Child Sex Sting Started in Lower Mac Car Dealership, Authorities Say

A man who set up a meeting from a computer in a Lower Macungie car dealership for what he thought was a sexual encounter with an 8-year-old girl was arrested in Cherry Hill, N.J., Tuesday, according to federal authorities.

Ramy Ahmed, 30, of the 2000 block of West Pennsylvania Street, Allentown, made the 70-mile drive expecting to meet with the girl’s father, but had actually been communicating for nearly two months with an undercover officer with the Department of Homeland Security, leading to charges of using a means of interstate commerce to attempt to coerce and entice a minor to engage in sexual activity, according to a court affidavit filed in his case.

He will be held in federal custody until his trial, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Rice ruled Thursday.

The case against Ahmed was born out of a Craigslist post titled “Looking for pervy dads for incest,” which the undercover agent spotted on Feb. 5, according to the affidavit.

Authorities traced the IP address of the original Craigslist post to Kuhns Garage in Lower Mac and surveillance confirmed Ahmed worked there as sales director, according to the affidavit.

After the agent, posing as a 43-year-old father of an 8-year-old girl and 3-year-old boy, responded to the ad, Ahmed began communicating via multiple means—email, texting and Yahoo! Chat—starting with vague statements like, “Would you allow me to play with your daughter?” and progressing to graphic descriptions of what Ahmed wanted to do to the 8-year-old, according to the affidavit.

Other emails included attachments with child pornography and screenshots of child porn video-filled folders on Ahmed’s computer.

“It appears he is in possession of at least 375 video files containing child exploitation materials,” the affidavit reads.

Ahmed even bragged about the child porn, authorities indicated in the affidavit.

"Here is preview of what I have. Look at the number in the bottom left corner of the pictures I sent you!" Ahmed allegedly wrote in one email to the agent included in the affidavit.

The email address and cell phone number used to communicate with the undercover agent were both connected to Ahmed, according to the affidavit.

The communications by chat, email and text continued for weeks after the initial contact, with Ahmed telling the undercover agent he was willing to travel to Philadelphia or anywhere else for a possible meeting, authorities said.

That culminated in the agreement to meet at an unspecified location in Cherry Hill, where Ahmed was arrested, and subsequently confessed to being the person on the other end of the conversation about engaging in sexual activity with the fictitious 8-year-old, authorities said.