MCKINNEY (1080 KRLD) - 13 men are arrested in an online sting operation in Collin County.
The Collin County Sheriff's Office, DPS and five other agencies joined forces for a three-day undercover operation aimed at catching sexual predators preying on children.
Undercover officers all pretended to be children online.
"They pretty much started chats, and (undercover officers were) able to find 13 people trying to meet up with minors," says Collin County Sheriff's Sgt. Jessica Pond.
Collin County Sheriff
The men arrested are:
Matthew Calli, 46
Alexis Corado-Asencio, 26
Blake Cuccaro, 33
Ever Gonzalez, 25
Marcus Griffin, 33
Antwan Jackson, 51
Calvin Ladle, 25
Chris Le, 53
Joel Purrington, 32
Joseph St. John, 48
Kevin Sterling, 37
Chris Wess, 44
Colin Womack, 29
One of the suspects was out on bond from a 2020 arrest in Dallas for sexual assault of a child, another was in town from New York on a business trip, and another was armed with a pistol when he showed up to meet who he thought was a child.
All are charged with online solicitation of a minor, and additional charges could be forthcoming.
"Electronic devices were seized, and they're going to be examined by our child exploitation unit," says Sgt. Pond, "so they'll go through (them) looking for any kind of child pornography and other things like that."
Pond says the fact that these online stings continue to yield multiple arrests shows that this is a problem that is not going away.
"Technology just continues to advance," she says. "If one thing closes down another one's opening up."
