Online predators exploit gaming apps to target teens, Geneva police issue warning

Online predators exploit gaming apps to target teens

In a FOX 32 Special Report, Terrence Lee found out where your child is most likely to encounter an online predator these days.

CHICAGO - Two months ago, Geneva police posted a shocking warning to the public about human traffickers targeting juveniles through a social media gaming app - a game your child probably plays every day.

In a FOX 32 Special Report, Terrence Lee found out where your child is most likely to encounter an online predator these days.

Geneva is a quiet city in far west suburban Chicago. Some real estate experts even rank it as one of the best places to live in Illinois, giving it high marks for housing, schools, and safety.

But online predators don’t care where you live.

Thanks to a gaming app, a local teen found herself the victim of online predators just a few months ago.

Geneva police posted a warning in March regarding human traffickers targeting juveniles online. The warning said the girl was "contacted by an out-of-state adult" and that "the man and an accomplice enticed the teen to provide funds" for them to meet up with her out of state.

After she was reported missing, Geneva police launched an investigation and law enforcement eventually found the girl out of state with the adults who enticed her to leave Illinois. She has since been reunited with her family.

"We want to make sure that it’s clear that it’s occurring in every region across the United States, and it’s not something anyone can think is just happening somewhere else," said Staca Shehan, vice president for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

The latest report from the NCMEC that looked at missing kids who were enticed online showed Illinois in the top ten states with the most cases. It tied with Michigan and Arizona for the bottom spot.

The report included cases where kids met a predator either through an online video game or a social media site.

No matter the location, researchers said they are seeing a consistent trend.

"That children are being enticed. Their ages are teenagers. That it is a larger number of females than males and that it is the larger number of children that are going missing from a family home as opposed to a child welfare placement," Shehan said.

That's not all the report showed.

"That the children are more often being picked up by the abductor directly. The abductor is traveling to the child when the child goes missing. But as the children are getting older, higher in their teenage years, that does become more common that the child may travel to the abductor and in those situations, the abductor is likely to facilitate that travel," Shehan said.

That was the case with Weston Opus, according to Cook County Sheriff’s police detectives.

They arrested the 42-year-old Glenview man last October for grooming and traveling to engage in sexual acts with a 15-year-old minor in Boston.

"He’s flying her out here, lying to her parents," said Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart. "They think she’s at a summer camp. She’s with him. We, thankfully, working with the police in Massachusetts were able to catch him with her."

When investigators arrested Opus at his house, they not only found him and the young girl, but a gun, ammunition, body armor and lots of computer equipment.

That’s a problem because Opus is also a convicted sex offender.

"Now, probably the newest thing we’re seeing which is new in volume is that the predators are going after very common games that all children, my own children, will play at times," Dart said.

After initially contacting the girl through an online gaming app, detectives said Opus then began communicating with her via text messages, a move made by most online predators.

"And once they get them off of their gaming platform to go to private chat, they can have private conversations with them and that’s when they grab them," said Detective Richard Wistocki.

Wistocki not only specializes in cybercrime cases but also in training other officers and school staff across the country on how to do this type of investigation.

"What parents don’t understand is when a kid wants to play in Roblox, Minecraft or Fortnite, the parents have to set the account," Wistocki said.

"Parents think they’re only playing with their friends and better not talk to anyone you’re not supposed to. Well, kids don’t listen to that. They want to play with everybody," he said.

"If your kid wants any of these games, you set the settings. You set the pin so they can’t change who they can and cannot talk to," Wistocki said.

Wistocki added many kids find themselves in trouble because many sites require users to be at least 13-years-old and they don’t do the math when setting up their account to put in the correct year they were born.

"So when I go to schools, I ask the kids how many of you put in 2000 because they didn’t want to figure out the math. 80% will raise their hand. How old are they today? They’re 24. And this is how they are talking to all of these adults," Wistocki said.

"There are an estimated half a million online predators, active, every day," said Titania Jordan, chief parenting officer for Bark Technologies and co-author of "Parenting in a Tech World."

Bark Technologies is a company that specializes in new devices to help monitor your child's activity online.

She said trying to keep up with technology is like playing wack-a-mole and understands why some parents think it’s safer to buy their child a smartwatch instead of a phone.

"A smartwatch - if you don’t get a kid safe smartwatch - gives children the availability to communicate with the outside world with strangers. And let strangers text them. They can access the internet. They can access browsers. They can access unsafe apps," Jordan said.

"As long as there is WiFi or LTE - a cellular signal – you can connect to the outside world and outside world can connect to your children," she said.

Jordan also has some advice for parents.

"Whatever your child can access, PlayStation, iPad, you name it, Google the name of that device plus two words: "parental controls" and do the work, do the research to set up the free built-in parental controls that come with most devices," Jordan said.

There is a bit of good news from the National Center for Missing Children's report is that it showed what’s described as an overwhelming recovery rate in online enticement cases.

"Typically, there are some additional avenues to develop leads on where the child might be located, social media trail and any interactions in a public space," Shehan said.

"We’re probably talking more like days and weeks here than we are talking about minutes to hours," Shehan said.

But that digital trail that law enforcement follows might not be around much longer.

"We are seeing times where the offender is guiding a child on how to delete social media or how to delete messages," Shehan said.

While some experts say more girls are now playing online video games, the latest numbers from the NCMEC show more boys are being enticed this way and that girls are often enticed when on a social media site. No matter the approach, the prime age range is 13 to 15-years-old.

When the Geneva Police Department posted their warning, they stated the investigation is ongoing by other law enforcement agencies.