A Fort Lauderdale tennis coach admitted coercing two teenage students into sexual activity and was sentenced to 20 years after an FBI Miami investigation and guilty plea.
Miami Herald File
A former Fort Lauderdale tennis coach will spend 20 years behind bars after admitting to coercing two teenage girls he coached into sexual activity, the Department of Justice announced on Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian sentenced Daniel James Riggs, 33, after he pleaded guilty to two counts of coercion and enticement of a minor to engage in sexual activity. He had also been charged with engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place and production of visual sexual exploitation of minors, but the charges were dropped.
Riggs was president and a tennis coach at Team Riggs, run with parents Lawrence and Regina Riggs at a Fort Lauderdale tennis center, where both minor victims were his students. The last name Riggs is well-known in the tennis world for Daniel Riggs’ grandfather, Bobby Riggs.
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“Children and parents trust coaches with more than athletic instruction. They trust them with safety, guidance, and character,” U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones, of the Southern District of Florida, said in a statement. “This defendant abused that trust in the most disturbing way imaginable, using his position to groom and sexually exploit the very students he was supposed to mentor.”
In September 2024, an 18-year-old girl told the FBI that her tennis coach, Riggs, had sexually assaulted her. Riggs began coaching the girl in 2020 when she was around 15 years old, according to Riggs’ criminal complaint
She said they traveled to tennis events in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Brazil. The teen’s mother said during these trips, Daniel Riggs and Lawrence Riggs were “considered (her daughter’s) guardians.”
Riggs started massaging her back and play-wrestling her while at a tournament in Augusta, Georgia, and just a month later in November 2021, while in Charlotte, North Carolina, she said Riggs took things further in her hotel room.
“(She) recalled that Riggs was wearing plaid pajama pants and no condom was used,” the complaint said, adding that Riggs never used a condom when he was with the teen.
The complaint said she told investigators that she wrote about what happened in Charlotte in her diary, “but crossed it out after her mother located the passage and confronted her about it.” Her mother told investigators she had seen the diary.
Her diary was turned over to investigators.
During a 2022 training trip to Brazil, she told investigators, she and Riggs stayed in an Airbnb together where they engaged in sexual acts and watched pornographic videos together.
Riggs told the then 16-year-old “he felt they should not do this anymore (referring to engaging in sexual acts) because of the potential repercussions,” including Riggs being charged with statutory rape and being tagged as a sex offender, according to the complaint.
He also told her not to put anything about him or their relationship on paper, “including her diary” and to keep it secret from everyone.
They started using Snapchat to talk to each other and Riggs started requesting pictures or videos of her involving sex acts. “Riggs provided instructions for what he wanted in each image and/or video. If the image or video wasn’t what he wanted, he would advise (her) what was wrong with it and what she needed to change,” the complaint said.
The teen saved the conversations in which Riggs “makes admissions about engaging in sexual acts” and thus “corroborates (her) account of the sexual acts occurring in Brazil and other sexual acts occurring between them,” according to the complaint.
Snapchat conversations along with conversations with parents also uncovered that Riggs “appears to be engaged in a sexual relationship” with another player, who was 16, the criminal complaint said.
FBI Miami investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Camille Smith was the prosecutor.
Miami Herald
Milena Malaver covers crime and breaking news for the Miami Herald. She was born and raised in Miami-Dade and is a graduate of Florida International University. She joined the Herald shortly after graduating.