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Pedophiles troll MySpace
Washtenaw detective finds 100% of his cases have accounts
Monday, October 23, 2006
BY AMALIE NASH
News Staff Reporter
It's a parent's nightmare: Sex offenders prowling through MySpace, looking for young victims.
For Washtenaw County Sheriff's Detective Kevin Parviz, it's a disturbing reality in his work.
In the 12 cyber pedophile cases he has investigated this year, Parviz says, every single suspect has had an account on MySpace, a social networking site popular with teenagers and young adults. What's more, nine of those cases involved men serving probation for a sex offense conviction with a victim under 13 years old.
Parviz, the county's only full-time cyber detective, had an idea at the beginning of the year: Instead of just posing as a teenager online and waiting for solicitations, why not check up on registered sex offenders who are on probation?
The results have been successful, and perhaps shocking to some.
In nine surprise visits to the offenders' homes, Parviz and probation officers found the men were violating the terms of their probation. In five of the homes, police found child pornography, in several homes they found the men had computers though they had been forbidden to own one, and in other cases the detectives found the men were communicating with underage teenagers.
"In the eyes of a police officer, I'm not surprised one bit because I've never come across a pedophile who just gave it up,'' Parviz said. "I think this is very important and more attention should be paid to it. These are people who were usually charged with higher offenses and plea bargained to second-degree criminal sexual conduct, then served some jail time and are out on probation.''
Parviz can't say for sure whether all of the men he investigated were using their MySpace accounts to communicate with teenagers. But since probation conditions for sex offenders - especially those who commit crimes using a computer - often forbid the person from owning a computer while they are on probation, it's still a violation.
MySpace, with its more than 100 million users, made headlines again last Wednesday after a technology reporter for Wired Magazine uncovered hundreds of convicted sex offenders on the site with a computer code that he wrote, leading to one man's arrest. The reporter identified 744 sex offenders with profiles on the site.
Last month, Ann Arbor police investigated a reported relationship between a then-15-year-old girl and 37-year-old man she met on MySpace. Police received a tip shortly after they began communicating, but both denied anything sexual occurred, Detective Sgt. Jeff Connelly said.
"I think it was headed in that direction, but it was stopped,'' Connelly said.
In Parviz's 12 cases, he sought charges that included probation violations, possession of child pornography and using a computer to commit a crime. Three men have been convicted. Two committed suicide. And the rest are pending.
Leo Lelonde, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections, said probation and parole officers across the state have employed similar tactics to keep track of offenders. He said agents have a tool that they can attach to computers that will detect whether the computer may contain pornography or child pornography. They then seize the computer for a forensic analysis.
Figures were not available on the number of offenders on probation for sex offenses in Washtenaw County.
"Probationers always know that their officers can make unannounced visits, so they should be on the straight and narrow,'' Lelonde said.
That lesson was apparently lost on one 24-year-old probationer. He was out of jail for two weeks when he got his Internet cable line installed, Parviz said. When the detective and probation agent visited three days later, they discovered that he had been online nearly nonstop, accosting teenage girls, Parviz said. He's now in prison, serving a two- to 15-year sentence.
"He was to the point where he was saying things like, 'I want to know you,' and I believe we stopped him before he was able to do anything,'' Parviz said.
Another man claimed to be 25 on his MySpace account - but was actually 51, Parviz said. He had posted a photo of a man who appeared to be about 25.
But MySpace isn't the only place where online solicitations occur.
Parviz said one mother called police after posting a child's leotard on eBay and receiving e-mails from a man asking for nude pictures of the 8-year-old daughter.
On one hard drive that a suspect tried to erase, Parviz recovered an e-mail from a 16-year-old girl telling a man she couldn't meet him because she didn't have a driver's license. The detective then e-mailed the teen asking for her mother to call him and learned the girl met the man - who was much older than he claimed - through a gaming Web site. He said the mother didn't know about the e-mails.
When Parviz speaks to neighborhood groups or others, that's his No. 1 lesson: Know what your children are doing and who they're talking to online.
"It's no excuse for parents to say they don't know computers. They have to know,'' Parviz said. "Pedophiles take advantage of parents not knowing who their children are communicating with. It used to be that parents taught their kids how to use different tools, and now it's the other way around. They need to get educated.''
Parviz works from an office in the sheriff's Ypsilanti Township substation, where two FREDs (Forensic Recover Evidence Devices) keep busy analyzing computer data. When computers are seized, he makes a mirror copy of the hard drive, then uses that copy to search for data.
Although he doesn't spend much time online waiting to be solicited, Parviz does have several MySpace accounts where he poses as a teenager - even using his own childhood photos. But the cases generated from probationer house calls and the identity theft and fraud cases he investigates take the bulk of his time.
Parviz admitted the pedophile cases can get to him.
"It's sickening, but I try not to put my personal feelings into it,'' Parviz said. "You have to really change your mindset. I interviewed this one man for three hours, and every minute of it I wanted to punch his lights out, but he thought I was his best friend.''
Because the cyber pedophile cases often cross jurisdictional boundaries, Parviz works closely with detectives across the area - and nation. He said he believes the volume of cases won't decrease until authorities are able to better investigate them and parents better monitor their children.
"When a kid is molested or something happens, they carry that with them for life,'' Parviz said. "There needs to be zero tolerance.''
Amalie Nash can be reached at
anash@annarbornews.com or 734-994-6832.
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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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