The girl was supposed to be 14 years old. She was supposed to "chill and relax" with the man. They were supposed to meet at the Gainesville Regional Airport.
"Apparently, he didn't follow the news," Alachua County Sheriff's Office spokesman Art Forgey said.
ASO held a press conference earlier this week announcing a successful child-sex sting, but that didn't stop Richard D. Jernigan, 30, of Ocala, from pursuing an illegal Craigslist hookup.
The sheriff's office arrested Jernigan on a public orders crime and two counts of obscene communication. His mugshot joins those of 21 other men as the dominant images of Operation Tailfeather, a joint investigation by ASO and the Gainesville Police Department.
On Jan. 30, a GPD detective posted an ad on Craigslist: "do u like yung1s - w4m." The fictional girl wrote that she was bored and looking for older guys.
Jernigan responded to the ad on Sunday morning, sending two nude pictures and a closeup of his face, according to an arrest report. The girl said she was 14, but the two continued to email and text each other.
"Are you a cop?" Jernigan asked in an email. "Or working with cops?"
He asked the girl about her sexual experience, and eventually they agreed to meet Wednesday. The day before, during the press conference, ASO Sgt. Todd Kelly was asked whether going public with the sex sting would curb the department's chances of snagging other child predators.
"There's plenty of folks out there that are willing to travel to have sex with a child, unfortunately," Kelly said.
Sure enough, Jernigan drove to the airport, where officers arrested him.
Throughout Tuesday's press conference, law enforcement officials repeated that they weren't finished with Operation Tailfeather.
Still, they didn't expect to catch other alleged predators. They were just expecting to prepare cases to submit to a federal prosecutor.
After dedicating more than 20 officers from the sheriff's office to the operation last week, only four or five detectives who investigate predators full-time remain on the detail, Forgey said.
They don't predict any more arrests.
"I imagine that's going to be the last one we get," Forgey said. "We don't expect too many other people to be unaware of the operation."
