CONCORD - Roger Hyder told a jury he had sexually explicit role-playing sessions in an Internet chat room with a woman who pretended to be a 13-year-old girl.

Hyder never believed she was a minor, he said. That's why he flew from Las Vegas to Concord to meet her for sex.

A Contra Costa County jury didn't believe him. On Thursday, jurors convicted Hyder, 49, of one count of attempting to commit a lewd act with a child under 14 and three counts of attempting to distribute harmful material to a minor over the Internet.

"He came to Concord with the intent of picking up a child to have sex," jury foreman George Johnson said outside the courtroom.

Hyder could serve up to six years in state prison. His sentencing hearing is set for April 4.

Investigators arrested Hyder on Jan. 20, 2005, during a sting operation that raised the issue at trial of whether law enforcement committed entrapment and illegally convinced Hyder to fall for their ruse.

The investigation began at a Concord private investigation firm, Butler and Associates. Women often hire the company to learn whether their husbands are cheating, and sometimes whether they are seeking underage girls on the Internet, company owner Chris Butler said in a phone interview Thursday.

A new employee was learning to do an investigation in Internet chat rooms. Pretending to be a girl named "Lisa," she came across Hyder without looking for him in particular.

The company, which routinely hands off information about suspected pedophiles to law enforcement, told inspectors with the District Attorney's Office about Hyder, Butler said.

"Lisa" then began working with the inspectors, spending the next two months chatting and sometimes speaking with Hyder on the phone. "Lisa" told Hyder she was 12 until January, when she said she had a birthday.

They arranged to meet in front of El Dorado Middle School in Concord. Hyder, a pilot for a tour operator, arrived in a pilot's uniform.

When Concord police arrested him, he had condoms, Viagra and a makeup kit -- a present for Lisa. He had booked a room in a motel.

At the same time, San Francisco police and the FBI, which both have computer task forces that troll chat rooms seeking predators, were conducting separate investigations of Hyder. None of the agencies knew about the others until after Hyder's arrest.

A San Francisco police officer pretended to be Katlyn. And an FBI agent pretended to be Kai.

Hyder believed those fictitious girls to be 13, defense attorney Todd Bequette said Wednesday in his closing argument. And even though he scheduled times to visit them, got maps to find them and told them he took days off work, he never intended to leave his home.

"Roger Hyder was all talk," Bequette said.

Bequette had portrayed his client as a recluse who rarely left his computer. He feared the idea of meeting Lisa, or anyone.

Over two months of chatting, Lisa asked him to visit several times and eventually told him that she would break up with him if he did not.

Bequette called this "a textbook case of entrapment" -- continual requests and appeals to friendship.

"So he summoned all his strength, packed up his Viagra and flew to visit her," Bequette said.

Deputy district attorney Dale Gomes told the jury Wednesday that the case had "nothing to do with entrapment." Like a female police officer posing as a prostitute and arresting a prospective customer who solicits her, nobody encouraged Hyder's intent, which could be read in the explicit online conversations.

"In most cases you don't have pages and pages of intent," Gomes said, alluding to a 6-inch stack of transcripts. "I hand it to you on a silver platter."

Jurors discussed entrapment at length during their three-hour deliberation, Johnson said.

"She did in a child-like way act disappointed when he said he wasn't coming," Johnson said. "But it was more like providing the opportunity (to visit) than really inducing him to do something he otherwise wouldn't do."

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