Over 270 years in prison for Placer County man who lured girls on Snapchat
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- A judge sentenced Marco Montejano to more than 270 years to life in prison.
- Prosecutors said Montejano used Snapchat to lure girls for sexual assault.
- Montejano was convicted of 27 criminal charges in the Placer County sexual assault case.
A Placer Superior Court judge on Friday sentenced a 26-year-old Lincoln man to more than 270 years to life in prison for sexually assaulting girls after luring the victims on Snapchat.
On Oct. 2, a jury found Marco Antonio Garcia Montejano guilty of 27 criminal charges that included committing lewd acts with a child younger than 14 years old and other sexual assault charges, the Placer County District Attorney’s Office announced Monday in a news release.
Montejano was prosecuted for crimes committed from July 2019 through January 2022, court records show. Montejano was arrested and booked March 4, 2023, at the Placer County Jail.
Prosecutors said the investigation began when officers from the Lincoln Police Department responded to an apartment complex where Montejano had grabbed a young girl into his apartment to perform a sex act.
Investigators determined that Montejano had preyed on victims from his apartment in the same complex, first communicating with them on Snapchat, according to the District Attorney’s Office. The girls were not friends with Montejano on the popular social media platform, and they did not have any mutual friends.
Snapchat’s Snap Map shows users’ live locations on an interactive map, making nearby profiles visually discoverable, according to the D.A.’s Office.
The Snapchat map often reveals bitmojis and other cues that hint at a user’s age or gender. Prosecutors said that visible proximity lets predators identify and target children who appear nearby, then use in-app messaging to groom or arrange contact — unless Snapchat’s location sharing is turned off or set to ghost mode and strict friend-only settings are enforced.
Prosecutors said Montejano pretended to be a teenage boy on Snapchat, asked the girls to meet him in a public area at the apartment complex before forcing the girls into his apartment.
Police confiscated Montejano’s phone where they found child pornography and information corroborating what the sexual assault victims told investigators, according to the D.A.’s Office.
Deputy District Attorney Brandie Huggett, who prosecuted Montejano, said the defendant was constantly communicating with the girls on Snapchat, “carefully cultivating trust and emotional dependence” to manipulate the victims.
“The defendant’s conduct was not impulsive or opportunistic. It was deliberate, methodical and deeply exploitative,” Huggett said in the news release. “He invested significant time and effort into identifying, targeting and grooming his victims through Snapchat.”
Judge Garen J. Horst sentenced Montejano to 250 years to life in prison, along with an additional 24 years and four months in prison.
In response to this criminal case, the D.A.’s Office has launched the AppSafe Initiative that seeks to bring attention to these dangerous social media trends, give tips on how to put protective settings on children’s phones and keep children away from online predators.
The case against Montejano was prosecuted by the D.A.’s Sexual Assault Unit and supported by the D.A.’s Victim Services Unit and Multi-Disciplinary Interview Center.
This story was originally published November 3, 2025 at 1:09 PM.
