7 Sex Offenders Arrested in Texas MySpace Crackdown
Friday, June 15, 2007
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HOUSTON — Seven convicted sex offenders with profiles on MySpace.com have been arrested in what Texas officials said was the country's first large-scale crackdown of registered offenders who use the social networking Web site.
The men were arrested in Houston, Austin, Round Rock, and Glenn Heights during a two-week operation by the Texas Attorney General's Cyber Crimes and Fugitive units.
They were picked up after MySpace.com released the names of offenders with online profiles to the state Attorney General's Office, which had issued a subpoena for the site's subscriber information.
"Texans will not tolerate criminals who prey on our children," Attorney General Greg Abbott said in a statement.
After it was criticized for failing to protect underage subscribers, the site supplied names to attorneys general in other states, and began checking subscribers' criminal histories through Sentinel Safe, a database of registered sex offenders.
In Houston, officials arrested Patrick Joseph Blevins, 49; Reginald Lee Collins, 27; Ronald Daven Metoyer, 41; and Robert Shepard Walter, 23. Walter was also charged last month with failing to register as a sex offender.
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