Wacky Internet Predator Wednesday 54
I was gone for a week and man did the stories pile up! I submit to the jury, six more reasons why parents absolutely must know what their kids are doing online and who they are talking to. It is imperative. Don’t think guys like this exist? Think again…
PC Pandora computer monitoring software can help you keep your kid safe online by allowing you to KNOW what they do on the internet!
Here is a rundown of the scumbags caught and/or sentenced. Stories follow with links to reporting websites…
- A 36-year-old man from Illinois was arrested and charged with soliciting what he thought was a 15-year-old girl for sex on the internet
- A 28-year-old teacher and camp counselor from New York was arrested for having sex with a 15-year-old girl. He used texting and MySpace to communicate with her. Yes, a real girl.
- A 25-year-old man in Missouri was arrested and charged with soliciting what he thought was a 14-year-old girl for sex on the internet
- A Connecticut man was arrested for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy he met on MySpace.
- A 25-year-old man from Nevada took a bus 2,500 miles to Virginia to meet a 13-year-old girl he met on MySpace. He had a return bus ticket in the girl’s name. Fortunately she came to her senses before meeting him and told her mom….
- A 28-year-old man in Detroit was arrested for exposing himself and performing a sex act over a Web cam in front of what he thought was a 13-year-old girl.
July 22, 2009
Man caught in online sex sting
By Kathleen FoodyMILTON — An Illinois man on Monday became the third arrest by the Milton Police Department through a program targeting online sexual predators.
Michael D. Johnson, 36, of Joliet, Ill., was charged with child enticement, use of a computer to facilitate a sex crime and exposing a child to harmful material after police arrested him in a public parking lot at 9 p.m.
Johnson made contact with Milton Lt. John Conger four months ago. Conger was posing as a 15-year-old girl in a chat room. The conversations evolved to explicit sexual chats and Johnson eventually asked to meet the girl in Milton, Conger told WCLO Radio.
The department received federal and state grant money allowing it to participate in a program focused on online sexual crimes. A Madison man and another Illinois man were the first two suspects arrested this year.
“If somebody from Madison or Chicago is willing to come to Milton to prey on our children, we’re going to take that just as seriously as if it’s somebody who lives around the corner from them,” Conger said.
The department hopes its work will discourage predators from using Milton as a target—though the message doesn’t get through to some people, Conger said.
Chat room users often warn that he is a police officer or “Dateline’s here,” when he introduces himself a 15-year-old girl in the main room.
“At the same time, you’re getting three or four instant messages from people who don’t believe it’s going to happen to them,” he said.
July 22, 2009
Merrick teacher pleads not guilty in rape of girl, 15
By Andrew StricklerA Nassau teacher and camp counselor accused of having sex with a 15-year-old girl used text messages and the social networking site MySpace to arrange a meeting with his alleged victim, Suffolk authorities said Wednesday.
The online relationship between Daniel Rothbard, 28, of Merrick, and the girl began several days before a police officer discovered them Tuesday having sex in a parked car, according to Det. Lt. Matt Sullivan of the Third Precinct.
Using the screen name “DJ” or “D to the J” and claiming to be 17 years old, Rothbard also communicated online with the girl’s friends. “He was asking them online for sex,” Sullivan said.
Rothbard is a math teacher at the Willow Road Elementary School in Franklin Square, where he has been employed for four years, according to a statement from Elizabeth Lison, superintendent of Valley Stream Union Free School District 13. The district is consulting with legal counsel regarding his employment, she said.
Rothbard also worked as a summer counselor for about 15 years at Rolling River Day School and Camp in East Rockaway.
“We are all in shock – his closest friends, his family. He has a lot of close friends here and it is amazing that not one of them had an inkling,” said director Mark Goodman. The camp has fired him and sent letters to families recommending they ask their children whether anyone asked them “to keep a secret,” Goodman said. “We certainly have no reason to think that anything happened at camp.”
Rothbard was having sex with the 15-year-old about 8:25 p.m. Tuesday when the officer found the pair outside Westbrook Elementary School in West Islip, according to a Suffolk prosecutor. Police believe Rothbard and the girl met for the first time Tuesday.
