Sheriff Jeff Gahler hoped that the undercover operation in Maryland, US would come back ’empty handed’ – but instead he found multiple sexual predators willing to ‘terrorise kids’
A suspected paedophile was snared by an acclaimed predator hunter after joking he hoped he wasn’t being set up during online chats with a “14-year-old girl”. Tyler Devault, 33, was one of “the nasty nine” arrested in a major sting operation by police.
The undercover operation will be featured on hit US TV series “Takedown with Chris Hansen”, hosted by the renowned journalist who previously hosted “To Catch a Predator”.
Devault — who pretended to be 19 — had told an undercover cop posing as a teenage girl that he wanted to meet her and even quipped he “didn’t want to see Chris Hansen from the show ‘To Catch a Predator’ waiting for him”, police said.
The show looks at snaring perverts who chat online with someone they think is a minor and try to arrange having sex with them. But in reality, they are speaking to an undercover agent who arranges a meet-up with the unsuspecting sicko.
Hansen is then there to question the paedophile on the spot before cops appear and take them away. On Monday, Sheriff Jeff Gahler of the Harford County Sheriff’s Office in Maryland posted a video on Facebook confirming that nine arrests have been made as part of the investigation.
He said: “When I was first approached about conducting this operation, it was my sincere hope that we would come up empty handed, that we would find there were no predators that wanted to terrorise our kids here in Harford County.
“And that the operation would end with zero arrests.” However, Gahler admitted: “Sadly that was not the case at all.”
A number of cases were discussed in some detail in the by the officer in the video, reports WMAR 2 News. First in cuffs was 72-year-old Charles Schmidt, from a town called Rising Sun, who allegedly believed he was meeting a 14-year-old girl.
The twisted pensioner reportedly even stopped off for condoms and booze to wash down his Viagra.
Then came Nicholas Fountain, 38, from Pennsylvania — a man who Gahler says owns two daycare centres.
Fountain allegedly met an undercover cop posing as a teen on a Reddit forum called ‘Boys Ask Dads’. With his wife out of town, he was apparently desperate to “meet as soon as possible.”
Patrick Macaluso, 36, a Virginia attorney, was also arrested. He thought he was arranging a secret tryst with a teenage boy, cops said.
But officers stormed his office instead — and found him on his government computer, allegedly trolling for even more underage victims.
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