Since then, it’s believed at least half a dozen more men have killed themselves following similar stings by law enforcement agencies around the country. WTSP showed nearly half of the men arrested in Florida stings between 2005 and 2015 were high school or college-aged men who thought they were talking to a high-school-aged girl. But the public shaming by press conference-loving sheriffs lives online forever, even when charges were dismissed; young men who thought they were talking to someone their age were branded with a life-altering scarlet letter. Yeah, I’m talking to you! Keshmirian, a single man, whose two adult daughters say he was battling depression and loneliness, continued the conversation with the woman he thought wanted to have sex with him. "He lost everything (in the Great Recession) — his business and his home — and he battled depression for eight or nine years," his daughter continued. 19 — his birthday.





The majority of charges related to traveling to meet a minor — across more than 1,000 cases — were dropped or reduced, often because of the circumstances leading to the arrest. He was arrested upon arrival, spending two nights in jail because Keshmirian’s family says SCSO denied him a phone call and kept his arrest out of the computer system while they continued to hunt other men. The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) is defending a controversial sex sting amid accusations of entrapment, following the arrest of 23 men — and the suicide of a 62-year-old soon-to-be-grandfather — last month. Knight’s office also could not provide any evidence that the adult dating apps and sites they used in the sting were used by adults to prey on teens. If, however, grown adult men want to utilize social media to prey on children and teens who identify themselves as 12, 13, and 14 years old, we are going to arrest them.





Florida Politics first reported Sunday how Sarasota County Sheriff Tom Knight employed questionable techniques in last month’s child predator sting, targeting lonely adults on adult websites, rather than possible predators who lurk on sites and apps more popular with teens. "I wish I could say these operations were no longer needed but time and time again, even after we make dozens of arrests, these men keep coming back for more," Knight said in the release. What Knight didn’t say was that the men — many of whom traveled long distances — might not have ever have come to Sarasota had deputies not convinced them to. Detectives then, without being asked, send a flirty picture to the man — a violation of Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) operational standards. Public records experts consulted by Florida Politics say the unsuccessful chats between detectives and men on various dating or chat sites should be public records, but there is little risk to agencies violating the law. However, bait-and-switch tactics on adult dating sites have become more frequent for law enforcement agencies that seek to boost arrest numbers related to sex crimes, even if the prosecutions don’t always hold up.



"They keep doing it because it works," Aiken said of agencies that continue to run undercover stings. "They killed our dad," said an emotional Natasha Keshmirian, who said men like her father were the only victims of the SCSO sting. "They should be targeting people who are targeting unsuspecting young girls," said Sarasota defense attorney Peter Aiken, who runs the Florida Sex Sting Lawyer blog. A 62-year-old soon-to-be-grandfather is dead following a controversial undercover operation by the Sarasota Co. Sheriff’s office — a sting designed to target child predators, but Video One free porn that instead targeted men looking to meet other adults on adult websites. The SCSO could not provide any evidence that any of the 23 men arrested in their sting were tied to trafficking or any previous sex crime. But detectives with the Sarasota Co. Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) changed the woman’s age to that of a 14-year-old after the conversation about sex began.