Reprint from the Progress Times - September 19, 2008
©Progress Times 2008 - All Rights Reserved

 

PD tracks cyber crime

 

By David Rodriguez

When fifteen-year-old Amy met Bill, she was a typical teenage girl. All her worries and stresses felt that much smaller as she typed them out to her new friend online. Bill was sympathetic and seemed to really understand what she was going through.

When Amy went missing her mother went through her room and was horrified to find out her daughter had decided to get on a bus and meet a man she had been talking to online. As she drove her daughter home after finding her in another town, she had no idea what to say.

When Amy was assaulted by Bill in a motel room in her hometown three weeks later, all of her mother’s fears were realized and the true scope of the danger of online predators became clear to both of them. Unfortunately, just a little too late.

It is this story that serves as not only a template for examining online predators’ behavior but also a cautionary tale that the Mission Police Department uses when it visits local schools to educate parents and kids about the dangers of the Internet and online predators.

“It is important to us that we educate not just the kids but the parents on how easy it is for their children to meet online predators,” said Mission Police Department Lieutenant Martin Garza. “We want them to know what dangers are out there and that there are ways they can be vigilant in preventing something terrible from happening.”

A year and a half ago, the Mission Police Department began to develop a special crimes investigation unit. Out of the eight investigators who handle cases ranging from white-collar crimes such as identity theft to prostitution rings, two have been assigned to cyber crimes.

These two investigators have made the predator’s business their business, and to do that, they have to go where the predators are.

“I pretty much just log and pretend to be a 13-year-old girl and start saying ‘hi’ to people,” said Cyber Crime Special Investigator Brenda Cantu, who, because of pending investigations has requested that her name be changed in this article. “A lot of the sites I get from kids at school. I log on and it is really crazy the stuff that’s out there.”

For at least a couple hours a day Brenda sits at a computer and chats on the popular chatting forum, Yahoo Chat. Yahoo Chat allows anyone to create a name, log on and chat with other people both publicly in a chat room or privately.

Brenda, posing as a 13-year-old girl, simply says hello to people and responds when approached.

“I can’t do it all day but I try to do it at least a couple hours a day,” said Brenda. “I just tell the people I’ve been talking to that I just got back from school. There are things that people say that tip you off and let you know that you might be dealing with a predator.”

Once a crime is committed, such as transmitting sexually explicit images to a minor, in this case Brenda, Mission PD develops the case, processes the evidence and sends it to the proper jurisdiction, which is determined by where the offender lives. Already Mission PD, through Brenda and the other cyber crimes investigator’s efforts, has sent cases to Houston, Florida and California. The cases are handed over to a detective in that area.

“The crime takes place when images are being sent from one person to another,” said Garza. “Images of sexually explicit content to a minor is one of the offenses. But the one we’re mostly trying to prevent is an adult actually meeting with a minor.”

That is what the department tries to impress on students when they visit schools.

“During the summer the kids have a lot of time on their hands and the parents are gone,” said Martin Garza. “The predators know when kids are online and parents aren’t home.”

Cyber crime investigation at Mission PD has not just been limited to chatting. The department has also made social networking sites such as Myspace and LiveJournal and even bulletin board sites such as Craigslist a priority. 

“One of the things we do throughout the school year and we like to emphasize is a presentation on Myspace,” said Garza. “The presentation targets kids in junior high level to senior in high school and lets them know of the dangers of chatting with people they don’t know. It gives them key words and signals to let them know they are speaking to an adult.”

“When we are investigating missing persons between the ages of 10 and 16, we look at Myspace accounts and look at what has been said to see if there are any leads that can point us in the right direction,” said Garza. “Many people would be surprised at how much information you can get on the Internet about runaways or missing people.”

In early August of this year, the department’s vigilance paid off when a prostitution ring was discovered by investigators who found advertisements for massages accompanied by nude photos and Mission telephone numbers. The investigation led police to two houses and two arrests.

None of this, of course, surprises Brenda, who says sometimes she has hard time believing the stuff she sees online.

“If parents just took 10 or 15 minutes to learn how to navigate this stuff it would help a lot,” said Brenda. “There are pretty much monsters everywhere.”