NY- Two dozen men, including a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, have been arrested and charged with soliciting sex over the Internet from an officer who they thought was a child, Suffolk police said.
Suffolk Police Commissioner Richard Dormer, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy and U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop plan to hold a news conference at police headquarters in Yaphank today to release details about the monthlong sting operation.
The arrests culminate a delicate scheme in which officers in the Suffolk Police Department's Computer Crimes Unit nabbed men who they believe intended to have sex with a child they thought they had met in chat rooms over the Internet.
But it was an officer posing as an underage teenager who lured the men into arrests by arranging to meet them at a house police had set up as a trap. Thirteen men agreed to meet the police officer at the house, police said.
The announcement of the arrests comes just two weeks after the sentencing of a man who pleaded guilty in one of Suffolk's most infamous cases.
Lester B. Joy, 24, of Morristown, N.J., who met a 16-year-old Southampton girl in a chat room and developed a sexual relationship with her last year, was sentenced to 31/2 to 7 years in prison Jan. 30. Joy coaxed her to go with him as far as the Mexican border, launching a nationwide search that lasted for two weeks.
The girl eventually called home from El Paso, Texas.
Det. Rory Forrestal of the Computer Crimes Unit has said that men tend to find children to prey on by using search engines that lead to chat rooms frequented by teenagers, and that they develop relationships with the children over time.
Last October, under an agreement with Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Internet giant Yahoo! announced it was closing down chat rooms likely to be visited by sexual predators.
The action was targeted at Yahoo! chat rooms with names such as "5-13 kiddies who love sex," and "Girls 13-16 for much older guys," according to Spitzer's office, which conducted a seven-month probe.
The pact requires Yahoo! to pre-screen chat-room names before listing them, and to nix ones that may promote sex or other crimes between adults and minors.
