91. User: The Danger Online

Two cases are discussed today, both involving sensitive topics about child sexual abuse. Please listen with care.

His message to her read “I made a vow to you that in sickness and in health I would always be with you.”
It’s not a romantic notion sent from one loving spouse to another, but rather - a real-life message sent from an adult male to a child. 

A Roblox developer known as “Doc” and a group of online predators known as “The Bored Group” are taken down and prosecuted for targeting dozens of children.

This episode includes resources for parents to discuss the dangers of the dark web.

For information about Project Safe Childhood:
http://www.justice.gov/psc

For resources on keeping children safe online:

https://www.wxyz.com/news/reading-this-predators-playbook-could-help-protect-your-child

ENDCAN

https://www.icmec.org/icmec-resources/https://www.d2l.org/child-grooming-signs-behavior-awareness/

https://www.justice.gov/psc/national-strategy-child-exploitation-prevention-and-interdiction

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Method & Madness is researched, written, hosted, & produced by Dawn Cate

Music by Tymur Khakimov from Pixabay
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode contains discussions that may be distressing for some listeners,
including sensitive details regarding child sexual abuse. If you choose
to listen, please do so with care. The cases shared
in this episode are based on actual events, and details
such as location may have been modified where necessary to

(00:23):
maintain anonymity. Let's dive in Welcome to method and Madness.
This is user the Danger online. I'm your host, Dawn.

(00:58):
His message to her read, I made a vow to
you that in sickness and in health, I would always
be with you. On the surface, it sounds like a
romantic notion, reassurance from one spouse to another about their
feelings and their commitment. But this message was sent from
an adult male to a child he met online. Children

(01:21):
crave more autonomy as they reach adolescence. It's a mixed
bag of excitement, confusion, and emotional intensity. They're eager for
more independence. It's not unusual to seek out a sense
of belonging to look for connection online if you're struggling
to find it at school or in your community. The
TikTok account gab Wireless posts videos about keeping kids safe online.

(01:47):
One video in particular showed online safety experts naming which
video games they would never let their kids use. Several
experts had the same answer. Roadblocks an online gaming platform
popular with both children and adults. You can play games
created by Roadblocks or by the users themselves. Like any

(02:10):
platform with a social media component, Roadblocks can pose risks
to users, particularly the younger ones, who may not have
familiarity with suspicious links that with a click, can scam
you out of money. Even more dangerous and alarming is
the adult that utilizes Roadblocks specifically to sexually abuse children.

(02:32):
Bloomberg reported this year that of the thirty six million
people using Roadblocks daily, more than half of them are
under the age of thirteen. It only takes a minute
to create an account on the platform. You just need
to enter your birth date, pick a username and password,
and you've entered the anonymous world of Roadblocks. Recently, a

(02:53):
popular independent game developer on Roadblocks known as Doc made headlines. Doc,
at one time an icon to many of the young
Roblocks users, had developed the game's sonic Eclipse online. He
created this space that promised to be a similar experience
to the original Sega game. Thousands of children flocked to

(03:17):
the space, and the game quickly became a user favorite.
Doc enjoyed his online fame among gamers. He claimed to
be the brother of John Tldski, one of the platform's
original creative designers. Doc had a wide online presence, from
Roadblocks to a community on Discord, to YouTube and Twitter.

(03:41):
He frequently told his fans and followers that he was
twenty eight years old, blonde and buff, but nobody really
knew who was behind the keyboard. Doc was just an
avatar with a tall white hat. He was also known
to brag about his alleged wealth and prowess and dating
beautiful women where he lived in California. As a Roadblocks

(04:06):
game developer, he recruited dozens of children to create new
spaces and characters for him, and in exchange, he paid
them in roebucks, a virtual currency where users can purchase
extras like accessories for their avatar. Doc put out messages
on Roadblocks that anyone that wanted to talk more about

(04:27):
gaming could come over to his Discord channel, a chat
app outside of the Roadblocks world. Doc wasn't using the
Discord channel to just chat about gaming. He was spending
hours and hours over the course of several years, having
inappropriate conversations with kids and spewing hateful insults and slurs

(04:50):
at marginalized groups. At least one user, a teenage girl,
was set up and decided to expose Doc's dark side.
Around twenty seventeen. The user began documenting what they called
creepy and manipulative behavior by quote an overall scummy person.

