Following a six-day undercover operation earlier this month dubbed "Operation March Sadness 2," the Polk County Sheriff's Dept. said four Disney employees were among 108 people arrested in a human trafficking sting, NBC Miami reported.
The department's operation began on March 8 and involved a number of regional law enforcement agencies. Police detectives identified prostitutes who posted advertisements online with the intent to identify and free victims who were being forced into prostitution, as well as anyone else taking part in the trafficking of victims.
In a statement, the Polk County Sheriff's Office noted that four men were arrested for preying on children online.
"The arrests of a human trafficker and four child predators alone makes this whole operation worthwhile," Sheriff Grady Judd said in the statement.
"The online prostitution industry enables traffickers and victimizes those who are being trafficked. Our goal is to identify victims, offer them help, and find and arrest those who are profiting from the exploitation of human beings. Johns fuel the trafficking and victimization. Where there is prostitution, there is exploitation, disease, dysfunction, and broken families," he added.
One of the Disney employees was a 27-year-old man who worked as a lifeguard at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said Wednesday. The lifeguard is accused of sending sexualized images to an undercover detective who was posing online as a 14-year-old girl.
Another Disney employee busted in the sting was a 24-year-old man who worked at the Cosmic restaurant. Other Disney employees arrested were a 45-year-old IT worker and a 27-year-old software developer, Judd said.
“Four arrests of this magnitude in a week is simply remarkable,” the sheriff said at a news conference.
According to reports, undercover detectives made contact online with the suspects and arranged for a meet-and-greet at a location where they were summarily arrested upon their arrival, Judd told reporters.
In addition to the four Disney staffers, a retired judge from the Chicago area was also arrested as part of the sting, while another suspect told police that he is married with eight children and left one of his kids at a soccer game that was being played nearby so he could meet with a prostitute.
"The oldest suspect arrested was a 67-year-old man who showed up drinking Ensure, Judd said. The youngest was 17," NBC Miami reported.
As for CNN, Natural News reported in December Project Veritas had published a report based on a whistleblower’s text messages indicating that a CNN producer fantasized about having sex with his fiance’s underage daughter, while also soliciting obscene pictures from the young girl.
In one text message exchange, the producer told the source how his fiancé’s daughter “was wearing very closely cut bottoms at the pool,” going on to use extremely graphic language to describe how he saw the outline of her private parts.
“Other texts were too graphic and sickening to directly quote. The messages and videos were obtained by a woman who engaged in a sexual relationship with the producer in question for a decade,” the investigative journalism organization noted on its website, adding:
Project Veritas’ first course of action was to reach out to authorities. Following that, we reached out to the mother of the children to ensure their safety. Project Veritas then reached out to his employer, CNN, to inform them of the situation and give them the opportunity to comment. As of this press release, we are still awaiting a response.
“The producer in question also solicited sexually explicit photos of the source’s underage daughter,” the report added.
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