A private school employee in South Florida has been arrested after being accused of possessing child sexual abuse material he culled from minors whom he allegedly enticed online to send him the prurient photos and videos.
Federal agents arrested Evan Michael Sands, 26, a “staffer” at the Randazzo School in Coconut Creek just north of Fort Lauderdale on multiple charges after he allegedly used the chat platform Discord and the gaming site Roblox to get the sexually explicit material.
A federal criminal complaint, reported by WPLG, indicated the investigation began with a tip from the messaging platform Discord.
According to the TV news outlet:
That tip, sent to the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children and forwarded to the South Florida Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force in December, pertained to two child sexual abuse videos shared through Discord depicting girls who appeared to be 6 years old, authorities said. The videos, they said, were found in Sands’ account.
Federal agents said they applied for search warrants to his home in Tamarac, further discovering the teacher had allegedly been engaging in “numerous conversations” with minors.
“The Discord data revealed that Sands, using the username, astraldrag0n#0, engaged in numerous conversations with children under the age of 18, some under the age of 12, where he solicited the children to send him sexually explicit images and videos of themselves,” the complaint stated, according to WPLG.
The private school would only identify the suspect to news outlets as a “staff member.”
Authorities also said that Sands, inexplicably, sent the children explicit videos of himself while identifying himself “by name and address and his place of employment.”
Sands allegedly confessed during his interrogation to having sent explicit content on Discord since 2021 and enticing children by giving them “Robux,” the virtual currency for the online game platform Roblox, authorities said in the complaint.
He is now being held in the Broward Sheriff’s Office Main Jail facility and faces two federal charges related to the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material and one count of one count of enticement of a minor to engage in illicit sexual behavior.
The Randazzo School, described itself as “family owned and operated,” and offers education for grades Pre-K through 12th.
Administrators at The Randazzo School told WPLG that Sands “will not be returning to our school” and “based on the information” provided by U.S. Marshals, “there is no evidence any of our students were involved or affected.”
As Breitbart News reported in an exclusive investigation last month, educator sexual misconduct has reached levels that experts describe as “rampant” in the past two decades in the U.S.
Offenders are not only teachers and coaches but also administrators and non-teaching school employees.
While sexual misconduct by attractive young female teachers with underage boys make most of the national headlines, studies show that actually nine out of ten offenders are male educators or school employees.
Award-winning crime writer Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets, which documents one of the worst cases of child sex abuse in U.S. history, and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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