A Buchanan County Detective was honored Tuesday for his work for the Cyber Crimes Task Force which resulted in the successful prosecution of a Danish citizen exploiting an 11-year-old Missouri girl online.
Acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri David M. Ketchmark presented the Crystal Kipper & Ali Kemp Memorial Award to Detective Thomas Cates of the Buchanan County Sheriff’s Department.
Cates was the lead agent in his first federal case when he investigated the exploitation and extortion of the Buchanan County, Mo., victim by Kai Lundstroem Pedersen, 61, a citizen of Denmark.
When Pedersen traveled from his home in Denmark to New York during the investigation, Cates discovered his travel plans and went to arrest him and bring him back to Missouri to face federal charges.
Pedersen pleaded guilty and was sentenced on Feb. 2, 2012, to 30 years in federal prison without parole.
According to Ketchmark, Cates was contacted by the Missouri victim’s family after Pedersen communicated with their daughter over the Internet, deceived her into believing he was a teenage boy, then exploited and extorted her.
After meeting with the family and gaining their trust, Cates used the victim’s email and Facebook accounts to covertly engage directly with Pedersen. When he learned that Pedersen was engaging in this activity from Denmark, he contacted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations.
Pedersen admitted that in July 2010 he instructed the victim to engage in sexually explicit conduct that he recorded and saved as a digital video on his computer. This video, as well as screen capture images from the video, were later edited and distributed to others, including family and friends of the victim. Pedersen distributed the images and video over the Internet via file-sharing software.
Pedersen contacted the victim using various aliases through email and chat programs from July to September 2010 in an effort to convince her to engage again in sexually explicit conduct via video web chat.
Pedersen threatened to disseminate sexually explicit images of her over the Internet if she did not comply with his demands. For example, on Aug. 15, 2010, Pedersen used nine different aliases on Facebook to contact the victim.
“Despite the complexities due to the international aspects of this investigation, Det. Cates performed superbly in moving the case forward and in constantly remaining in touch with the victim and her family,” Ketchmark said. “His willingness to cross over and provide resources and information to other agencies was likewise of great assistance in tracking down this defendant. But for Det. Cates’s aggressive and timely work from the outset of this investigation, it is unlikely that we would have ever caught the defendant in this case.”