A middle school teacher, a graduate student, and seven others face felony charges for allegedly soliciting sex online from minors or undercover agents posing as parents of minors, the New Mexico Department of Justice (NMDOJ) announced Monday. announced.
The suspects posted sexually explicit messages and, in some cases, images to investigators’ decoy accounts on various “non-traditional digital messaging services,” including Kik, SkiptheGames, MocoSpace, Discord, Grindr, Fetlife, and Sniffies. , the New Mexico Attorney General said. Raul Torres told reporters. At a press conference.
The suspects were charged with solicitation of a child using electronic devices, attempted sexual penetration, and other related crimes, according to reports.
All but one suspect were arrested between October 5th and October 11th. slide deck It has become clear that Torez’s office announced the arrest and indictment. According to some information, the first six people were arrested at various meetings. press release From Torres’ office. (Related: ‘Most prolific creator’ of child pornography involving more than 100 children convicted, authorities say)
One of the suspects was a middle school teacher in Albuquerque who said he wanted “baby girls to pamper,” “girls to buy new sex toys to try out,” and “constantly want to be better at sex.” It is said that he was looking for a girl who might be. According to “Fundamentals” criminal charges. According to NMDOJ, the agent who contacted him was posing as a father intending to offer his 12-year-old child for sex.
Another suspect, a graduate student at the University of New Mexico (UNM), is accused of knowingly masturbating with an agent posing as a 15-year-old girl and asking her how much she would pay him for sex. be. The girl was a minor, according to criminal charges.
a UNM Department of Physics and Astronomy Webpage A student with the same name as the suspect is listed as a graduate student in the same department.
a LinkedIn profile He also described the student with the same name as a “physics doctoral student.”
Another suspect reportedly sent messages to investigators posing as a “bad father” with a “child” (a 12-year-old girl). criminal charges. She is said to have suggested that she would give the girl a fistfight “probably…soon”, adding that she “likes anything that is forced” and is “a little rough around the edges”.
Torres announced “with great pride” that the arrests were the result of Operation Overwatch. The operation, a multi-organ undercover online chat investigation targeting child predators, began in September, according to NMDOJ.
Torrez said the investigation is active and told reporters that “the highest public safety priority for our nation’s special agents and prosecutors is the protection of children.”
FBI Albuquerque Special Agent Raul Boujanda said the investigation is “a wake-up call to all predators who attack and prey on our most vulnerable children.”
Online child sexual exploitation and abuse has exploded into a global epidemic over the past decade, said Jason T. Stevens, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Acting Special Agent in Charge of El Paso. told reporters.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received more than 36 million reports in 2023, surpassing the center’s initial record of 1 million reports in 2014, Stevens added.
