These 13 men are charged with luring kids for sex – but were actually chatting with cops – NJ.com

It might be via social media, on an app, Xbox, or an online chat room where youth talk about their favorite video game. Pedophiles are there too, trolling for children, ready to groom them with casual conversation. It then turns to sexual talk, until they agree to meet up for sex.

But sometimes, when they arrive at the park or hotel or airport to meet the child, they are actually meeting several police officers, and out come the handcuffs.

Across New Jersey, undercover detectives are posing as children on websites, apps and other online spots, carrying out luring stings that see perpetrators arrested, and often convicted, jailed and marked as sex offenders.

The detectives working on some of the most high-profile arrests are from the New Jersey State Police Digital Technology Investigations Unit in Hamilton, Mercer County.

State Police Detective Sgt. Paul Sciortino has been working to catch online predators for six years and estimates that the number of conversations he’s engaged in with adults is “in the thousands.” Much fewer end in convictions, he said.

Police that do this kind of work are trained to adhere to strict standards set by the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, or ICAC. They keep up on the latest ways predators are reaching out to children, whether its a new app or website. Then a detective comes up with a child’s backstory, creates a profile in the online community, and waits.

The detective cannot start a conversation with an adult, or it would be considered entrapment and could never result in a conviction, Sciortino said.

“They’ll just approach,” he said. “At that point you can engage in conversation.”

Also to avoid entrapment issues, the detective has to wait for the adult to bring up sexual things, he said. Officers can reply, but can’t engage in “dirty talk” or send any pictures. “They lead the conversation and you answer.”

If the adult cuts off the conversation, the detective can’t try to get them to keep engaging, he said. But sometimes, a conversation seems concluded, and then the adult will start messaging again weeks later, he said.

Sciortino said posing as a child is strange, but playing the part of an adult interested in trafficking a kid — like a parent offering his child for sex in exchange for money — is “horrific.”

Understandably, not everyone is cut out for this kind of police work. He said that while many in the DTIU are trained in how to carry out the stings, much fewer actually do it.

The detectives are advised to find ways to destress and dissociate from the conversations, he said. One tip is for a detective to never have personal photos — like of his or her kids — in the area where they’re working on a computer. But the conversations don’t always end when you clock out, he said.

“It never ends,” Sciortino said. “From 5 a.m. to 2 a.m., my phone will go off, at dinner, at home.”