Authorities on Friday announced the results of a sting operation that ended with the arrests of 18 Northern California men, including 13 from Sacramento County, who are suspected of sexually soliciting undercover investigators posing as children online.
Investigators with the Internet Crimes Against Children team, which works out of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, initiated “Operation Secret Admirer” beginning on Valentine’s Day. The 15-day undercover investigation was jointly conducted by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.
The undercover investigators took to various social media sites and other online platforms posing as children 13 and younger to identify, contact and arrest anyone who was trying to target children for sex.
Sheriff Jim Cooper said the suspects in the sting operations would attempt to “groom” who they believed were children and arrange to meet them for sex. He said some would send nude photos of themselves to entice the children to do the same; typically a ruse to blackmail the child into further illicit behavior by threatening to expose the child to their family or friends.
The sheriff said among the 18 men arrested, three of them were registered sex offenders and another was wearing a GPS ankle bracelet for pre-trial monitoring in a felony false imprisonment case. He said some sexually solicited more than one undercover investigator, indicating they were willing to target more than one child.
He urged parents not to give their children unrestricted or unattended access to social media apps and other online platforms, where sexual predators continue to target children.
“These are very bad people we got off the streets,” Cooper said during a news conference Friday. “There are a whole lot more out there.”
The sheriff said they decided to release the suspects’ mugshots, because investigators believe the arrested suspects have targeted children online before. Authorities asked anyone who was victimized by one of the suspects to report it to local law enforcement.
‘If you go after our children, we will come after you’
The suspect faces charges that include contacting a minor with the intent to commit a sex crime, arranging to meet with a minor for lewd purposes, attempted lewd or lascivious acts with a child younger than 14, distribution of harmful material to a minor and attempted production of child pornography. Sheriff’s officials said the arrested suspects, if convicted, would face incarceration and be required to register as sex offenders. Investigators from the California Department of Justice also participated in the sting operation.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who also attended Friday’s news conference at Sheriff’s Office headquarters, said the arrests are the result of the collaborative work and expertise of the investigative team. “I have one message for every predator out there: If you go after our children, we will come after you,” Bonta said at the news conference. “And this is an example of that. We will hold you accountable. We will put you behind bars, we will make sure we keep our kids safe.”