“We believe there is every possibility that there are other victims,” Sullivan said.
Rothbard pleaded not guilty in First District Court, Central Islip, to felony charges of rape, criminal sexual act and sexual abuse, as well as misdemeanor endangering the welfare of a child.
His attorney, Todd Greenberg of Forest Hills, said Rothbard is married and has no criminal record. “We know him as a very decent and hardworking young man,” Greenberg said.
District Court Judge Salvatore Alamia held Rothbard on $5,000 cash bail or bond. Rothbard’s mother stood up at the arraignment in a show of support for her son. She declined, through her son’s attorney, to speak to a reporter.
July 24, 2009
Man charged in sex sting
Suspect, 25, accused of trying to meet teen at Crane car wash for sex
By Mike Penprase, News-LeaderA Springfield man went to uncommon lengths after seducing who he believed was a 14-year-old girl over the Internet, an officer helping run a sting in Stone County said Thursday.
Most men try to link up with underage girls by posting pictures or videos online, Stone County Capt. Tim Gideon said.
Jeffrey Dale Wommack, on the other hand, wanted a face-to-face meeting with whom he believed was a teenager. Instead, Wommack got a meeting with deputies and a felony charge of enticement of a child.
According to a probable cause statement filed with the charge, Wommack began chatting up a Stone County deputy in a Yahoo chat room Monday afternoon. His online moniker: csncreeper.
The deputy claimed to be a 14-year-old Crane girl and participated in a conversation in which Wommack, 25, allegedly encouraged the “girl” to masturbate and asked if she liked older men.
He arranged a meeting at a Crane car wash, explaining he wanted to give oral sex to the girl and that she would “love it,” the probable cause statement says.
“He asked if I was a cop or if I was going to get him into trouble and I told him ‘no,’” the deputy wrote in the probable cause statement.
Police parked near the car wash where Wommack was to meet the girl, and pulled the man over when they spotted his blue Ford Mustang, the statement said.
Wommack allegedly admitted he’d come to have oral sex with an underage girl. Police found a condom and brass knuckles in his vehicle, the probable cause statement says.
Wommack is being held in the Stone County Jail in Galena in lieu of a $25,000 bond.
The man’s arrest comes as Stone County deputies place more concentration on nabbing Internet predators.
What began as a part-time effort by one deputy has expanded considerably since the program started, Gideon said.
A task force that includes the Branson Police Department and Taney County Sheriff’s Department now is financed with a grant that allows a deputy to work half-time on patrolling and half-time on the computer, he said.
“She just goes into the chat room, and they come to her,” Gideon said of the deputy’s work.
Men contacting the deputy have to make the first move to avoid claims they were entrapped, Gideon said.
July 28, 2009
Police: Conn. man molested teen he met on MySpace
Associated PressMIDDLETOWN, Conn. – Newly released court documents say a Connecticut man charged last week with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy met the teenager on the MySpace social networking Web site.
Twenty-six-year-old Jacob Bonilla is charged with nine counts of second-degree sexual assault and nine counts of risk of injury to a minor. He has not entered a plea and returns to court Aug. 24.
Court records say Bonilla and the teen first communicated on MySpace on July 1, 2008, six days before the first of several in-person meetings.
There is no public phone listing for Bonilla, who now lives in Meriden. It’s not clear if he has a lawyer.
Middletown police say Bonilla worked for the state child welfare agency, but state officials say they have no record of him ever working there.
A parent’s worst Internet nightmare nearly came true in Chesapeake when a man took a bus 2,500 miles to meet a 13-year-old girl he had met on the social networking Web site MySpace, authorities said this week.
Plus, he had a return bus ticket in the girl’s name, a federal agent said Tuesday.
After hearing explicit details of the alleged crime, a U.S. magistrate judge ordered Jesse Lee Wise, a 2 5-year-old door-to-door salesman from Nevada, jailed without bond pending grand jury action.
