Wagoner County Sheriff's Office deputies have arrested a man accused of sending sexually explicit material to undercover decoys posing as a 14-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl. Samuel Sanning now faces multiple complaints tied to the alleged online exchanges, which authorities say included graphic descriptions of sexual violence.
According to KOKH, deputies say they have arrested an Oklahoma man who is accused of sending sexually explicit material to decoys posing as minors. The outlet reports that investigators with the Wagoner County Sheriff's Office conducted a multi-day operation in September aimed at identifying and investigating suspected online child sexual abuse and exploitation.
Decoys Posed as Teen Girls Online
Investigators say Sanning communicated with two decoys who were posing as a 14-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl. Authorities allege he made graphic statements describing sexual violence and sent explicit photographs and videos during those communications, per the same account.
Sanning was arrested on complaints of soliciting a minor for sex by the use of technology and two counts of lewd or indecent proposals to a child, the report states. Wagoner County Sheriff Chris Elliott said anyone who uses technology to target individuals they believe to be children for sexual purposes will be investigated and held accountable.
Part of a Larger Pattern of Arrests
This arrest comes amid a broader undercover push in the county. Since May, the Wagoner County Sheriff's Office has arrested eight people on child sex crime charges using an undercover decoy posing as a teenage girl, according to Fox23. That outlet reported that the sheriff's office has an undercover operative communicating with suspects and, in some cases, arranging meetings before making arrests.
The operation has been supported by a partnership with the Department of Justice's Internet Crimes Against Children Division, Fox23 reported. Separately, News On 6 reported that the sheriff's office arrested eight men from Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri in a months-long sting, noting that hundreds of people contacted undercover accounts during the investigation while only eight cases resulted in arrests at the time of that report. News On 6 also noted that no actual children were involved in the undercover operation, and that planning for the effort began about four months before the first arrests were made in late May.
Statewide Scope of Online Exploitation Cases
The Wagoner County cases fit into a much larger statewide caseload. From January through August of this year, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children sent 8,621 CyberTips to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation's Internet Crimes Against Children unit, with 2,086 of those cases opened for investigation, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The OSBI's ICAC unit is one of 61 regional task forces nationwide funded in part by the Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, according to the State of Oklahoma.
Sheriff Elliott said investigators will continue pursuing these cases, work with law-enforcement partners, and protect children within their authority. He added that authorities will find people who try to hide behind a computer or phone and pursue evidence to hold them accountable.
