Wacky Internet Predator Wednesday, Part 5
You know what’s ironic about doing this weekly Wednesday post is that for the last couple of weeks right after I make the post, I get alerted to several arrests made under the headline. So, as with the last couple of weeks, here are 3 headlines on Internet predators being caught, but all are from last week.
Reminder to parents that you should be monitoring computer activity of your kids and our PC Pandora monitoring software can help do the job!
Internet aids predator sting
By BRANDON COUTRE – June 3, 2008
WONDER LAKE – Police have arrested a college student in a first-of-its-kind sting in McHenry County on child sexual predators with the aid of a nationally known group that unmasks adults who solicit children online for sex.
Wonder Lake police Friday arrested Grant W. Boyer, 21, of Tower Lakes after police said he came to a home on the east side of the village prepared to have sex with who he thought was a 13-year-old girl he met online.
But the girl really was a decoy, and police were waiting at the home to arrest Boyer, who brought condoms and a movie to the house, police said.
The sting was conducted in conjunction with Perverted Justice, the group that frequently works with Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” series, although the Wonder Lake sting was not filmed for the show.
Boyer, who said Monday that he wouldn’t comment on his arrest, was charged with solicitation of a child, a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison. He was released from custody after posting $20,000 bond.
Wonder Lake police Chief Dave Mahlke said Perverted Justice came to the village at his request.
“We’re a small town,” he said. “I can’t designate a specific officer to go online and see if pedophiles are trying to make dates with children.”
For the group to agree to work with police, the local state’s attorney had to agree to prosecute the cases, Mahlke said.
McHenry County State’s Attorney Louis Bianchi said he was glad to work on cases with Perverted Justice because the group had expertise in posing as children online.
“Their specialty is on these kinds of cases,” Bianchi said. “You have to mirror what the responses of a minor would be. They know how to speak like a minor does over the Internet.”
Mahlke said his department planned to continue the stings, which is new territory in Wonder Lake.
“There are a lot of perverted people out here who need to be arrested,” Mahlke said. “We’re going to continue to investigate these pedophiles, and hopefully we could put a bunch of them away.”
Local sting operation ends with arrest of Hobbs man
By Sharna Johnson: CNJ staff writer — June 4, 2008
A Hobbs man armed with Viagra and a cooler full of beer came to Clovis on Wednesday to meet a 13-year-old girl, officials said. Instead, he was arrested by investigators with the Curry County Sheriff’s Office.
As sheriff’s deputies led him handcuffed to a waiting vehicle outside North Plains Mall, Douglas Edens’ face was emotionless.
Edens, 48, a power plant operator, was arrested around noon in an undercover sting operation when he arrived to meet what he believed was a 13-year-old girl he had been chatting with online, Sheriff Matt Murray said.
Edens is being held at the Curry County Adult Detention Center on a $20,000 bond, jail officials said.
He is charged with two, second-degree felony counts of child solicitation by electronic device and faces up to 18 years imprisonment if convicted, District Attorney Matt Chandler said.
Edens went into the mall and made a call from a pay phone, telling the girl he had arrived and to meet him outside. As he walked out of the mall, he was swarmed by law enforcement and arrested without incident, sheriff’s officials said.
Investigators said Edens told them on the drive to Clovis he changed his mind about having a rendezvous with the girl but decided to tell her face to face and “be a man about it.”
Edens began chatting with the decoy girl May 30, investigators said. He was pressing for a meeting with her and wanted her to meet him wearing a miniskirt, they said.
During online conversations, investigators said Edens told the girl he wanted to have sex with her. He told her he was bringing beer because he likes to drink it and offered to give her a taste.
Investigators said a search of Edens’ pickup truck revealed a handgun and a prescription bottle of Viagra, an erectile dysfunction medication.
The prescription was filled Tuesday and one of the six pills was missing from the bottle, sheriff’s investigators said.
According to sheriff’s officials, Hobbs police served search warrants at Edens’ home Wednesday and seized three computers, 12 CDs and two jump drives. The electronic items will be analyzed for evidence.