(05:12):
Others came forward and started sharing their own experiences with
Doc and private messages he had sent them. All of
the evidence was compiled into a document and presented to
law enforcement, but no action took place to look into
the man behind Doc. With the help of some concerned parents,

(05:33):
roeblocks received complaints about Doc, banned his account and reported
it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
but Doc simply got around the ban by successfully creating
new accounts on roeblocks. Despite being outed as an online
predator and racist, the man continued to maintain his presence

(05:55):
in the gaming world. By twenty twenty, Ben Simon, and
vigilante in the gaming world whose brand was all about
exposing the risks of roeblocks, was sent a message detailing
conversations that Doc had with the girls, including one where
he fantasized about raping a twelve year old. One message

(06:16):
read words cannot explain what I want to do with you.
You're the reason why I'm going to end up behind bars.
From there, Ben shared the screenshots of the conversations to
his Twitter account. His followers then took action to try
and bring Doc down. Word was spreading quickly in the

(06:36):
gaming community that Doc was a predator. Screenshots captured by
a roeblocks developer detail the grooming and the disturbing and
dangerous conversations that Doc had. If a child showed their
discomfort with the sexual comments, Doc would go on to
degrade them any chance he got, in both private messages

(07:00):
or in chat rooms or on Twitter. Mixed in with
that predatory behavior was the racist and homophobic rhetoric that
Doc passed off as jokes. In response to the accusations,
Doc posted a video online which was just a black
screen and his voice over, where he denied that he

(07:21):
was a predator and defended his actions, doubling down that
he was only doing it for laughs. His replies to
detractors on Twitter turned into back and forth arguments, with
Doc repeating his hate for Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ
plus communities. When called out for his predatory messages that

(07:43):
he had sent to a twelve year old, Doc replied
that his comments about raping children were jokes. After he
got his Twitter account, band Doc started a new account,
one that is still up on x to this day.
What Doc referred to as jokes became a reality in

(08:04):
twenty twenty two, when he successfully arranged for a fifteen
year old girl to be transported over state lines. He
told the FBI agents that placed him under arrest that
his name was Arnold Castillo and he was twenty three

(08:25):
years old. According to his ex profile, he would have
been closer to thirty. He was not related to Roblock's
creator John Schledeitsky, as he often claimed. Castillo was tracked
down to his residence in Paterson, New Jersey, after the
fifteen year old girl had gone missing from her home

(08:46):
more than a week earlier. The roblock developer had transported
the child from her home in the Midwest to his
home in Patterson. He had found an Uber driver in
New Jersey who was willing to make the trip to
the victim's home and, unbeknownst to her family, bring her
back to New Jersey. Castillo paid the driver five hundred

(09:09):
dollars to go and retrieve the child, and paid another
five hundred when she arrived at his apartment. According to
the age requirements laid out on Uber's website, children cannot
take rides unless accompanied by an adult. In some states,
teens aged thirteen to seventeen can only take rides with

(09:30):
parent or guardian permission. Castillo had arranged for the transport
via his Uber account, and the driver didn't question it
even when he arrived at the pickup location. The girl
was reported missing shortly after, and while her family desperately
searched for her, they had an inkling that they knew
who she was with. Castillo groomed the child over four months,

(09:55):
a popular tactic used by predators to manipulate their victims.
Using the alias Jacob Schladetski or Jaden Shladeitski on social
media platforms and gaming apps Instagram, roadblocks and Discord, he
communicated with his victim, who he knew was fifteen. Castillo

