The Sugar Land Police Department recently concluded an online predator sting with the arrests of four men who engaged in sexually-explicit conduct with what they believed was a 13-year-old girl.
Arrested were Mathiyalagan Gopal, 26, of Plano; Paul Mahan, 37, of Friendswood; Wesley Bitner, 46, of Cypress and Sergio Herrera, 42, of Spring.
The arrests were the result of a summer-long investigation targeting child predators who engaged in sexually explicit and illegal conduct with children in Internet chat rooms. In each incident, the men participated in illegal sexually-oriented activity.
Gopal traveled to the Sugar Land area after soliciting sex; Mahan sent a sexually explicit photo of himself; Bitner sent sexually explicit material of himself and Herrera sent sexually explicit messages.
All were arrested and charged with online solicitation of a minor, a second-degree felony with bond amounts ranging from $25,000 to $200,000.
The police department said it would continue to take a proactive approach on the Internet to keep area children safe.
They also recommended the following safety tips for parents:
- Investigate safeguarding programs or options online service providers offer. These include monitoring or filtering capabilities.
- Websites for children are not permitted to request personal information without a parent’s permission. Talk to children about what personal information is and why it should never be provided to people online.
- If children use chat or e-mail, talk to them about never meeting in person with anyone they first “met” online.
- Keep the computer in the family room or another open area of your home.
- Children should not complete a profile for a service provider and children’s screen names should be nondescript so as not to identify that the user is a child.
17. September 2009 at 11:56 am
Best advice ever—-
Keep the computer in the family room or another open area of your home.
Never put a pc in a kids room. Heck, growing up I never knew anyone who had a phone in their room.
17. September 2009 at 11:54 am
I didn’t know it was a crime to send sexually explicit msgs to a online person who says they’re a minor. Interesting. I’d like sit in on his trial.
17. September 2009 at 8:36 am
Busted, pervs! Great!
Now a question. Do the police departments around the country
have officers dedicated to catching online predators or do the
detectives take time off the other cases they’re working to
try and entice online perverts? Curious.