#online-grooming

#online-grooming

A Chicago man has been charged after allegedly posing as a 17-year-old boy and sexually exploiting a Brookline teen. Joshua Rogers, 30, was arrested in Chicago on Wednesday morning and is charged with one count of sexual exploitation of children, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. In July 2025, Brookline law enforcement were notified of an individual posing as a 17-year-old boy named "John," who was allegedly later identified as Rogers, engaging in sexually explicit conversations with a 14-year-old girl on Snapchat, according to officials.

A group of men, one of them from Queens, ran a disturbing online child exploitation ring that targeted kids on Discord and on hyper-popular online games Roblox and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, coercing the youngsters into filming themselves performing sex acts, the feds allege. Queens resident Hector Bermudez, 29, who went by the handle Fiasco, was part of a sick group calling itself Greggy's Cult, according to an indictment unsealed against him and four co-defendants in Brooklyn Federal Court Tuesday.