A Kik Kreeper from the Kowboy State

While school may be starting today in many parts of the country—more on that later—the Summer of Kreep heats up. This time our subject is 28-year-old Alfredo I. Najera of Cheyenne, Wyoming, who reportedly told investigators he found CSAM files “interesting and weird.” Not exactly a great defense when you’re facing five felony counts of sexual exploitation of a child.

This whole case started with a cyber tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, passed along after the messaging app Kik flagged Najera’s activity.

If you’re not familiar with Kik, it’s an app that allows users to chat anonymously and send media without needing a phone number. In theory, it’s a messaging app for teens. In reality, it’s a breeding ground for the worst kinds of online behavior from sex offenders, pedophiles, CSAM collectors, and child traffickers. If you’re a parent, make sure Kik isn’t quietly sitting on your kid’s device. There’s a reason this app keeps showing up in stories like this.

Investigators say Najera had multiple Kik accounts, some tied to different usernames and emails, where he shared and stored files he admitted to collecting. He also allegedly posed as a 16-year-old girl to gain trust and get more people to share that kind of material with him. And if that sounds familiar, it’s because tactics like this have been around since the earliest days of the internet.

Najera reportedly admitted to “hoarding” CSAM files, even saying he probably had “hundreds” of them on his phone. He told investigators he had been using Kik since he was a kid, which is exactly the kind of full-circle creep factor that makes your stomach turn.

But it gets worse. The investigation also uncovered several selfie-style images on his account of a partially nude teenage girl. Najera claimed they were photos sent by an old high school girlfriend. Whether or not that’s true doesn’t change the fact that they were stored alongside a digital stockpile of the worst kind of content.

Here’s the thing, this isn’t new. This is textbook online exploitation behavior. What’s maybe more disturbing is how numb society seems to be getting to it. We’ve got a tangerine-tinged sex criminal of a president currently under fire for his own history of disturbing behavior, constantly brushing it off, denying it, or shifting blame. And when the most powerful person in the country treats accusations like punchlines, it sends a message that accountability is optional.

People like Najera are a symptom of a much bigger problem. This case isn’t just about one man and one app. It’s about how easily technology is exploited, how little oversight exists, and how normalization at the top trickles down.

This behavior isn’t just “weird.” It’s dangerous. And until we start treating it that way, online, in courtrooms, and in the halls of power, cases like this are going to keep happening.

(Source)