A mother posing as her 14-year-old son on the Internet helped Salt Lake County sheriff's deputies arrest a possible predator.
The woman wanted to find out what her son had been up to on the Internet, so she went into one of his favorite chat rooms using her son's name, said Salt Lake County sheriff's detective Mike Mitchell.
The mom was soon involved in a conversation with a man who made sexual advances and insisted on meeting what he thought was a teenage boy, Mitchell said.
"He was saying 'I want to meet you now,' " Mitchell said.
While the mom was talking to the man, she dialed the sheriff's office on her other line. Detectives instructed the mother on what to tell the man and had her arrange a meeting with him. The mother, still posing as her son, told the man she would meet him at a Ream's Food Store near 10600 South and 700 East.
The sheriff's office had a decoy waiting at the store. When the man, 60, approached the decoy Wednesday evening, he was arrested and booked into the Salt Lake County Jail on two counts of attempted forcible sodomy and one count of attempted forcible sexual abuse.
The charges were expected to be screened by the Salt Lake District Attorney's Office and the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Mitchell has high praise for the woman for getting "nosy" into her son's affairs. "Most parents wouldn't have any concept," he said. "Parents don't check on their kids and then they find out later they've been abused. She did a great job."
Investigators seized the man's computer Wednesday night from his home in Riverton.
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