Three alleged online child predators arrested, AG blames Meta social media sites

May 8—The distraught parents of an 11-year-old girl contacted the Chaves County sheriff's office earlier this year after noticing disturbing Facebook messenger chats between their daughter and a man who turned out to be a convicted sex offender from Texas.

The case, which was eventually investigated as part of an undercover operation by the state Department of Justice and led to three arrests, underscored the ability of child predators to "hunt, groom, target and potentially victimize minor children" via the social media platforms of Meta, formerly known as Facebook, said state Attorney General Raúl Torrez on Wednesday.

The arrests prove that "the danger presented by Meta on social media platforms doesn't just exist in the virtual world, it actually endangers children in the real world," Torrez said during a news conference in Albuquerque.

Back in December, a group of state DOJ agents went undercover, posing as minors to catch child predators on Meta platforms.

Those arrested were:

—Christopher Reynolds, who was on probation after being convicted in Lubbock, Texas in 2007 of sexual assault on a child;

—Fernando Clyde, who was arrested Tuesday at a Gallup motel after stating online that he wanted allegedly to rape the underage persona and "make her cry";

—And Marlon Kellywood, who was arrested after showing up to a Gallup motel to meet who he thought would be an underage girl.

In the case of Reynolds, the Chaves County Sheriff's Office contacted Torrez's agency and an undercover agent took over the chats posing as the 11-year-old girl.

"It's extraordinarily concerning to us just how easily these individuals found the undercover personas that were created," Torrez said. "It is, frankly, a wake-up call for all of us to understand just how serious these kinds of threats and these kind of practices are that are currently allowed to exist on the Meta platform. ..."

Torrez's office last December filed a civil lawsuit against Meta Platforms Inc., which owns Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Whats App and Oculus, contending the platforms, through their lax policies and recommendation algorithms, enable child predators and pedophiles and traffickers to hunt for, solicit and sell sex or sexual images with children at an unprecedented scale. That case is pending in state district court in Santa Fe, where Meta has filed a motion to dismiss based in part on a broad federal law that provides a "shield to social media and tech companies."

"Mark Zuckerberg (co-founder of Facebook) is responsible for this," Torrez said on Wednesday. "The Meta executives are responsible for this. And while we can do what we are able to do as law enforcement professionals to try and safeguard the community, ultimately it is their responsibility to make sure that the products they're putting out into the world are safe for everyone to use."

Meta has defended its efforts to keep its platform safe, noting that it uses child safety experts and sophisticated technology to root out predators. On Instagram, the company also makes accounts private for those under the age of 16.

"In one month alone, we disabled more than half a million accounts for violating our child safety policies," Meta spokeswoman Nkechi Nneji said in a statement in December. Meta said it also reports sexually explicit conduct to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and shares content with law enforcement and state attorneys general to screen out predators.

Efforts to reach a Meta representative to comment for this story weren't successful Wednesday.

Torrez's agency said in a press release that the civil lawsuit against Meta "has already uncovered internal documents in which Meta employees estimate about 100,000 children every day receive sexual harassment on Meta's platforms, such as photos of adult genitalia. In another document in the case, a Meta executive warns the head of Instagram that Meta's platforms are "basically massive victim discovery services."

Torrez said his agency's lawsuit is asking the tech giant to implement "common sense safety measures," such as age verification to ensure children aren't in platforms where they can be victimized. Another measure would be to prohibit direct communications with underage users.

He said other social media companies around the world don't permit communications between underage users and unknown adults. "Meta is an exception," he said.

The day after Torrez filed suit against Meta, the company announced it would be implementing end-to-end encryption for Facebook and Messenger, so Meta wouldn't see the content of such messages. Though lauded by privacy advocates, police and governments have warned encryption could make it more difficult to find and monitor criminals and their activity, including potential child abusers.

While Torrez said the state DOJ will continue its efforts to apprehend online child predators, he invited parents and children who have faced sexual exploitation enabled by social media platforms — as well as those who have problems with addiction, depression, eating disorders or other self-harm and mental health issues because of their use of social media — to contact his agency to share their experiences.