When Raymond Fierros Holguin was arrested last month after being found in possession of hundreds of files of child pornography, it was not the first time the former member of the U.S. Air Force has been caught with illicit images of young girls.
But Holguin, 39, was doing more than just looking at images for sexual gratification. He was also grooming young girls for the purpose of sexual exploitation, according to court records.
“Holguin confessed he has continued his conduct of receiving and transferring illicit child images to other individuals including attempting to teach younger females he met online about sexual issues,” Sierra Vista Det. Thomas Ransford noted in a statement supporting Holguin’s March 22 arrest.
Ransford added that Holguin confessed in a post-Miranda statement to chatting with prepubescent girls and then sending them explicit images of other girls “in an attempt to teach or ‘groom’ them” for taking similar images. It was behavior Holguin has engaged in for years.
Public records show Holguin is a Level 2 registered sex offender stemming from a 2005 federal conviction in Georgia for distribution of child pornography. At the time, he was assigned to Moody Air Force Base but possessed a driver’s license issued in Arizona.
Holguin served several years in the Federal Bureau of Prisons before being released in December 2012. He then began a three-year term of supervised federal probation and became a registered sex offender.
Prior to his release from prison, Holguin was ordered by a federal judge in Georgia to comply with several conditions of probation, such as attending sex offender treatment, undergoing periodic polygraph testing, installing internet tracking software on any computers, and not possessing sexually explicit materials.
At some point in 2013, Holguin’s probation was transferred to the U.S. District Court for Arizona. The Cochise County Sheriff’s Office designated him a Level 2 offender, indicating he was someone with “a moderate risk” of committing another sex-related crime.
It was in Arizona in November 2013 that Holguin allegedly committed two probation violations: using an unauthorized computer while at work and possessing / viewing child pornography. The outcome of the allegation is not documented in court records, although it appears Holguin’s term of probation ended in December 2015.
Fast forward to December 2021 when the Arizona Internet Crimes Against Children taskforce received a tip that an Internet Protocol (IP) address in the Sierra Vista area was used to transmit sexually explicit images of children to a Dropbox “cloud” storage account.
An investigation revealed more than 1,000 images, “the vast majority” of which were illicit images involving prepubescent girls, some as young as age 4, according Ransford’s probable cause statement.
The detective also learned Holguin established his Dropbox account using an email account in the name of a young female relative.
On March 22, Ransford arranged for Holguin to come to the police station for an interview. It was there that the detective learned Holguin created the email account and opened the Dropbox account soon after being released from prison.
“He said it was part of a scheme he could use to avoid detection on his sex offender polygraph evaluations while he was on parole and probation,” Ransford noted. “He stated he knew law enforcement would be in touch with him since the account was deleted by Dropbox” back in November.
Holguin remembered the exact date he noticed the account was deleted – Nov. 11, Veterans Day.
According to Ransford, Holguin stated he would often delete the illicit images but then go to the “trash” to restore the images. Those images would also be on his work phone, which Holguin said he used “because he didn’t want his kids to see if they used his phone,” Ransford added.
Upon making the arrest, Ransford asked the Court to order Holguin held without bail to protect the community.
“I believe based on the description of the images, Holguin ‘s prior conviction for
possession of illicit child images, his continued possession of images and sexual
conduct since being released from prison, his continued attempts to avoid detection by manipulating the treatment polygraphs, and his recent conversations with children online, he is a danger to the community and no bond should be issued,” he wrote.
The Cochise County Attorney’s Office recently secured a multi-count felony indictment against Holguin, who remains in the Cochise County jail on the no-bond order. His next court date is set for May 13.
Additional charges could be forthcoming against Holguin based in part on his admitted use of a relative’s identity for the email and Dropbox accounts.
