DENVER - Law enforcement officers say sex tourism in Colorado is happening more than anyone can imagine. A 9Wants to Know investigation has found adults are traveling here from other states and other countries to have sex with children, and police say every child is at risk.
Sex tourism is something most people assume is going on in other countries, but police say child predators will do almost anything to satisfy their desires, including travel thousands of miles to Colorado.
"It's very real and it's happening," Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Agent in Charge of Colorado David Marwell said.
"You could be going to the airport to get on a plane and passing a predator arriving here to meet a child here in Colorado," Mike Harris, a senior investigator for the Jefferson County District Attorney, said.
Harris estimates about twenty percent of the more than 500 child sex predators he has arrested come from other states and other countries. He points to the 2008 arrest of Majid Alqurashi. The Saudi Arabian national flew to Denver International Airport with the intent of having sex with someone he believed to be an underage girl.
"He began talking to us, talking about how he wanted to come to the United States. Come out specifically to Colorado," Harris said. "And he was very distinct and specific about what he wanted to do and that was to have sex with the underage child."
In text messages exchanged with an undercover officer portraying the girl, Alqurashi said, "I will give you the best sex ever if you don't mind."
Alqurashi, then 23, served a 15-month sentence and was sent back to Saudi Arabia.
That "underage child" at the airport was actually an undercover officer 9Wants to Know has chosen to call "Katie," for her protection.
"I'm 41 years old and I portray myself as a 12, 13, 14-year-old child," Katie said.
Katie is part of a team of investigators whose sole purpose is hunting down child predators.
"I'm hoping that I'm going to go get this guy before he gets to a real child," Katie said.
9Wants to Know tagged along as officers with the Jefferson County DA's office and the Gilpin County Sheriff's Office moved in on a suspected sex tourist in late April. The target was Brian Kett, a student from Ontario, Canada.
An arrest affidavit says Kett, 36, had been texting undercover officers since the day before, and thought he was going to meet up with a young girl for sex.
"You're so damn sexy you'd have me really turned on," Kett wrote in text messages to a police officer portraying an underage girl.
Most of the text message conversation is too sexually explicit to quote directly.
"It's like a drug addiction. It's like cocaine. And they just want more and more and more," Harris said.
9NEWS cameras watched as Katie, dressed to appear like a young girl, waited at a Taco Bell surrounded by undercover officers.
When Kett arrived at the restaurant, he was arrested and booked on three counts, including criminal attempted sexual assault on a child. If convicted, Kett faces jail time and a one-way-trip back to Canada.
Kett was the 39th suspected sexual predator arrested by Harris' team in 2011. They're now at 42.
"Last year, we had 78 arrests," Harris said. "The year before, we had 99."
Harris reports more than 500 arrests in Jefferson County since 1996.
"The reason these guys think they're going to get away with it is because they mostly do," Harris said.
It's not just local law enforcement fighting sex tourism. ICE began a global crackdown in 2003 called Operation Predator.
"There are literally thousands of arrests that have been made in the last couple of years," Marwell said.
With 70 offices, in 50 countries, Marwell says ICE has arrested almost 14,000 predators worldwide since 2003.
Marwell says American predators are traveling to countries plagued by sex tourism, including Mexico, Thailand and Cambodia.
Sometimes children from those countries are smuggled to the United States and forced to work as prostitutes in strip clubs and massage parlors.
"And these traffickers will force them into the sex slave industry," Marwell said.
Marwell says many cases involve American kids who meet predators online, including predators from other countries that come to make American kids their victims.
"It happens both ways," Marwell said.
Court documents obtained by 9Wants to Know show Georges Najjar, a Lebanese national living in California, flew to Colorado to meet an undercover officer he thought was a mother of a son and daughter, ages 5 and 4.
"His intention was, in fact, in meet the children and basically arrange to have a sexual encounter with the children, Marwell said.
In various email, instant messages, and phone communications with the undercover officer, Najjar described how he intended to perform various sex acts on the children and "teach" them how to reciprocate.
"He had various sexual devices on him. He had toys," Marwell said.
Najjar is serving an eight-year prison sentence at federal facility in Texas.
"We are continually working these types of cases everyday," Marwell said.
The list of suspected sex tourists arrested in Colorado includes men from Canada, England, Greece, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, along with various states within the U.S.
"They think if they go to another state, they won't get caught," Katie said. "There's more people out there that have desire for kids and they're willing to travel wherever to meet a kid. This is happening to real kids every day and it's not being reported."
Harris worries how many sex tourists are sneaking past police - coming to Colorado - quietly abusing children.
"We can't catch everyone," Harris said. "Sex tourism is happening more than anyone will ever, ever want to know about. And the scary thing is, nobody knows about it because these are things that are happening behind closed doors."
The same people fighting sex tourism are also investigating child pornography and child trafficking. There are so many cases; they can only investigate a small percentage.
Experts tell 9Wants to Know it's up to parents to closely monitor what their kids are doing online and teach them about the dangers they face.
(KUSA-TV © 2011 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)