MARION COUNTY, Fla. – A child sex sting set up by the Marion County Sheriff’s Office led to the arrests of 40 people, including a trespassed UF student on a visa and a contractor for the U.S. Department of the Army.
Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods held a news conference on Wednesday to discuss the arrests and was joined by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and State Attorney Bill Gladson.
The operation, conducted last week, successfully captured men traveling to meet children in Marion County for sex, a news release states.
An additional eight people were arrested before the official start of the sting. The sheriff’s office said that as they set up the fake child profiles for the operation, they sometimes catch people before they even start.
In all the cases, Woods said the suspects made contact online with people they thought were minors, but were actually undercover officers. The sheriff’s office said the suspects all engaged in sexually explicit conversations with the children, then arranged a time and place to meet them. Some of the men travelled an hour or more to meet a child in Marion County, the sheriff’s office said.
Woods highlighted that while 35 of the suspects were looking to meet an underage girl, five were looking for boys.
[WATCH a replay of the news conference]
“The parents out there that have only boys do not think and do not believe that your sons are not victims in these cases, do not think that they’re not vulnerable,” Woods said.
Woods also highlighted that seven non-U.S. citizens were among those arrested, saying they traveled from Jamaica, El Salvador, Dubai and India.
Woods also said one of the suspects was a student at the University of Florida here on a student visa.
However, a spokesperson for UF said the suspect had actually been trespassed from campus two weeks ago for three years.
The sheriff’s office reaffirmed with News 6 that he was a student. A spokesperson said UF officials were not cooperative initially, but ultimately revoked the student visa and issued a trespass warning.
Woods said another suspect “for a split second broke my heart.”
“Retired first sergeant of the Army,” Woods said. “Is a contractor for the Department of the Army. Right now. That breaks my heart.”
The Ocala Police Department, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, the Port Orange Police Department, the Lake City Police Department, and the Florida Highway Patrol Aviation Unit also took part in the operation.
The men face numerous charges, including traveling to meet a minor for illegal sexual conduct, human trafficking and using a computer to solicit a child.
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