A former youth softball umpire is among nine men arrested on child exploitation charges after GBI and FBI investigators accused them of trying to meet minors for sex.
Jim Morriss, 49, of Dacula, has been a youth umpire at Bogan Park in Gwinnett County for years, Channel 2 Action News reported. Morriss was arrested in an online child sex sting after investigators said he traveled to a location with the intent of having sex with someone he thought was a child.
Gregg Morris, who heads the Mill Creek Athletic Association in Gwinnett, told Channel 2 no one ever saw anything “out of character or alarming” with Morriss.
He told the news station the association immediately took action when they learned of Morriss’ arrest.
“We immediately called the umpiring association that we hire, and obviously we asked to have him removed from anything we do,” Morris said.
The nine arrests were the culmination of a monthslong, multi-agency sting operation called Operation End Game that was based out of Athens, AJC.com previously reported.
RELATED: 9 arrested on child exploitation charges after GBI, FBI sting
Thirteen mobile phones were seized as evidence in the sex sting, GBI spokeswoman Natalie Ammons said. Investigators had more than 200 exchanges with people on social media platforms over a three-day period that started Thursday, she said.
“Many of those were exchanges in which the subject initiated contact with whom they believed to be a minor and directed the conversation towards sex,” she said. In some cases, the subject would send lewd content or pornography to the person they thought was a minor, or ask them for nude photos.
Ammons said some of the men were communicating with multiple investigators posing as minors at the same time.
“Such activity confirms what investigators uncover conducting these types of investigations: that many predators specifically seek out minors on such websites to groom them as potential victims for sexual contact,” she said.
The men were charged in Clarke County with one felony count of computer or electronic pornography and child exploitation.
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