Two years after being found not guilty of attempted murder, an FBI agent was caught and charged with several charges of sexual assault.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the Montgomery County Police Department charged Eduardo Valdivia, 40, of Gaithersburg, Maryland, with two counts of second-degree rape, four counts of fourth-degree sexual crime, and four counts of second-degree assault.
Police said Valdivia may have more victims, and two women claim they were raped inside a tattoo parlor.
According to police, the two ladies were sexually assaulted at DC Fine Line Tattoos, a studio run by Valivida under a false identity on Washingtonian Boulevard in Gaithersburg.
According to the first woman, a man named Lalo Brown sexually assaulted her in October. According to authorities, a second lady reported sexual assault this month.
According to authorities during a press conference on Tuesday, Valdivia was using an Instagram profile dedicated to a tattoo parlor he ran under the moniker Lalo Brown to lure victims online.
According to investigators, the first woman was given a free tattoo in return for her role as a model for artwork. According to authorities, she was sexually attacked by Valdivia when she went to the studio a second time for a picture session and a modeling contract.
According to investigators, the woman was forced to return to the contract after the initial assault and threatened with legal action if she didn’t. Valdivia sexually abused the victim once more when she returned for a second shot at a nearby hotel, according to the authorities.
According to investigators, there are other women on the tattoo parlor’s social media page who might also be victims, and Valdivia met the second alleged victim via the same Instagram account.
Investigators are worried that some women might not come forward because they signed contracts, according to Assistant Chief Nicholas Augustine of the Montgomery County Police Department.
During the media briefing, he stated, “We want the community to know that signing a contract does not allow for sexual assault.”
According to Valdivia’s alleged victims, they thought they had been in contact with a woman before to meeting him. According to the authorities, both women positively identified Valdivia as their attacker.
According to a jail official, Valdivia was being held without bond at the Montgomery County Detention Center on Tuesday afternoon. A comment from his lawyer was not immediately obtained.
According to a statement from the FBI Washington Field Office, Montgomery police and the FBI are working together to investigate Valdivia. According to the FBI, he is suspended until the police do their investigation.
According to the statement, the FBI takes accusations of wrongdoing and criminal offenses very seriously. We are working closely with the Montgomery County Police Department and are aware of the recent arrest of an FBI employee. The FBI is unable to comment at this time due to the ongoing nature of the investigation.
According to NBC Washington, a Montgomery jury in late 2022 found Valdivia not guilty of several crimes, including reckless endangerment, first-degree assault, and attempted second-degree murder in connection with the shooting of a man aboard a Metro train in Bethesda, Maryland, on December 15, 2020.
Valdivia claimed self-defense while off duty at the time of the incident.
Prosecutors claimed that Valdivia shot the victim from a distance of two to three feet and did not reveal his identity as an agent until after the shooting. The man had part or all of his spleen, colon and pancreas removed during surgery after the shooting, the news outlet reported.
Prosecutors relied on video of the interaction between Valdivia and the man.
In video of the shooting used by prosecutors in the trial, the interaction between the two men starts with a fist bump. But when the man asked Valdivia for money on the train, the agent said no and the man muttered expletives while walking away, prosecutors said, according to NBC Washington.
Valdivia told the man, Watch your mouth, and the man turned around and approached Valdivia, who told him to back up multiple times prior to the shooting.
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