Edens is the third arrested in four months as part of an initiative by the sheriff’s department to curb Internet predation of children in the area.
“In my opinion the more arrests we make, the more people are going to be aware that we’re doing something about it and the predators of the world are going to look somewhere else,” Murray said.
SANTA CRUZ — District Attorney Bob Lee said the arrest last month of a San Jose man accused of pursuing a 13-year-old girl online and trying to meet her in Capitola to have an intimate relationship is his office’s way to send a message to sexual predators. 
“Stay away from Santa Cruz County,” Lee warned. “They mean to protect their children.”
The District Attorney’s Office arrested Russell Baker, 44, on suspicion of meeting a minor for lewd purposes and sending harmful matter to a minor.
The San Jose plumber allegedly sought out what he thought was a 13-year-old Chowchilla girl in a Yahoo chat room and tried to seduce her.
However, Baker actually was talking to Brenda Green, a volunteer in the Midwest working with PervertedJustice.com and posing as “Hope,” according to prosecutor Andrew Isaac. It’s the first time the District Attorney’s Office has worked with the volunteer group, but is one of many ongoing online investigations focused on sexual predators, he said.
“The message is loud and clear. We want the message to echo to every possible predator out there, from here to Illinois: If you’re talking in chat rooms in Santa Cruz, you could be talking to law enforcement,” Lee said. “People will go to great lengths, literally, to prey on young kids. That may mean chatting with them for months and months and months or traveling tremendous distances to see them, so when I say here to Illinois I really mean it.”
Baker’s attorney, public defender Ken Azevedo of Santa Cruz, did not return calls seeking comment Wednesday.
Baker is just one of several suspected sexual predators the District Attorney’s Office is pursuing — some through in-house investigations, others with volunteer groups, including PervertedJustice.com. Lee said they are in contact with at least two other potential suspects in Southern California, and Isaac said additional arrests are possible in the near future.
“We want people to know through the state and the country they better be wary,” Lee said. “It could be one of us they could be talking to, and we want them to know that.”
The online encounters between Baker and Hope played out just like they do on TV news magazine shows, according to the transcripts of the chats.
Hope talked about homework, her friends and baby-sitting for her “brat” of a little brother. Baker asked what type of clothing she like to wear, her sexual experience and if she’d like to meet him. He asked for photos and told her she was cute.
Green, the woman behind Hope, is trained to not respond to lines meant to engage the girl, such as questions about what she’d like to do to him, Isaac said. Her responses are “always ‘laughing out loud’ or ‘I don’t know what you mean.’”
“We never start the ball rolling,” Isaac said. “We’re really careful not to draw them in.”
When the two shared photos online, some of Baker’s were sexual in nature, while Hope’s looked like an average kid, Isaac said.
“One of the ground rules going in, we don’t post a photo of a girl in a thong bikini,” he said. “They’re Pipi Longstocking photos; they’re fully dressed.”
According to the transcripts of the chats, Baker offered to give Hope a Web cam — something she told him her father forbade her to have — so he could watch her change before bed. He talked a lot about meeting and once plans were in the works to rendezvous in Capitola while she spent a weekend at the beach, he said he hoped the weather would be warm so she would wear sexy clothes, according to the chat transcripts.
Baker told her he had once met a 14-year-old girl in Gilroy and taken her to a lake to go skinny-dipping, according to the chat transcripts.
Baker later denied meeting the teen when questioned by the District Attorney’s Office, according to Isaac. Investigators have not found any teens Baker met, and Isaac said it appears Baker, who has two children of his own, didn’t have any sexual contact with kids.
However, the prosecutor did point out that Baker drove to Capitola intending to meet Hope and possibly one of her 13-year-old friends.
When Baker arrived at a Capitola fast food restaurant to meet Hope on May 9, he instead encountered District Attorney’s Office investigators and attorneys.
“What we’ve done is turn the tables on these guys,” Isaac said.
Isaac said Baker had a Web cam in his vehicle when he was picked up. He was arrested, booked into County Jail and later released on $20,000 bail. Baker has pleaded not guilty.
