A convicted sexual offender who prosecutors tried but failed to keep in custody after he completed his federal prison term is back behind bars.

Police arrested Jay Abregana at his apartment in Liliha on Friday for allegedly having sex with a 12-year-old boy on multiple occasions and recording the acts.

An Oahu grand jury returned an indictment yesterday charging Abregana, 40, with two counts each of first-degree promoting child abuse and first-degree sexual assault and four counts of third-degree sexual assault. Promoting child abuse involves producing or participating in child pornography.

The first four charges are class A felonies punishable by mandatory 20-year prison terms. But because Abregana is charged with more than one felony, the state may seek an extended sentence of life in prison with the opportunity for parole.

Abregana remains in custody, unable to post $200,000 bail.

Circuit Judge Richard Perkins refused the state’s request to order Abregana held with no opportunity for bail.

Abregana met the boy at a video game store in Ala Moana Center, said Klemen Urbanc, deputy prosecutor.

"He was seeking out boys consistent with what he was doing before," Urbanc said.

The boy told police Abregana had sex with him in his apartment, in the apartment building’s laundry room and once in the restroom of a McDonald’s restaurant. He said Abregana gave him three airsoft pellet guns and money as payment for the sex and a cellular telephone to keep in contact with him.

The boy told his mother about having sex with Abregana after she asked him about the telephone, police said.

In November 2001, Abregana pleaded guilty to transporting child pornography after he sent 16 diskettes containing pornography to an undercover U.S. postal inspector. The diskettes contained images of Abregana having sex with a 15-year-old boy.

U.S. District Judge Helen Gillmor sentenced Abregana in March 2002 to 44 months in prison, followed by three years on probation.

Also in 2002, a state judge sentenced Abregana to a one-year jail term to run the same time as the federal prison time for exposing himself and masturbating in front of a 12-year-old boy in a Hilo movie theater in November 2002.

Gillmor sent Abregana back to prison in June 2005 for 20 months, followed by 16 months on probation, for having sex with a 17-year-old boy in a Neiman Marcus restroom at Ala Moana Center. She sent him back to prison again in April 2007 for four more months for failing to submit for drug testing, possessing a computer, viewing pornography and for contacting minors through e-mail communications.

Federal prosecutors asked Gillmor to designate Abregana as a dangerous sexual person so he could be held indefinitely, but the judge said in August 2008 that the government did not prove, by clear and convincing evidence, that Abregana is sexually dangerous to others and ordered Abregana released.