He Was Already a Registered Sex Offender. Then He Allegedly Drove to Meet a 13-Year-Old.

On Friday, June 5, 2026, Washington State Patrol detectives walked up to a vehicle parked in Tacoma. Inside, they say, was Marquercus Gant, 38 — a registered Pierce County sex offender living out of that vehicle — waiting to meet a 13-year-old girl he had allegedly offered to pay for sex. The girl did not exist. The person on the other end of his messages was a detective with the State Patrol’s Missing and Exploited Children Task Force.

Gant was booked into the Pierce County Jail and charged with attempted second-degree rape of a child, attempted commercial sexual abuse of a minor, and communicating with a minor for immoral purposes. Bail was set at $750,000. The new charges are allegations; he is presumed innocent until proven guilty. His status as a registered sex offender, however, is not an allegation — it is a matter of public record, and prosecutors say his prior history could put him in line for the harshest sentence Washington law allows: life in prison without parole under the state’s two-strikes persistent-offender law.

The arrest is the latest in a decade-long string of undercover operations — known as Net Nanny stings — that have put more than 334 alleged predators in handcuffs since 2015 and convicted roughly 94 percent of those charged. And in Olympia, there is a live bill this legislative session, sponsored by Sen. Lisa Wellman (D-Mercer Island), that would soften the penalties for exactly these convictions.

• $750,000 bail — set for Marquercus Gant, 38, after the June 5 arrest in Tacoma on three felony charges · Source: MyNorthwest, KIRO 7
• 334+ arrests — by WSP's Missing and Exploited Children Task Force since August 2015, across 22+ Net Nanny operations statewide · Source: FBI Seattle
• ~94% conviction rate — 236 of 252 resolved Net Nanny cases ended in conviction, versus 77.9% for comparable non-sting charges · Source: WSIPP
• 5 years — the sex-offender registration period SB 5312 would cut Net Nanny convicts to — down from current law · Source: Senate Bill Report, SB 5312

The operation began in May 2026, when MECTF detectives posing online as a 13-year-old girl made contact with a man investigators later identified as Gant. “During those communications, [he] allegedly expressed a desire to meet the girl and offered to pay her in exchange for sexual acts,” the State Patrol said in its account of the case, as reported by the Tacoma News Tribune. The conversations continued for weeks — long enough, investigators say, for him to arrange a time and a place.

On the afternoon of Friday, June 5, detectives say Gant drove to the agreed meeting spot in Tacoma and waited in his vehicle — the same vehicle he had been living out of. There was no 13-year-old. Detectives arrested him on the spot and booked him into the Pierce County Jail. The case lead, WSP Sgt. Jason Greer, runs the task force’s proactive sting work; the prosecution falls to the office of Pierce County Prosecutor Mary Robnett, whose office is officially nonpartisan. Investigators believe there may be additional victims and are asking anyone with information to contact the task force at (360) 704-2397 or MECTF@wsp.wa.gov.

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The Missing and Exploited Children Task Force is a Washington State Patrol unit that runs the state’s longest-standing proactive child-exploitation program. Its signature operations, branded Net Nanny, follow a consistent playbook documented by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy: detectives post or answer ads online, posing either as minors themselves (57 percent of cases) or as parents offering children (39 percent). The suspect drives the conversation. When he proposes a meeting and shows up to it, he is arrested — the “substantial step” that converts intent into an attempted felony under Washington law.

The scale is significant. Per FBI Seattle, which partners on the operations, MECTF had made 334 arrests across 22 operations by August 2024 — a figure that has only grown through subsequent stings in Battle Ground (12 arrests, 2025) and individual cases like an Olympia arrest this April. The task force credits the program with removing more than 30 children from dangerous situations. And the cases hold up in court: the WSIPP study found 236 of 252 resolved Net Nanny prosecutions ended in conviction — roughly 93.7 percent — against 77.9 percent for comparable charges brought outside stings.

“It's nice because a large portion of our job working crimes against children is reactive in nature. So we kind of pick up the pieces after someone comes in and tears down the castle. And for us, this is our one opportunity to become proactive and actually go out there and stop people before they can actually commit a crime against a child.”

