Wisconsin man arrested in S.L. Internet-sex sting

A registered sex offender was arrested Tuesday after he allegedly used a Salt Lake City Library computer to ask a woman if he could have sex with her children.

The man, 39, who is a registered sex offender in Wisconsin, was in a chat room where he talked to an undercover police officer posing as a mother with two daughters.

The man eventually solicited sex with the woman's children, Utah Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force director Ken Hansen said.

Unfortunately, Hansen said, there have been other cases of men who meet women in online chat rooms with the intent of having sex with their children.

"There are individuals out there who are spending quite a bit of time looking for children in various ways for sex partners. This is just one way to do it," he said.

The undercover officer, who works for another ICAC task force, contacted authorities in Salt Lake City about a sting. The officer then told the man to go to the laundry room of a nearby apartment complex to meet the daughters.

Members of Utah's ICAC task force posed as transients outside the apartment. When the suspect arrived, the undercover officers asked if he would let them into the apartment because they were cold. The man told them no because he was there to meet a friend in the laundry room.

That tipped off the undercover officers that it was the man they sought, and they arrested him about 4:45 p.m. Tuesday, Hansen said.

The man was booked into the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation of six counts of enticing a minor over the Internet.

Investigators later searched the apartment, near 700 South and 300 East, where the man was staying. He was apparently a transient and paying some people to let him stay with them.

The man was also a suspect in several recent indecent exposure incidents at Crossroads Mall, according to investigators. Several complaints were received by Salt Lake police within the past two months of a heavy-set man exposing himself to women inside the mall.

The man arrested Tuesday is 6 feet tall, 240 pounds and matches the description from the indecent exposure incidents. No charges from those cases had been filed as of Wednesday.

The man is a registered sex offender from Wisconsin where authorities say he also abused the library system in Green Bay. The man was banned from all libraries in Brown County, Wis., after he was caught downloading porn and engaging in sexually explicit conversations in Internet chat rooms, according to police.

In addition, the man had several arrests for obscene and harassing phone calls in Georgia and Wisconsin. Investigators said the man apparently liked to randomly call people and try to get them to engage in sexually explicit conversation. Again, the phones at the Brown County Library were believed to have been used, according to police.

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