(NewsNation Now) — Authorities in Florida have arrested 13 men accused of soliciting children for sex as part of a predator sting.
All of the men arrested allegedly traveled to have sex with what they thought were underage kids, but instead were met by authorities who took them into custody. The Walton County Sheriff’s Office headed up the operation with help from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.
“We know that these are occurring all the time so we’re taking a proactive approach to kind of seek out these predators and then work to get them caught — solicit them to come and travel and get them arrested,” Capt. Dustin Cosson, with the Walton County Sheriff’s Office, said Monday on “Dan Abrams Live.”
As part of “Operation Wolves Blanket,” investigators went undercover as minors communicating on numerous social media platforms with the suspected predators.
“We have checks and balances of what we can say and what we can’t say,” investigator Heather Tice said. “But yeah, we do have some investigators that sound like 13-year-old girls, and they’ll be chatting with them on the phone.”
Each of the men has been charged with second- and third-degree felonies.
“We had investigators interviewing these people afterwards and those investigators got an 80% confession rate,” Tice said.
Many of the men charged are facing the possibility of up to 25 years behind bars.
“We have those prosecutors kind of standing there over the shoulder of the chatters to make sure that we are doing things how we should do for that successful prosecution,” Cosson said. “So we can hold these individuals accountable, but also hopefully prevent these individuals from seeking out live victims because that’s what the ultimate goal is.”
Cosson said although the operation lasted five days, it is not over. The sting also provided law enforcement with more than 60 leads on other potential suspects.