PHILLIPS – A convicted sex offender was arrested Tuesday after he failed to register as a sex offender, according to police.

Franklin County Deputy Heidi Gould was conducting unrelated investigations and noticed a van had been parked at 60 Park St. for the past two weeks, sheriff’s Lt. Niles Yeaton said.

Gould checked with the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles and discovered the van belonged to a registered sex offender, Robert J. Depietro, 65, whose last known address as of Nov. 14, 2008, was 8 Searles St. in Livermore Falls, Yeaton said.

Gould, assisted by Detective David St. Laurent, arrested Depietro on a charge of failure to comply with sex offender registry law, Yeaton said.

The deputies determined that Depietro had been at the Phillips address for the past two weeks and failed to register at the new address, Yeaton said.

He told police that he was in the process of buying or had bought a house there and was fixing it up for a relative, Yeaton said.

Depietro posted $2,500 unsecured bail Tuesday to be released from the Franklin County Detention Center in Farmington.

He was previously convicted by Middlesex Superior Court in Massachusetts of six counts of rape of a child by force and three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person 14 or older and one count of indecent assault and battery on a child under age, according to the Maine Sex Offender Registry.