Kollege Kid Kaught Kreeping on Kik; Looking at a Three-Century Sentence

A 21-year-old student at the University of Central Florida, identified as Joshua Smith, is now staring down a mountain of charges after investigators say he was deep into CSAM and actively trying to exploit minors online.

The investigation reportedly started the way a lot of these do now, with a cyber tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. That tip led campus police to take a closer look, and once they got into his phone, the whole thing seems to have unraveled fast. Authorities say they found numerous files of CSAM on the device, and when they dug into his accounts, it didn’t stop there. According to the Florida Attorney General’s office, there were additional files and messages tied to multiple accounts on Kik, including conversations where he allegedly tried to solicit minors for sex acts and arrange the trade of CSAM.

For anyone who might be new to the website, Kik is a messaging app that lets users chat with strangers or contacts without needing a phone number or email address. It’s been around longer than it should be and has built a reputation as a place where anonymity is easy to come by. Which is why it’s a known breeding ground for sex offenders, pedophiles, CSAM collectors, and child traffickers.

Investigators also allege that Smith wasn’t just consuming CSAM but was actively engaging with others, trying to solicit minors and participate in the exchange of more CSAM.

Smith is now facing 20 felony counts, including 18 counts of possession, one count of transmission, and one count of soliciting a child for unlawful sexual conduct using a computer. If convicted on all of them, he could be looking at a maximum of 280 years behind bars.

This story also shows that you don’t have to be some gross old man lurking in a basement somewhere. The suspect here is a 21-year-old college student who would blend into a campus crowd without a second glance. Sometimes it’s the guy sitting a few seats over in a lecture hall.

Meanwhile, Kik keeps insisting they have zero tolerance for this kind of activity. By zero, they must mean a metric ass-ton due to the fact I post stories about it here on a more than regular basis. On paper, they do all the right things. They ban accounts, they report to NCMEC, and they publish community standards that say all the correct words. But in reality, you can’t be the creepers’ den then pat yourself on the back for throwing a handful of them to NECMC.

And as I previously mentioned, Smith is looking at a maximum sentence of 280 years. I have no problem with throwing the book at creepers who are involved in this kind of exploitation. But why is it that people who commit actual assault, and you know what I mean by that, barely get any time at all?

The victims in these images and videos are real. So yes, the penalties should be severe. It’s just hard to ignore that in other situations, where the abuse is happening face-to-face, the offender gets something ridiculous like time served and community service.

Anyway, the problem isn’t going away just because platforms like Kik say they have policies against it. Until that changes in a real way, stories like this are going to keep showing up, and they’re going to keep looking a lot like this one.

(Sources)