{"id":349121,"date":"2026-07-22T22:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T22:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/349121\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T22:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T22:08:08","slug":"tampa-man-arrested-after-undercover-sting-for-allegedly-trying-to-meet-two-children-for-sex-deputies-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/349121\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa man arrested after undercover sting for allegedly trying to meet two children for sex, deputies say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">LAKE CITY, Fla. (WCJB) &#8211; A man from Tampa has been arrested for trying to meet up with two children for a sexual encounter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">In June, both the Columbia County Sheriff\u2019s Office and Tampa Police Department participated in an undercover operation targeting individuals looking to exploit children for sexual purposes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Through this investigation, Jose Portal, 35, was having sexually explicit conversations and sending nude photos to detectives that he believed were children. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Portal made arrangements to meet one child in Columbia County and the other in Tampa. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Detectives say once they identified Portal, they discovered he was already on federal probation for another crime.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Portal was then arrested on June 30 in Tampa. After his arrest, he confessed to his crimes to detectives, and evidence was found on his phone. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">He was charged with using a computer to lure, seduce, and solicit a child, using a 2-way communication device to facilitate a felony, and distributing, transmitting, and showing obscene material to a minor. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Portal is being held with no bond. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wcjb.com\/newsletter\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Click here<\/a> to subscribe to our newsletter.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 WCJB. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAKE CITY, Fla. (WCJB) &#8211; A man from Tampa has been arrested for trying to meet up with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[52470,763,142838,135,137,61027,136],"class_list":["post-349121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-child-sex-crime","tag-columbia-county","tag-jose-portal","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-man","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}