Online gaming attracts predators as well as kids

This holiday season, kids across the state and the nation will tear into wrapped boxes and hold up one of several new next-generation video game consoles that promises to transport them into a variety of growing gaming "worlds" on the Internet.

Next-gen consoles such as Xbox360, Playstation3 and Nintendo's Wii open up a world of online gaming that previous game consoles lacked. Kids and adults from all over the globe can now converge in cyberspace to compete in online martial-arts matches or band together for a fantasy quest. But while online gaming draws video game fans, they also are attracting another type of person: the online predator.

"What we found in the past is that child predators tend to move where the children are going and this is one of those areas," said Ken Wallentine, chief of law enforcement for the Utah Attorney General's Office and the head of the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. For the past few years, agents with ICAC have patrolled chat rooms, posing as minors in the hopes of catching sexual predators. Now agents are faced with the prospect of predators going into online gaming worlds to find their prey.

Dave White, an agent with ICAC, said the problem came to their attention a year ago while giving presentations to school students about Internet safety. White said kids began coming up to him and other agents saying people had tried to have lewd conversations with them or asked for personal information. "I thought, wow, this is an area where we need to look into," White said.

"We've had complaints from individuals about their children being contacted and lewd statements being made to them," Wallentine said.

Now Utah's ICAC will become one of the first law enforcement organizations in the nation to dedicate agents to patrol and investigate online gaming worlds.

The obvious question — what do middle-aged cops know about playing video games?

Not a whole heck of a lot, Wallentine admits.

Recently the Utah Attorney General's Office enlisted the help of a 15-year-old to teach them how to be "gamers" and how to behave like teenagers. Zach Loulias, the nephew of an ICAC agent, said he didn't know online predators were a problem until he ran into one himself.

"One day I was playing at home and a guy just started asking me questions, like where I live. I think he thought I was a girl. I told him I really wasn't interested," Loulias said. The teen was recently honored by Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff for volunteering countless hours to help ICAC agents.