Doctor sentenced to 20 years in sex case

TALLAHASSEE, FL – Attorney General Bill McCollum today announced a
 Jacksonville doctor has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for traveling
 to meet someone he thought was a child, intending to have a sexual
 encounter with that child. Irfan Nawaz was arrested in April 2008 by the
 Osceola County Sheriff's Office. He pleaded guilty in December to one
 count of traveling to meet a minor for sex and one count of using a
 computer to solicit a child. He was prosecuted by attorneys with the
 Attorney General’s CyberCrime Unit.

 In March 2008, Nawaz, 33, approached an undercover investigator from the
 Attorney General’s CyberCrime Unit, in an internet chatroom and began to
 talk to the investigator, believing he was talking to a 14-year old girl.
 Over the course of several weeks, Nawaz initiated several chat
 conversations which were extremely sexually explicit with the “child” and
 discussed possibly meeting her to engage in sexual activity.

 During the same time period, another detective with the Osceola County
 Sheriff's Office received a CyberTip complaint from the National Center
 for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) regarding a man who had engaged
 in a sexually explicit conversation with a young girl living in the
 detective’s jurisdiction. Acting on the CyberTip complaint, the detective
 posed online as a 15-year old female friend of the child named in the
 CyberTip complaint. Nawaz began chatting with the “girl” and arranged to
 meet her to engage in sexual activity. When Nawaz arrived at the meeting
 point, he was arrested by the detective.

 The Osceola County Sheriff's Office executed a search at Nawaz’s home for
 computers with assistance from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. The
 detective from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office was familiar with the
 CyberCrime Unit's case and realized Nawaz might be same suspect who had
 been soliciting the undercover CyberCrime investigator. The CyberCrime
 investigator was able to verify that Nawaz was indeed the same person who
 had engaged him in sexually explicit chats. Additionally, authorities
 discovered Nawaz had engaged in sexually explicit conversations with
 undercover investigators from the Polk County Sheriff's Office, thinking
 he was talking to another young girl.

 Upon his release from prison, Nawaz must register with the state as a sex
 offender. Nawaz was formerly employed as a physician at the Mayo
 Foundation in Jacksonville and at the time of his arrest was working
 toward obtaining his board certification in gastroenterology.