(10:16):
had convinced her that he'd get her a career in
gaming and that her parents were going to get in
her way. He purchased gifts and had them sent to
her home. Once the FBI got involved in the child's disappearance.
They were able to track the sender's Amazon account to
a New Jersey address. When the child arrived at Castillo's home,

(10:38):
an apartment over a garage that he shared with his mother,
he brought her to a tiny dark room he rented
next door. He kept her there just a twin mattress
on the floor and sexually abused the girl multiple times
for several days. Castillo purchased plan B to prevent her

(10:58):
from getting pregnant and controlled her every move. He dyed
her hair to try and conceal her identity. After eight days,
the FBI had staked out the Patterson, New Jersey address
and arrested Castillo as he walked with the victim in
front of his apartment. He was charged with transportation of

(11:18):
a miner with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity,
and coercion and enticement of a miner, to which she
pleaded guilty. He was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years
in federal prison. Upon his release, Castillo will be supervised
by the US Probation Office for twenty years and must
pay ten thousand dollars restitution to his victim. FBI's special

(11:43):
Agent Lenn Rothermick, said the agency discovered during their investigation
that Castillo had already been identified and exposed a year
and a half before his arrest. He gave props to
the kids who documented everything about doc he said, quote.
Seeing what those children did as far as compiling all

(12:04):
this and their ability to identify mister Castillo, well, they
might want to submit some applications to the FBI one day.
Matt Kaufman, the chief safety officer at roblocks, said that
the platform has a moderation system that scans all digital
content and bleeps out in appropriate words, while also blocking

(12:26):
users from sharing images. He said, quote, Tens of millions
of people of all ages have a safe and positive
experience on roadblocks every single day. However, employees who worked
under Matt Kaufman spoke on the promise of anonymity and
said that policing the platform and its thirteen million games

(12:47):
is a task that can never truly be completed, and
with the cfo's goal of one billion users, it will
only get tougher. Critics of Roblocks's safety measures point out
that certain words or terminology are not caught, and that
predators can use their own language to communicate with each other.

(13:08):
Announcing in a chat room who's in the mood for
cheese pizza is a code cheese pizza initials. CP stands
for a term that I'll not be using, but means
child's sexual abuse material. It's a way for one predator
to identify another and exchange said materials. Investigative journalist Olivia

(13:30):
Carville interviewed Castillo via a series of phone calls and
a visit to the Otisville Federal Correctional Institute. Olivia reported
that Castillo said he was drawn to Roadblocks because it's
easy to create an account, and he suspects that other
predators do the same. As it was preparing for this

(13:52):
episode to be recorded, NPR reported on November eighteen, twenty
twenty four, that Roadblocks is rolling out a major update
to its safety features and parental controls. The update includes
amped up parental controls and communication restrictions for players under thirteen.

(14:19):
Remember in Jurassic Park, how the dinosaurs test for weaknesses
in the electric fence. They never test the same spot
twice because they remember what sections they already tested. The
idea that a dangerous predator is determined enough to break
through a security barrier begs the question how can you

(14:40):
ever really feel safe? In twenty seventeen, Assistant US Attorney
Kevin mulcahey wrote in a court filing quote, this group
did not invent the sexual exploitation of children, but they
may have perfected it. Kevin, a survivor of child's life abuse,

(15:01):
was referring to nine adult men known as the Board Group,
which was formed in twenty twelve. The men met on Stickham,
a live streaming video website that operated from two thousand
five to twenty thirteen. It was there that nine board
men from across the United States with different backgrounds all

(15:22):
shared one common interest creating and viewing child sexual abuse material.
Due to Stickham's restrictions on content, the nine men allied
and migrated to a different site where their intent to
victimize children would yield more results. The site they decided
on is referenced as Website A in court documents. Website

(15:48):
A was described as follows a social media platform where
people using user names of their choosing, entered chat rooms
and communicate with other users in real time. The chat
rooms have a list of users in the lower right
corner of the screen. In a large space above those
for individuals to live stream their activities via web camera.

