pinal County have been investigating Guardiola for two years, after reports that for years he sexually abused and molested children under the age of fifteen years old. Deputies say he escaped to Mexico to avoid prosecution, and may have been living there under a different name.

Deputies say Guardiola contacted them in February 2014 saying he wanted to turn himself in, but then he disappeared. Mexican law enforcement and U.S. Marshalls learned he was living in the area of Purisima del Rincoln, Guanajuato, Mexico. Mexican authorities arrested Guardiola on Wednesday afternoon, and immigration officers transported him to Los Angeles. Marshalls arrested him at the Los Angeles International Airport and he is now awaiting extradition back to Pinal County. He is facing eleven counts of sexual conduct with a minor and sexual abuse.