An adult sexual predator, posing as a teenager, sought out young boys from 10 to 13 years old to entice them to play on online gaming platforms and then sexually exploited them, police in Scottsdale, Ariz., say – part of a growing trend that authorities contend should put parents on alert. “A lot of cases that we’re coming across, especially with younger victims, are starting from online gaming,” said a detective in the Scottsdale Police Department’s Human Exploitation Unit, reports the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. In this case, Jacob Lozano, 23 and living in Florida, met the boys through online games and lured them onto an instant messaging app. Once there, “he was enticing and coercing these boys … into performing various acts on camera, unbeknownst to them,” the Scottsdale detective said, and “they were being surreptitiously recorded.” Lozano doled out rewards such as PlayStation gift cards and, in at least one case, “he actually ordered pizza to their house,” the detective said. The activity came to light when the mother of an 11-year-old boy with special needs found sexually explicit messages on her son’s cell phone between him and Lozano, and she got in touch with police and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
Scottsdale detectives investigated and identified Lozano. Police soon discovered about a dozen other Arizona boys who they said were also sexually exploited by Lozano, as well as victims in other states. What happened to the children Lozano met online is not uncommon. A 2022 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that in the last several years, increases in online access, new technology, and the rise of encryption are contributing to growing online sexual exploitation of children. “The scale of sexual exploitation and abuse of children online is increasing and the sustained growth is outstripping the U.S. government’s capacity and global capacity to respond,” the report said. Recent NCMEC data shows that reports of online sexual enticement to its CyberTipLine, including financial sextortion of underage people, jumped more than 300% between 2021 and 2023.
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