Boca Raton Man, 21, Charged With Arranging Sex Meetup With Girl, 15 (Who Was Really an Undercover Cop)

Bronson Welbes (Photo: Palm Beach County Jail)

A Boca Raton man has been charged with soliciting a sexual encounter with a 15-year-old girl who turned out to be an undercover detective, a police report filed this week in Palm Beach County stated.

Bronson Welbes, 21, of Boca Raton, has been released on bond from the Palm Beach County Jail after being booked on charges of soliciting a child for unlawful sexual conduct and unlawful use of a two-way communications device. He was arrested Dec. 1, 2025 for the incident that occurred between Nov. 20-21, and bonded out Dec. 2, 2025.

According to a probable cause affidavit filed by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, detectives from the agency’s Human Exploitation and Trafficking (HEAT) unit were conducting an undercover operation to crack down on human trafficking at an undisclosed location within Palm Beach County. A fictitious escort advertisement was created and posted via the internet to which the suspect, later identified as Welbes, later responded. The response was received via text message, in which he is alleged to have “engaged in conversation with undercover HEAT detectives portraying a ‘trafficker’ offering a fictitious 15-year-old female for commercial sexual acts.”

The text messages then transitioned to a FaceTime video call with a HEAT detective posing as a trafficker and a decoy posing as the 15-year-old girl, a police report stated. Welbes allegedly asked, “Are you available tonight?” before requesting a rate and location. The detective then texted back, “She’s young” and doesn’t “do everything,” leading Welbes to allegedly list a number of specific, explicit sexual acts he wished to perform, which have not been included in this article.

Welbes did, at one point during the conversation, allegedly ask whether the girl was 18, at which point the detective responded that she was “almost 16,” according to the report. After the detective provided a location for a meetup, Welbes told him that he “felt like this was a ‘trap’ and asked if there was any way to ‘prove you aren’t the police.'”

The negotiation continued, culminating in what the report said was an explicit FaceTime call. The exchange on Nov. 20 led to a meeting being set up the following day at 3 p.m. The detective told the suspect the price was $160 for what they had already agreed on, and that it would be $220 for an entire hour, to which Welbes allegedly replied, “Sold,” according to the report.

From that point on, the police report describes the suspect as becoming more suspicious about the potential encounter, asking to see another copy of the escort advertisement and confirming that it was “real.” The last text message was sent at 4:39 p.m., after which there was no more contact made.

Detectives ultimately used the FaceTime video call to verify the identity of the suspect through the state’s driver’s license database, the report states.

Welbes was booked into the jail Monday morning and released Tuesday night after posting $40,000 bond on the solicitation charge and $10,000 on the communications device charge.