Child sex trafficker and accused Tucker squatter sentenced to 5 years

TUCKER, Ga. - A man accused of squatting in a Tucker home and arrested for sex trafficking is now in federal prison. His arrest was a takedown caught on camera by the Fox 5 I-Team.

The October 2023 scene was like something out of a movie. We were there for one reason—a home squatter complaint. The feds, unbeknownst to us, were literally hiding in vehicles and behind trees. They were there because they were looking for a sex trafficker. Well, they got their man.

In the fall of last year, law enforcement surrounded a well-kept Tucker ranch home. They hit the front door with a battering ram because inside was a man wanted for multiple reasons. The then-homeowner, Ronan McCabe, had called the I-Team feeling helpless after strangers moved into his home.

"This is my home. And there's somebody in there, an intruder in there, intruders, who I do not know," he said.

McCabe said squatters had taken over his house while it was on the market. He told us back in 2023 that a man calling himself Raymond Cortez wanted money to leave.

"Dana, that's a shakedown. That's a shakedown," he said, clearly exasperated. "You kidding me? They want me to pay them to leave my home. That's scandalous."

The Gwinnett County police called it a civil matter and said in order to get him out, the real homeowner would have to go through a potentially lengthy eviction process.

But there’s more. While we talked to a frustrated Mr. McCabe, U.S. Marshals were gathering, some hunkering down in vehicles, others peeking around trees. They wanted that man inside, too. He was a fugitive.

There was a federal warrant for the arrest of a man we now know is Ramon Fuertes III. Police and court documents show Fuertes is a convicted federal felon. He had been in federal prison for child sex trafficking, accused of prostituting a young teen he called "Lollipop."

According to a Justice Department press release, after his prison term, as a convicted sex offender, he failed to properly register email addresses and social networking accounts. Then, he left the state of Florida without notifying authorities.

But they found him in Tucker last fall, living in a home that didn’t belong to him. His new home is in a federal prison. After a six-day trial this month, a federal judge sentenced him to five years in prison on four counts of failure to register as a sex offender.

The Tucker home has since been sold. And squatter laws in Georgia have changed since this story first aired. Today, squatting—living in someone else’s property unlawfully—is a crime and not a civil matter. These cases have been moved to the more serious Superior Court system.

The Squatter Reform Act requires that if a lease is presented, the person claiming to be the leaseholder has three days to present that document to the court. A judge has seven days to make a determination on the legitimacy of that lease.