A 31-year-old Florida man was arrested and faces charges after police said he hid a missing Ohio teenager and planned to have sex with her.
Detective Henrick Osthed arrested Thomas Ebersole on Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
An FBI special agent had contacted the detective. Osthed asking for help to locate the missing 16-year-old girl.
Investigators found the girl after she logged into World of Warcraft, an online video game, from Ebersole’s home address in Dunnellon, police said.
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Thomas Ebersole: Arrested for allegedly interfering with child custody, harboring an unmarried minor, and traveling to meet a minor to engage in sexual activity in Marion County, Florida, on Wednesday, January 3, 2024. (Marion County Sheriff’s Office)
Upon further investigation, authorities discovered that Ebersole also had a World of Warcraft account that was accessed from the location.
When authorities contacted Ebersole, he initially denied knowing the missing girl. However, when pressed, he allegedly admitted that he had driven to Ohio to meet her minor victim and brought her back to her home.
Ebersole told police he had a romantic relationship with the minor and said he would hide her in his home and eventually marry her, according to the news release.
Ebersole delivered messages on the online chat app Discord to Det. Osthé detailed her plans to meet the girl in Ohio and engage in sexual activity with her, despite knowing he was committing a crime, police said.
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Copies of the computer video game ‘World of Warcraft’ are displayed inside a Best Buy store in New York, Friday, May 11, 2007. Authorities traced the missing teen’s location to Thomas Ebersole’s home after she logged into her World of Warcraft account from there, police said. (Jin Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
He was arrested and booked into the Marion County Jail, where the sheriff’s office said he remains without bond.
Ebersole faces charges of interfering with child custody, traveling to meet a minor to engage in sexual activity, and harboring an unmarried minor.
Law enforcement agencies have warned that children face a growing threat of being sexually exploited over the Internet.
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCME), reports of “online enticement of children into sexual acts” have increased 82% since 2021 and 113% since 2020.
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An Apple iPhone 11 smartphone with the Discord software application logo on the screen, taken on January 27, 2020. Ebersole allegedly admitted to making plans to meet the Ohio teenager and have sex with her on Discord, a chat messaging app. (Phil Barker/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
NCME attributed the growth, in part, to an increase in financial sextortion, defined as “a crime in which children are targeted for sharing explicit photographs and then the offenders threaten to share the images with the child’s friends, family or others if they do not give the blackmailer money.”
An NBC report released earlier this year detailed how Discord, which has 150 million users worldwide, has been used by child predators to groom children, exchange child sexual exploitation material, and extort money from minors they deceive. to send nude images.
The report identified 35 cases over the past six years in which adults were prosecuted on charges of kidnapping, harassment or sexual assault that allegedly involved chat messages on Discord.
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Discord has community guidelines that warn minors “not to engage in sexual conduct or any conduct that puts their physical or online safety at risk.” The platform also prohibits adults from soliciting sexual conduct or engaging in any sexual conduct with anyone under 18 years of age.
Discord disabled 128,153 accounts and removed 7,736 servers for child safety between July and September 2023, according to the company’s third-quarter transparency report. The company said it reported 51,916 accounts to NCME, a 40% increase from the previous quarter.
Fox News Digital’s CB Cotton contributed to this report.
