Marine Surrenders, Admits Posing Nude for Porno Ring

An active-duty Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton has turned himself in to military investigators, saying he submitted to nude photographs as part of a pornographic production ring, officials at the base said Wednesday.

The Marine, who was not identified, is the second junior enlisted man at Pendleton whose involvement in the porno operation has been confirmed by military authorities.

“(The Marine) indicated that he did not participate in sexual acts and expected payment, which was never received for his participation,” Chief Warrant Officer Mike Hedlund, the base spokesman, said Wednesday.

Hedlund said the matter had been referred to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Posing nude for pay constitutes pandering, a felony offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Lesser offenses are deemed misdemeanors handled as non-judicial punishments.

Pendleton officials confirmed that Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents conducted a jailhouse interview with the man who claims to have engineered a gay Marine porno ring that police say may have involved between two dozen and 200 active-duty personnel.

However, Luciano Ceballos, 42, known to police and military investigators as Robert (Bobby) Vasquez, declined to cooperate, base spokesman Hedlund said. Federal officials said Ceballos may be deported to Mexico, pending the outcome of an upcoming hearing.

Arrested near his Oceanside home Monday night and jailed at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego, Ceballos had told The Times in an earlier interview that, over the last three years, the ring has involved more than 500 active-duty Marines.

A Mexican native with a permit to reside in the United States, Ceballos was arrested in 1985 for having forged U.S. Treasury checks and was sentenced to three years in federal prison, U.S. authorities said.

Another three years were added to his sentence for jumping bail, said Gary Gray, the Dallas-based spokesman for the U.S. Parole Commission. Ceballos was initially paroled in 1988 but was ordered to serve 12 more months and was re-paroled in 1991.

After being released in 1991, Ceballos was deported to Mexico and violated the terms of his parole by failing to notify federal officials of his return to the United States in late 1992, U.S. marshal’s spokesman John Clark said.

“It was a condition of his parole that, if he were to re-enter the country, he would have to contact his U.S. probation officer in San Diego immediately, and he failed to do that,” Clark said.

Military investigators went to the Metropolitan Correctional Center to see whether Ceballos could provide any more specific information about the alleged involvement of U.S. Marines in his porno production ring, Hedlund said. “We also wanted specifics on who may have threatened him.”

In his interview with The Times, Ceballos said he was planning to flee to San Francisco to “hide out” with friends, after receiving threatening phone calls from Marines who feared he would ruin their careers by turning them in to military investigators.

Hedlund said that Ceballos refused to answer questions and that he had not reported such threats to the Oceanside Police Department, which recently closed its inquiry because Ceballos’ operation did not involve minors, as detectives feared.

Police recently turned over evidence to military authorities, who on Tuesday acknowledged for the first time the involvement of an active-duty Marine. Whether any Marine is charged “remains to be seen,” Hedlund said.