(16:12):
In each chat room, at any given time, up to
two users can broadcast their activities via camera. The Board
Group is an example of what the FBI would identify
as group groomers. Group grooming is when online predators pose
as children, meet in social media groups and gaming clans

(16:33):
geared toward children, and use each other to condone and
normalize the exchange of sexually explicit materials within the group.
In this case, the Board Group would go on to
target over one hundred children before they were finally caught
five years later. The men's ages ranged from late twenties

(16:54):
to early forties, and together they organized an operation where
they'd impersonate teenage boys and target girls. They used photos
of actual teen boys that they found on various social
media sites, created usernames, and began their hunt for girls
who were online and looking for friends. The men knew

(17:15):
how to sound like a teen, using common abbreviations or
slang to come across as a peer. The members of
the Board Group scoured the Internet using popular social media
platforms and teen dating sites Periscope, you Now, and mylol
dot com to hunt for their victims. With tens of

(17:37):
thousands of girls frequenting these websites, the predators had found
their hunting ground. They initiated chats with girls as young
as ten. Once the victims were convinced they were talking
to teenage boys, a member of the board group would
suggest they moved their conversation to a private site. Website

(17:57):
A was, for all intents and purpose, the second location.
Through grooming, the men manipulated the children into recording themselves
performing sexual acts. The board group had a hierarchy. The
hunters would lure the targeted victim into a chat room.
The loopers, posing as kids previously recorded, would convince the

(18:21):
victim to perform a sexual act. The talkers would take
the next step and manipulate the victim into turning on
their camera and performing sexual acts, which the loopers would
then record, unbeknownst to the victims themselves. The children that
were recorded on video were later blackmailed, told that if

(18:43):
they didn't do what the predators wanted, someone would come
to their house and expose them to their parents, and
that the entire family would be in danger of violent repercussions.
On another password protected site, a spreadsheet served as the
board group's victim tracker. It was on that sheet that
the nine men would communicate. They'd enter data like the

(19:07):
victim's name, what manipulation tactics worked best on her, and
each entry included a link to the child's social media account.
The men used their own terminology to identify the age
of the victims in relation to eighteen years old minus
four meant four years younger than eighteen, a tactic that

(19:29):
gave the men a sense of security in that they
weren't typing out age fourteen. The term win meant getting
a victim to engage in a sexual act on camera.
They'd communicate with each other by saying things like hey,
I got a major win today. By twenty seventeen, the
men were also using a server on discord to organize

(19:50):
their efforts. They went on to write an instructional manual
for other predators to follow when targeting children online. While
that's a terrifying notion, is also information that's been utilized
for prevention, educating parents and online communities on what to
look for. In November of twenty fifteen, a man in

(20:12):
Detroit was arrested by FBI agents on the suspicion of
possession of child sexual abuse material. During this investigation, it
was discovered that the man had been engaging in predatory
behavior on website A. The disturbing content on website A
launched a brand new investigation finding out who the users

(20:34):
were that were engaged in criminal activity. They're victims, all children.
By tracing IP addresses of the users, the FBI identified
the nine men that were behind the Board Group and
arrested all of them for victimizing over one hundred miners.
One of the accused had a collection of videos, most

(20:55):
of which had been recorded directly from website A. The
red of child sexual abuse material was described as so
vast it would take more than fifty days to bengewatch it.
The videos were organized by victim, name, age, and sex act.

(21:15):
The mastermind of the Board Group was the co founder
of a computer graphics company. His name Christian Mayr, a married,
forty year old father of two. Assistant US Attorney Kevin
mulcahey said of the group's leader quote, no age was
too young, No conduct too depraved, No victim too vulnerable

(21:38):
for mayor potential offenders who think about doing what this
group did, which has left permanent scars on so many
young girls should know that if they are caught, they
will likely spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Also indicted in federal court were Mayor's eight co defendants,
Arthur Simpatico forty six of Missasagua, Ontario, Jonathan Negroni Rodriguez

