Over the course of three days, nine men came to Johnson County intent on meeting a teenager for sex.
They drove — some for more than an hour — to undisclosed locations in Greenwood to meet up with undercover detectives posed as an underage girl. It was part of a first-of-its-kind sting operation in the county, dubbed Operation Firewall, a partnership of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, the Johnson County Prosecutor’s Office and Covenant Rescue Group, an Alabama-based nonprofit that’s fighting human trafficking across the country and working with law enforcement agencies on operations such as this.
The operation, Sheriff Duane Burgess said, was months in the making.
On Tuesday, detectives lured three men to Greenwood. On Wednesday, another two followed suit. And on Thursday, detectives caught four more child predators and an Avon woman who was traveling with one of them.
Morgan Warden, 31, was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of controlled substance possession.
Michael D. Gaiski, 62, of Morristown; John R. Dulin, 46, of Kirklin; Robert O. Bland, 29, of Indianapolis; Russell Burke, 58, of Frankfort; Fredy Berlamino Perez-Baten, 36, of Indianapolis; John David Kent, 57, of Martinsville; Preston Miles Carpenter, 24, of Greenwood; Jason M. Cleveland, 24, of Indianapolis; and Gregory M. Stennett, 37, of Avon were arrested on charges of child solicitation.
Cleveland and Stennett were also arrested on pornography charges for sending obscene material to a minor.
Detectives, with expertise and insight from the rescue group, created a fake profile on a sex-oriented website. During the chats, detectives would make clear that the girl was underage, 14 in this case. The conversations continued to turn sexual in nature, and arrangements were made for the men to meet up with the girl at two separate locations on the east and west sides of Greenwood.
“I took part in this investigation and it was very eye-opening,” Burgess said during a news conference Friday. “The night that I was there, I listened to the chats, the people texting back and forth … It just simply turned my stomach that these individuals, knowing that we had underage people, showed up to meet them for a sexual fantasy.”
All but one of the men were from outside the county. But others who were not arrested claimed to live in the Greenwood area, officials said.
“Not every chat ends up in an arrest. Some end up nowhere,” Burgess said.
“Every time you take one of these individuals off the street, you’re saving or protecting 25 children.”
The fact that the men physically traveled to a location to meet up with a minor heightened the level of the charge to a Level 4 felony, said Joe Villanueva, Johnson County prosecutor.
Most could face up to 12 years in prison, with a six-year advisory sentence, and could be ordered to pay up to a $10,000 fine. The two with pornography charges could face an additional 2.5 years. Some have already bonded out. Once charges are filed and their cases are assigned to a court, they will receive a summons to appear or they will be arrested on a warrant. The prosecutor’s office was working to get the probable cause affidavits processed and turned over to the Johnson County Clerk’s Office on Friday, he said.
“You often hear about these kinds of things happening, but you never think about them happening in your neck of the woods,” Villanueva said. “We had a chance, ever so briefly, during the course of the week to take a peek behind the curtain into a whole other world, and it is dark, it is depraved and it is here.”
The ultimate goal is to catch human traffickers, which Burgess said he knows are here because they’re everywhere. Local law enforcement monitors social media closely, and Burgess has seen posts that allude to human trafficking in the county, all of which are taken seriously, he said.
“Our ultimate goal is, if we have people who are human trafficking and these people are part of that, we want to get that and take it to that next level just like a drug dealer,” Burgess said.
Detectives interviewed all of the suspects before they were booked into the jail, said Maj. Damian Katt, chief investigations deputy at the sheriff’s office.
The suspects — ranging in age from 24 to 62, of varying races, from rural, suburban and urban parts of the state — represent all walks of life. There isn’t a singular job or physical description to identify them, Katt said.
“These people look like normal people, and I think that’s where we were kind of amazed,” he said.
“There’s no stereotype for this type of crime,” Villanueva added.
The county is already planning another similar operation, officials said Friday.
“This is definitely not a one-time thing,” Katt said.
“We didn’t know the extent of how this would play out; none of us did. I personally — and I think these guys are on the same page — thought if we could just get one or two out of a three-day operation, that would be a huge success.”
Officials urge parents to monitor their kids’ internet activity closely.
“Our kids are on the internet right now more than ever. Parents need to be alert as to what sites these kids are visiting and what they are doing on the internet,” Burgess said. “You cannot be your child’s best friend.”