WSP Sgt. Jason Greer · Missing and Exploited Children Task Force

What separates Gant’s case from a typical Net Nanny arrest is his record. Washington’s persistent-offender statute — a “two strikes” law for the most serious sex offenses — mandates life in prison without the possibility of parole for a second qualifying conviction. Prosecutors say Gant’s prior history, which produced his registration requirement and includes, per MyNorthwest, sexual misconduct involving a 5-year-old, could make the new attempted-rape charge his second strike. If a jury convicts, the sentencing question may not be how many years — it may be whether he ever gets out.

There is precedent, and it comes from the same sting program. In February 2020, Curtis Pouncy was convicted of attempted second-degree rape of a child after a Thurston County Net Nanny operation — the same lead charge Gant now faces. Because Pouncy carried prior rape convictions from 1983, the court sentenced him under the persistent-offender law to life without the possibility of parole, per the Thurston County prosecutor’s office. The two-strikes law does not care that the “child” in a sting was a detective; the attempt is the strike.

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While the task force keeps making arrests, a bill in the Legislature would make the consequences lighter. Senate Bill 5312, sponsored by Sen. Lisa Wellman (D-Mercer Island), targets people convicted through Net Nanny-style stings — cases where no actual child existed. The bill would cut their sex-offender registration period to five years and their community custody to three, and would create an oversight board for the sting operations themselves. It failed to advance out of committee in 2025, but it did not die: it was reintroduced on January 12, 2026, and retained in the Senate Law & Justice Committee — a live bill, this session, to soften penalties for exactly the kind of conviction prosecutors are now pursuing against Gant.

Law enforcement and prosecutors lined up against it. James McMahan of the Washington Association of Sheriffs & Police Chiefs told lawmakers the absence of a real child is beside the point, because the defendant did not know that. And to the entrapment argument — the claim that stings manufacture criminals — Laura Harmon, a King County senior deputy prosecutor, answered directly: “Prosecutors do not convict if there is evidence supporting entrapment, or if the person did not at least take one substantial step towards committing the crime.” The conviction data backs her up: defendants who merely talked do not produce a 94 percent conviction rate. Defendants who drove to the meeting do.

“Their actions are all based on their desire and their belief and their intent to cause sexual harm.”

James McMahan · WA Association of Sheriffs & Police Chiefs · on Net Nanny defendants

Zoom out from the single arrest and the through-line is volume. A 2018 Pierce County Net Nanny operation alone produced 21 arrests in a week, per the State Patrol’s release. The 2024 Kitsap County operation — the program’s 22nd — added 20 more. Battle Ground added 12 in 2025. The men arrested in these operations, per the agencies’ releases, have ranged from their early twenties to their seventies and have included people from nearly every profession. The supply of men willing to drive to a meeting with someone they believe is a child has not thinned in a decade of widely publicized stings.

Nor is Washington alone. In April 2026, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel announced a national operation that arrested 205 child sexual abuse offenders and rescued 115 children — a reminder that the Net Nanny caseload is one state’s slice of a national problem. What is distinctive about Washington is the policy fight: a task force with a 94 percent conviction rate on one side, and a live legislative effort to shorten the registration tail of those convictions on the other. Gant’s case — a registered offender allegedly caught reoffending by the very program SB 5312 targets — now sits in the middle of that argument.

A registered sex offender with a prior history involving a 5-year-old was allegedly willing, in May and June of 2026, to pay for sex with a 13-year-old — and allegedly drove to the meeting. The sting that caught him is one of the most statistically effective law-enforcement programs in Washington: 334-plus arrests, a conviction rate near 94 percent, more than 30 children pulled out of danger. The law that could put him away for life has already done exactly that to a defendant with the same lead charge. And the bill that would soften the consequences for convictions like the one prosecutors now seek is alive in the Senate Law & Justice Committee as this page publishes.

Gant is presumed innocent of the new charges, and this page will be updated as the case moves through Pierce County Superior Court. Investigators believe there may be more victims: anyone with information is asked to contact the Missing and Exploited Children Task Force at (360) 704-2397 or MECTF@wsp.wa.gov.

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Last updated June 10, 2026