New battlefield of online sexual exploitation: Gaming platforms popular with children

PHOENIX – An adult sexual predator, posing as a teenager, sought out young boys from 10 to 13 years old to entice them to play various online gaming platforms and then sexually exploited them, police in Scottsdale say – part of a growing trend that authorities contend should put parents on alert.

“A lot of cases that we’re coming across, especially with younger victims, are starting from online gaming,” said the case detective, who asked not to be named because of his undercover work in the Scottsdale Police Department’s Human Exploitation Unit.

In this case, Jacob Lozano, 23, living in Florida, met the boys through online games and lured them onto an instant messaging app, according to police records and interviews. Once there, “he was enticing and coercing these boys … into performing various acts on camera, unbeknownst to them,” the Scottsdale detective said, and “they were being surreptitiously recorded.”