The Vinny Barbarino's Grandpa Predator Is Dead
Little is known about Roberto Forte except that he was among the slimier predators caught in Riverside, California, and got a sentence to match. His life began on January 28th, 1952, and, according to his own words and by what evidence Chris Hansen and law enforcement were able to discover, he was a married man with children who managed a restaurant in Tustin, California, before it closed. Apparently, the unemployed Roberto had a little too much time on his hands, for he soon began online sexual chats with children.
Forte was a fast mover. Over the course of 49 minutes on an early January day in 2006, this predator, using the screen name "Socal128," began a chat with someone he believed to be a 13-year-old boy named Luke. Roberto Forte asked "Luke," really a decoy from Perverted Justice, if he had ever been with men before. Luke replied that he had been with a man of at least 30 and that it really hurt, to which Forte replied that he was doing well and just needed to "relax the muscle first." He called the boy "hot," asked him for pictures, and sent some of his own.
Immediately after the chat, Forte made another 49-minute trip, this time driving to the sting house in Mira Loma, Riverside, California. He admitted he did not have condoms and didn't bring any, but he did bring alcohol, lubricant, and a camera. After being lured in by Dell, playing the role of the boy, he was confronted by Chris Hansen, admitting that what he did was "stupid," that he "deserved to be humiliated," and that there was only "one thing to think." He admitted he brought a camera and beer but tried to deny he was going to use them in any sort of interaction with a child. Growing more squeamish, he became defensive when the cameras came out. He did not run away, but he tried to claim it was "wrong" for Dateline to put him on TV, apparently concerned about his family potentially seeing him on the news. He asked if they would show his "face and everything," prompting Chris to dodge the question and hand him a business card while pointing out that Forte was the one who chose to come to the house, apparently ready to have sex with a minor. His full interview with Chris Hansen would only be released later as bonus content, but what happened after he left the house was briefly featured in the Dateline special.
The old man with beige outfit and prescription sunglasses walked out and was promptly arrested by the Riverside PD. When asked if he had ever had sex with men before, he admitted, "it happens," in line with his telling Chris Hansen that he had met men online before for sex but "never minors." He seemed more worried about his wife finding out he was bisexual than about his being arrested for trying to have sex with a minor, but he was ultimately the first man in the Riverside case to be sentenced for doing the latter.
Forte was sentenced to 30 months (2.5 years) in prison with lifetime registration as a sex offender in June 2006, setting a precedent for fairly good sentences in the rest of the Riverside cases. He had asked for probation, but the judge noted that he had previously been investigated for possession of child pornography (he was never charged in said case) and went from being online to in the home of a child with lube, alcohol, and a camera in just over 90 minutes.
Forte apparently served most of his sentence and was released between late 2007 and early 2008. His children, adults at the time of his arrest, wanted nothing to do with him after his brush with the law in the child porn case was followed by a confirmation of his being a child predator in the Riverside case. Roberto Forte died on November 14th, 2009, at the age of 57. In less than four years, he went from being a married man with children to being an unemployed registered sex offender who spent a spell in prison and died alone. Judging by Forte's behavior, I can't exactly call his death a tragedy.
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