Wise had set up a tent in a wooded area by the Chesapeake library on Cedar Road, not far from the girl’s house, and sent her sexually explicit messages through the library’s computer, according to court records and testimony.
In a sting operation, Chesapeake police and the State Police arrested Wise on July 17 at the library, while Wise believed he was chatting with the girl over the computer. By that time, he was actually chatting with an undercover trooper.
Wise was initially charged in state court, but the case was taken federally last week on a charge of trying to entice a minor across state lines for sex.
The girl had been having online and telephone conversations with Wise once or twice a week for about 1-1/2 years, a federal agent said Tuesday.
“Where were her parents to allow her MySpace page to have her personal identifying information?” U.S. Magistrate Judge Tommy E. Miller asked in court Tuesday.
The girl, who has not been publicly identified, had her real name and age on her page.
In May this year, as the conversations between Wise and the girl became sexual, the girl reported the relationship to her mother, who called State Police, Paul Wolpert, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent, testified.
“She started getting uncomfortable with the conversations,” Wolpert said. Wise, he said, “was pressing her to meet him.”
At the time of his arrest on state charges, Wise told a WAVY television reporter in a jailhouse interview that he thought the girl was 19. Wise’s attorney raised that point again in federal court Tuesday.
Wolpert said that he believed Wise knew the girl was 13. He cited this July 7 MySpace conversation between Wise and the undercover trooper posing as the girl:
“I’m 13,” the trooper told Wise.
“I know how old you are just don’t type it on here cause I am in a public place,” Wise replied.
He also promised her a ring and told her he would take her back to Arizona to live. Wise has lived in both Arizona and Nevada, where he has a 1-year-old son.
Wise arrived in Norfolk on July 14, took a public bus to Chesapeake and set up his tent outside the library.
According to the court records, he asked the girl to meet him at the library and said that she would recognize him by his dragon/barbed wire tattoo on his left arm.
“Well baby, I am in the tent and it is in the woods as you walk out the front doors,” he wrote to her the day before his arrest.
During a search of the tent, authorities discovered new and used condoms, a ring with a pink heart and two Greyhound bus tickets to Arizona, one in the girl’s name, Wolpert said.
MySpace officials have said that they have installed stringent controls to weed out online sexual predators.
As of February, 90,000 registered sex offenders were removed from MySpace. Wise is not a registered sex offender.
July 30, 2009
Man Accused of Exposing Himself Online
By Robin Schwartz, FOX 2 NewsDETROIT (WJBK) – Police say one man is part of a frightening new epidemic in internet crime. They call him a “cyber flasher,” someone who exposes himself on a Web cam. The Wayne County Sheriff says the suspect logged onto his laptop and went looking for young girls, but he found an undercover cyber-cop instead.
The sheriff’s department’s Internet Crime Unit brings in the latest suspected online predator tangled up in their web. 28-year-old Nikhilkumar Rana of Detroit is accused of exposing himself and performing a sex act over a Web cam in front of what he thought was a 13-year-old girl.
“He essentially found me or my undercover profile in a public chat room,” said internet crime investigator Bill Liczbinski. “He exposed himself on Web cam and he showed his face during the exposure.”
Liczbinski was the person on the other end of the keyboard. He calls Rana a “cyber flasher,” part of a whole new breed of internet predators.
“It’s the new epidemic,” Liczbinski said. “They think if they stay in their house and do their bad deeds that they’re safer. Well, that’s not true.”
Investigators say Rana has been in Detroit for less than a year. He came here from India and was working at a business that provides physical therapy. He told officers he’s never done anything like this before.
Whether that’s true or not, new Sheriff Benny Napoleon says he’s glad to announce the arrest during his first week on the job. He hopes this case serves as a warning for parents.
“You should treat the internet like you would a child going outside. You don’t let your child go outside without telling you where they’re going, who they’re going to be with and how long they’re going to be,” said Liczbinski. “I’m of the opinion that I don’t believe any child belongs in any chat room for any reason. Period.”
Suspects like Rana are the reason why. He’s being held on $75,000 bond and could face up to 16 years in prison.