(22:03):
thirty six of West Hollywood, California, McCall Figurea thirty five
of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, odell Or Tiga thirty six of Virginia Gardens, Florida,
Brett Sinta thirty five of Hickory, North Carolina, Caleb Young
thirty eight of Olmsted Falls, Ohio, Daniel Walton thirty three

(22:28):
of Saginaw, Texas, and finally, William T. Phillips thirty nine
of Highland, New York. Some of the survivors spoke in
court about the long term effects the abuse had on them.
Many had sought out online chat rooms because they were
bullied at school and needed a friend. Now they were

(22:49):
suffering from depression anxiety, PTSD, and thoughts of suicide. At
least one of the victims had attempted suicide. Another who
had aspirations of becoming a performing artist and attended an
elite school said her dreams had been destroyed. Parents were
devastated that their children's innocence was taken from them and

(23:12):
exploited in unimaginable ways. One mother described how she thought
she'd created a save home, but that the monsters were
under the bed. Each member of the board group was convicted.
Sentencing ranged from thirty to forty years and included paying
restitution to the victims. Twenty eight days after beginning his

(23:35):
forty year sentence at Milan Correctional Institution in Michigan, Christian
Mayer was killed by fellow inmates. The man who started
the board group and victimized over one hundred children, was kicked, stomped, stabbed,
and thrown down a flight of stairs by at least
three inmates. His official autopsy report stated that his cause

(23:58):
of death was multiltiple stab wounds and blunt force trauma
to the head. Another member of the board group, Macall Figueroa,
also sustained injuries in the attack but survived. A third
man that was serving time for child sexual abuse material
was also injured, though he was not a member of
the board group. The men had been placed in general

(24:22):
population by prison employees against the court's recommendation that they
be secured in a separate area for sex offenders. At
least one of the injured men had previously reported that
he felt unsafe, but his concerns were allegedly ignored by
prison officials. Following his death, Christian Mayor's indictment was dismissed

(24:45):
by the U. S Attorney's Office. Here's why. Quote where
defendant in a criminal case dies while the case is
pending on direct appeal, the case abates and the action
must be remanded to the district court to dismiss the indictment.
In order from the US Court of Appeals said, while
in the eyes of the law, justice was served and

(25:07):
all nine members of the board group were convicted and sentenced,
there is no true justice for the children that were
victimized by these adults. The impact that sexual abuse has
on a child is profound and long lasting. It takes
an intense psychological toll where the child can experience the
following but not limited to guilt, shame, anxiety, and depression.

(25:32):
It can lead to behavioral changes like withdrawal or regression,
and the lasting effects emotionally, psychologically, and physically can carry
on for the rest of their lives. With technology evolving
at a rate few can keep up with, perpetrators of
sexual crimes against children will find new ways to carry

(25:52):
out their activities and new ways to get around security.
And with the evolution of artificial intelligence, misuse of AI
to generate images poses a serious threat. United States Attorney
Matthew Schneider provided this simple warning quote. If you're talking
to someone you don't know who you think is a

(26:15):
boy or a teenage girl, it's possibly a fifty year
old guy in someone's basement. The FBI has stated that
over fifty percent of victims of online sexual exploitation are
between the ages of twelve and fifteen. In twenty twenty,
the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported that

(26:35):
there were twenty one point seven million reports of suspected
child's sexual exploitation made to their cyber tip line. If
the electric fence doesn't work one hundred percent at the time,
then at least we can be informed should the dinosaurs
enter our spaces, and until apps like roadblocks are one

(26:57):
hundred percent secure, will have to rely on proactive advocacy.
For more information on how to protect children from online predators,
you can check the show notes and my website for resources.
Project Safe Childhood is a nationwide effort to locate, apprehend,

(27:18):
and prosecute online child sexual exploiters and rescue victims. For
more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www dot
justice dot gov slash PSC. Thank you for listening to

(27:38):
this episode of Method and Madness. If you haven't already,
please leave a rating or a review, and don't forget
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(28:01):
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