Robert Lyons

Almost a year before being caught in the sting, Robert Lyons had sexual intercourse a fourteen-year-old boy. In February 2005, he was charged with four felony counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a child 14 or 15 years of age. In a plea deal, he pleaded guilty to one felony count while the other three charges were dropped.

When Lyons made his appearance at the sting house, he appeared to be hard of hearing. Harvey, posing as the teenage boy, talked to Lyons from another room. When Harvey told him she had to brush her teeth, he responded, "Your feet?" She then asked him to wait at the counter. Lyons thought that she asked him to wait outside. Not long after, Hansen made his appearance to have Lyons sit at the counter. When Hansen questioned Lyons about the age of the person he was meeting, Lyons insisted he didn't know. He then began to have a nervous twitch on his upper lip. When confronted with the age discrepancy he gave to the decoy, Lyons admitted he was sixty-eight and admittedly said, "I lied". Lyons denied having any plans for the decoy when asked what he was intending to do.

Lyons acknowledged having sex with a boy who was underage. He also admitted his conviction, but he falsely claimed he was sentenced to probation rather than prison. He immediately acknowledged that he was still on probation, however. When asked about his victim's age, Lyons said he was fifteen. Lyons asserted once more that he was unaware that the decoy was thirteen-years-old. Lyons persisted in asserting that having sex was not his desire. He then assigned the decoy the blame, saying that the decoy continued calling him and assumed he was "lonely," and that the only reason he showed up was because he felt "sorry." Furthermore, he said that he thought the boy would do something to himself if he didn't come. Hansen emphasized Lyons' history with minors and rejected his arguments. Lyons once more laid the blame on the decoy, alleging that the latter kept calling and claiming to be alone. Lyons persisted in blaming the decoy, claiming that he led to the sexually explicit conversation. Hansen's patience began to wane as Lyons kept denying it, although Lyons admitted that it didn't make it right for him to visit the boy either way.

Hansen questioned Lyons about whether he had "talked" to his actual victim, to which Lyons responded that he was a prostitute and told Lyons his age was eighteen. Hansen questioned him if he was attending a counselor and mentioned his requirements and obligations as a registered sex offender. Lyons retorted that he was and had seen a counselor two weeks before arriving at the home. Lyons said that it was "pretension" and all "pretend" when questioned why he took forty years off of his actual age. When asked what should happen to him, Lyons responded that he should obtain a new counselor and that his counseling should be enforced more strictly, although he also said he wasn't sure what should happen to him. Hansen then revealed who he was and the cameras came out. When he is told that he walked into a Dateline investigation, Lyons became more anxious, wondering if he was going to be on Dateline, a show he seemed to be familiar with. Lyons was then arrested and taken into custody by the Riverside police department. When brought before an investigator, Lyons stated that he should speak to an attorney.

Lyons was charged with three felonies: one count of attempted lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age, one count of attempted sodomy with a child under 14 years of age, and one count of attempted oral copulation with a minor under 14 years of age and more than a ten-year difference between offender and victim. In February 2006, Lyons appeared in court shackled, wearing a orange prison jumpsuit. The District Attorney's office requested that Lyons be held without bail because they believed he was a danger to society. The judge ruled against their motion, noting that there wasn't a real victim involved, and instead ordered that Lyons be held on $100,000 bail for violating his probation and a staggering $1,000,000 bail for the Riverside charges, resulting in a total of $1.1 million bail. In the end, Lyons couldn't afford to post bail.

In March 2006, he appeared in court for his felony settlement conference and for a hearing to have his probation revoked. Lyons' attorney, Barry Sands, challenged the recording of the evidence, citing wiretapping concerns related to the "two-party system" law. Lyons' case went all the way to the California Supreme Court, which sided with the state. Eventually, Lyons pleaded guilty to all three felony charges and received a five-year prison sentence, getting credit for the one and a half years he'd already spent in county jail. He was released from prison in late 2010.

As of April 2025, Lyons was in violation of his parole and listed as absconded.