MySpace Scams

Jesse Clay Scott, 33, of Seguin, Texas, is just the latest of about 30 convicted sex offenders arrested to date by the Texas Attorney General’s Fugitive and Cyber Crimes units for allegedly accessing MySpace in violation of parole conditions. Four others were arrested for allegedly using the social-networking site to meet and sexually proposition undercover agents posing as minors under the age of 15, the Texas Attorney General’s office said in a statement and videotaped news conference.

Scott, arrested last week, allegedly used both his home computer and cell phone to access his MySpace account. He was paroled in 2008 after serving five and a half years in prison for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl, the statement said.

A MySpace representative said the News Corp.-owned social network is doing everything it can to keep sex offenders off the site.

“The safety and security of our users is a top priority for MySpace. We have removed and preserved the MySpace profile of this offender,” Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace chief security officer, said in a statement. “We employ a best of breed solution that we continue to improve on an ongoing basis in an ever changing environment. We hope that the remaining 29 states, including Texas, quickly pass e-mail registration legislation so that offenders can be punished for providing false information online.”

The arrest announcement comes one day after MySpace handed over the names of 90,000 registered sex offenders found on its site to the Connecticut Attorney General’s office, which had subpoenaed the social-networking site last month for the data.

Sentinel, the technology provider MySpace uses to find sex offenders on its site, accused Facebook this week of having 9,000 registered sex offenders on its site in what looks on the surface to be a ploy to drum up business.

The use of social networks by sex offenders has become a hot topic. Attorneys general claim the sites are not kid-safe if so many registered sex offenders are on there, while a recent report finds that those concerns may be overblown.

As technology becomes increasingly more complex, law enforcement has to evolve to keep up with the modern perpetrator.

Adam Lebowitz, an ex-Grady Hospital doctor infected with HIV, was arrested in Coweta last November after allegedly soliciting sex from a teenage boy he met on the Internet.

Lebowitz was charged with criminal attempt to commit aggravated child molestation, to sexually exploit a child, to commit statutory rape, to commit aggravated sodomy, as well as reckless conduct — for knowingly exposing a person to the AIDS virus, which is a felony — and obstruction of law enforcement, according to Assistant District Attorney Kevin McMurry in a previous interview with The Times-Herald.

Lebowitz has since been indicted and arraigned and is awaiting trial. He also faces similar charges out of Clayton and DeKalb counties.

Recently, the popular social networking Web site MySpace.com created a database as a means to identify and remove registered sex offenders from its online community. Officials with the online site have also agreed to share sex offender data — how many registered sex offenders are using the site and where they live — with attorneys general from eight states, according to The Associated Press.

MySpace general counsel Mike Angus announced that the site has already used the database to remove about 7,000 profiles out of a total of about 180 million, according to the AP.

Federal privacy laws require states to file subpoenas or other legal requests before MySpace can release the information.

Sgt. Mike McGuffey, an investigator at the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office who primarily handles the local sex offender list, is pleased that MySpace has started to share information with law enforcement.

“Predators should have absolutely zero access to places where children congregate, whether that be in public places or on the Internet,” said McGuffey.

McGuffey has been receiving increasingly more reports of incidents that occur online. He admits to using MySpace as “a resource” in solving crimes, although this new resource sometimes complicates the process.

While McGuffey feels the progress being made with MySpace has the potential of making the Web site a slightly safer place for young people to investigate, he points out that technology continues to evolve and predators will invent new ways of targeting the public. Safety against online predators starts in the home, according to the investigator.

“Ultimately, it ought to be up to the parents — it’s their responsibility to take care of their children,” said McGuffey. “Parents should be more involved in their children’s lives than in anything else. They need to set rules and enforce punishment when those rules are broken.”

Parents are advised to monitor their children’s online activities and not allow free reign. Sometimes, children will think that setting their profile to “private” will prevent their personal information from being compromised. But it won’t, reminds McGuffey.

“Even grownups should be careful on the Internet,” said McGuffey.

He especially cautions against dating Web sites, because predators often seek out common interests as a way into that person’s life. Adults are advised against posting pictures of their children online for potential offenders to see.

“A child predator will zero in on your children,” he continued.

Overall, America appears to be more aware of the dangers lurking on the Internet, according to McGuffey. Programs such as Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” have educated parents and children about how easy it is to fall victim to a predator and how bold these offenders can be. However, according to the investigator, the program is also educating the predator about the justice system and may, in some cases, help the person commit crimes more effectively.

“A true predator is going to do whatever it takes to get to his victim — wherever children congregate, he will be there.”

The following is a list of tips for navigating safely online:

* Just as in public, people should not talk to strangers.

* Parents should set computer filters and activate security features on all home computers whenever possible.

* Don’t allow children to have Internet access in their bedroom.

* Check the computer’s Internet history to see what sites have been visited.

