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Florida child sex sting nets theme park workers from Disney World

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Florida child sex sting nets theme park workers from Disney World, SeaWorld and Universal Studios among 101 arrests: cops

Police arrested 22 men in the online child sex sting.

At least three theme park employees at Disney World, SeaWorld and Universal Studios were among more than 100 people arrested for arranging sex with minors or prostitution in a huge sting across two central Florida counties, cops said.

Ryan Mayer, 24, worked at guest arrivals at SeaWorld for about two weeks before his arrest last month, according to the company. Cops said 29-year-old Tomas Adames once worked at Universal Studios while 22-year-old Jeff Conrad III had been a Disney World employee.

The men were swept up in a sting across Lake and Polk Counties that targeted predators using apps like Grindr to hook up with children between the ages of 10 and 14, cops said.

Law enforcement used a home in Claremont to lure the sexual deviants out into the open.

“These are very dangerous people. They are after your child,” Lake County Sheriff Grady Judd said at a news conference announcing the arrests, according to WKMG-TV. “Why do these people work at theme parks? Because that’s where the children are.”

Another man swept up in the bust was 22-year-old Ahmad Saleem, an Orlando community activist who founded the Saleem Academy, “an organization dedicated to empowering Muslin youths globally,” the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Saleem, who showed up at the Clermont home driving a van with an “Invest in Children” vanity license plate, had been chatting online with an undercover detective posing as a 12-year-old girl.

His Saleem Academy website has been taken down, replaced with a message reading, “Closed.”

“May God bless you, guide you, and illuminate the right path for you, and keep you firm on it,” the site reads. “Keep me in your prayers.”

Other men among the 22 alleged sex predators brought sex toys, whips, condoms or lubricant. One man, a funeral home director from Texas, showed up with a change of underwear, intending to keep his 14-year-old boy victim’s pair as a trophy, the Daily Commercial reported.

“Their communications and desires were outrageous and deviant,” Judd told reporter, according to The Ledger. “All 22 traveled to have sex and brought outrageous tools for deviant sex.”

The second phase of the sting targeted johns and prostitutes. Among those selling themselves for sex were “two high school girls, a pregnant woman and two women who thought they were coming to perform sexual services at a bachelor party,” the Daily Commercial reported.

Cops said the sting, one of several the agencies have carried out in recent years, is meant to help stop and prevent sex trafficking.

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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/florida-child-sex-sting-nets-theme-park-workers-police-article-1.2250461

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