Polk County sting nets 266 arrests, including influencer and Jan. 6 participant

Sheriff Grady Judd turned the latest Polk County operation into a two-part story: a headline-grabbing 266 arrests, and a much narrower legal breakdown underneath it. The multi-day undercover sting, called Polk Around and Find Out, produced 247 arrests tied to prostitution and human trafficking-related offenses, plus 19 suspects arrested for felony crimes involving travel to meet a minor for sex and similar offenses. That split is the real tell. The big number sounds like a sweep, but the charges show two separate lanes of enforcement, one aimed at prostitution and possible exploitation, the other at predators crossing a line into child-sex felony territory.

The Polk County Sheriff’s Office said seven possible human trafficking victims were identified during the prostitution and human-trafficking portion of the operation and were offered services. Detectives also screened 127 suspects who traveled to commit prostitution to determine whether anyone was being trafficked or exploited by others. Separate reporting said the sting generated 439 new charges, including 298 felonies, and the arrests reached far beyond Polk County, with suspects from 18 countries and 11 states. The youngest arrestee was 18, the oldest 68, and 167 of the 266 lived outside Polk County.

Judd used two names that guaranteed attention far beyond central Florida. One was Craig Long, 41, a Tampa fitness-company owner and self-described MAGA influencer with a large social-media following. Judd displayed a photo of Long with Donald Trump during the press conference, underscoring how the sting swept up people who were not hiding in the shadows of the internet but openly built public personas around law-and-order politics. The other was Ryan Yates, a Jan. 6 Capitol riot participant who had previously pleaded guilty to breaching the U.S. Capitol, served six months in prison, and was later released after Trump’s blanket pardons on his first day back in office. Judd said Yates would not get a “blanket pardon” in Florida.

The operation drew in investigators from federal, state, and local agencies, including Homeland Security Investigations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Florida attorney general’s statewide prosecution office, the State Attorney for the 10th Judicial Circuit, and police and sheriff’s offices from across central Florida. Social-service partners, including the Florida Department of Children and Families, One More Child, Heartland for Children, and the Florida Alliance to End Human Trafficking, were embedded with detectives.

For Polk County, the sting fit a pattern Judd has made familiar. The sheriff’s office announced 244 arrests in a May 2025 operation and 246 arrests in a September 2025 follow-up, keeping the county at the center of recurring human-trafficking and child-predator stings. The scale is the headline, but the case file tells the sharper story: prostitution arrests, felony child-sex charges, possible victims identified, and a sheriff who knows exactly which names will keep the public looking.