* Finally, never underestimate what people are capable of.

Written by Elizabeth Richardson

California may join Kentucky and Virginia in passing a law that gives the identities of registered sex offenders to social Internet groups such as MySpace.

The proposed legislation is California’s attempt to monitor sex offenders who troll chat rooms looking for young victims.

The plan would require registered sex offenders to report their e-mail addresses and Internet identities to the state which, in turn, would give them to MySpace and other social networks to block participation, the Sacramento Bee reported Monday.

The legislation is similar to proposed federal legislation and to new laws in Kentucky and Virginia.

Supporters call the legislation timely because online chat rooms and social internet groups are wildly popular. MySpace has about 100 million visitors per month, the Bee said.

Critics argue the legislation would infringe upon the free-speech rights of convicts who have not acted suspiciously and that predators easily could change their e-mail or instant message addresses.

MySpace said it will develop technologies to help block convicted sex offenders.

MySpace is partnering with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. to build a database containing names, physical descriptions and other identifiable details on sex offenders in the United States. The News Corp. site, however, stopped short of adopting Sentinel’s technology for verifying the ages and identities of its users.

The database, to be called Sentinel Safe, “will allow us to aggregate all publicly available sex offender databases into a real-time searchable form, making it easy to cross-reference and remove known registered sex offenders from the MySpace community,” Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace’s chief security officer, said in a statement.

Parents, school administrators and law-enforcement authorities have become increasingly worried that teens are finding trouble at social-networking sites, which provide tools for messaging, sharing photos and creating personal pages known as profiles.

The aim of such sites is for users to expand their circles of friends — and critics say those circles sometimes include predators, including those previously convicted of sexual crimes.

John Cardillo, Sentinel’s chief executive, said the database will give MySpace and other sites a tool to help keep out sex offenders.

Investigators said a local Pennsylvania man tried to lure a 14-year-old girl into a sexual encounter while out on bail in another Internet sex case.

Dustin Pawlicki, 20, was arrested in September after agents from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Child Predator Unit found him using the MySpace Web site to send a series of sexually graphic e-mail messages to a 14-year-old girl.

Pawlicki is charged with using a computer in an electronics store to send those messages.

Pawlicki was already facing charges after being arrested in June. He was picked up when he traveled to North Huntingdon to have sex with an undercover agent that he believed was a 13-year-old girl.

Pawlicki now faces charges that could put him in jail for up to 17 years if he is convicted.

BY FRANK MAIN

MySpace.com touts itself as “a place for friends.”

But a Naperville teenager discovered the social networking Web site also is a place for sexual predators, authorities said Friday.

Gerald Wheeler, 40, is being held in Salt Lake City on federal charges of using MySpace to coax the 13-year-old girl to engage in sexual conduct.

“This coordinated effort has taken another sexual predator off the street and off line,” Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said.

In July, the girl’s father contacted Naperville police and reported his daughter received obscene messages on her MySpace site and her Tagged.com account from people calling themselves Mike and Brian, authorities said.

The messages allegedly asked her to fly to New York to enter a modeling contract in exchange for engaging in sexual conduct.

With the help of her father, police found photos of the girl in sexual poses, authorities said.

Computer messages traced

Investigators traced the computer messages to an Internet cafe and gaming facility in Salt Lake City. The owner said Wheeler was a manager and the only one with access to the computer at the time the girl was contacted.

A cell phone number for “Brian” belonged to a former employee who was close to Wheeler, authorities said.

Wheeler was convicted in 1994 in Utah of attempted forcible sex abuse, a felony, and was placed on the state’s sex offender registry, records show.

“Wheeler is a prime example of why parents need to educate themselves on the Internet and pay close attention to their children’s activity while online,” Naperville police Sgt. Bill Davis said.

Kids used to hang out in vacant lots, then in malls and now, online.

BeNetSafe helps you to be a better parent by lovingly and effectively “chaperoning” your children online, just as you always have, offline.

BeNetSafe will monitor your child’s information on the Internet and provide you with detailed reports and feedback alerting you to potentially dangerous and risky behavior.

Myspace.com and other similar web sites have been in the news a lot lately. The reason that they are in the news is because kids get on these web sites and are able to post lots of personal information, and anyone can get access to that information. You may encounter argumentative teens asking, “What is the big deal mom?” or “What is the big deal dad? I’m just putting a little bit of information out there.”

The problem is this. First of all, when kids start to put information on Myspace, they are often doing so with peers standing over their shoulder or in the same room; their friends will encourage them to put more and more information there.

Secondly, teens are at an age where they trust the people that are on the other end of the computer more than they really should. There is some good research that suggests that kids are very trusting of strangers online when there is no good reason for that.

Finally, kids are at an age where they’re willing to take risks. You can talk to them about this, but they don’t see the risk in the same way that you do.