A cyber twilight zone in Ft. Myers, Fla.

The man who blamed his computer
31-year-old Thomas Coffen, whose scrennname is also “thomascoffen,” is a self-employed handyman. He’s here after making a date online for sex with a girl pretending to be 14. He tells her “I am into young girls. I like them better than the older girls” and he goes further—admitting he’s done this before. 

When the decoy types “How young have you dated,” he says “14.”

Actress, decoy (hidden camera footage): Hey come on in! Come on in! I’m in here.

Thomas Coffen: Trying to find this place was hard.

Actress: Come into the living room and take a seat.

Online, he tells the girl several times that he loves her.  He also makes it clear he’s coming to the house to have sex with the girl who said she was 14. He even sends her a picture of himself naked.

But when I show up, he explains it’s all a big misunderstanding.

Coffen: I’m looking for work and stuff.

Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent (walks out): And what kind of work were you looking for here exactly?

Coffen: I do black top sealing.

Hansen:And did the owner of the house call you for black top work or—

Coffen: No, I was put ads out and stuff.

Hansen: Really.  And did you bring all your black top stuff with you?

Coffen:   I just came down just to look at it.

Hansen:  Oh, just to look at it. Now do you want to start the story again?

Coffen:  What do you mean?

Hansen: Tell the truth.

Coffen:  I talk to a lot of people.

Hansen: So, you weren’t really here to give an estimate for a black top job.

Coffen: No.

Hansen: That was a lie.

Coffen:  Sorry about that.

He also seems sorry he sent that picture.

Hansen: That’s appropriate to send to a 14-year-old old girl?

Coffen: No.

He doesn’t deny he sent the picture... but does he know it’s a possible crime?

Hansen: Do you know that this is illegal to send something like this to someone you think is underage?

Coffen: Yeah, oh and it won’t happen again. I can tell you that much.

Then he tries to explain it all away as one big computer glitch.

Coffen: I shut down my computer and stuff and my computer messed up.

Hansen: Your computer—so it just, what magically typed itself like a player piano?

Coffen: No, it’s messed up, I’m saying  I have a virus in it and stuff.

Hansen: Well, what’s messed up in this conversation. What was your intent today? Just to babysit until…

Coffen: No just come over to say "hi." That was it.

But how will he explain that online the decoy asked him to bring condoms and he just happens to have them in his shirt pocket.

Coffen: I always carry them on me.

Hansen: You always carry them right there in your pocket?

Coffen: Well, yeah if I sit on them they end up getting crushed.

Hansen: Do you see how this looks Thomas?

Thomas: Yeah… it looks bad.

And it looks bad for all the men you’ve seen walking in Dateline's door. Like most of the men who find out they’ve been caught in a Dateline undercover investigation, the 45-year-old truck driver who made plans online to  meet a girl who told him she was 14 has nothing more to say.

Hansen: You’re obviously free to walk out that door that you came in.

Dennis Ramsey: I will do that. Thank you.

But he won’t get very far. Fort Myers police are ready to make the arrest. He’s taken away in an unmarked police car and brought to a transfer station where he’s searched put in another car and transported to jail.

Meanwhile, back at our house, another man thinks he has his own solution to being exposed on national television.

Remember the 21-year-old who duped his sister into driving him to meet a girl who said she 14?

Hansen: We’re doing a story on adults who try to meet kids on the Internet.

David Schumacher: You do look kind of familiar—

Schumacher: Alright.  Hey man, I don’t want to be on—on the news, you feeling me?

Hansen:    We are filming.

Schumacher: I don’t want to be on the news, dawg.

Hansen:    Well, it’s a little late for that, dawg.  Now if there’s anything else you want to tell me—

    

He quickly comes up with a disguise. And as far as interviews go, this may be a television first. He talks to me through his T-shirt, covering  his face.

Schumacher: Shall I got to say is there ain’t nothing going on here dude.  Nothing funny going on here.

Hansen:    Nothing funny going on?

Schumacher: No.  The girl if the girl’s really 14, then I go—

Hansen:    But she told you she was 14.

Schumacher: See, but we were in a role playing chat room dude. Do you ya’ll want an interview?  How ya’ll doing NBC?

Hansen:    NBC.

Schumacher: NBC.  And you’re Chris—

Hansen:    Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC.

Schumacher: Let me explain something to NBC for a second here.  I don’t know what kind of rap ya’ll got on people, but maybe ya’ll should get the whole story ‘cause this girl is in a role playing chat room. Who’s house is this?  Can I smoke a cigarette in here?

Hansen:    No, you can’t smoke in this room.

Schumacher: I didn’t think so.

Hansen:    You can smoke outside if you like.

Schumacher: Alright dude.

He decides to go out the front door, but that doesn’t stop detectives from catching him and placing him under arrest.

And when he shows up at the transfer station, police search him. And he keeps talking...

Schumacher: Naw.. there’s nothing on me dawg. Y’all thought you were going to get some green and sh*t, huh?   Hey NBC... two words: role-playing chatroom. Dudes cause the girl was role playing, man.

We checked with Perverted-Justice and were told he met the decoy in a Florida Romance room— not a role playing chat room.

Transcripts of his online chats and phone calls were enough for police to charge him with a felony.

Schumacher: Cause I’m not guilty. I’m going to f’ing sue somebody.

Even after he’s placed in the police car, he goes on talking...

Schumacher: I’m not guilty, man. Do I look like I need 14-year-old girls?  I don’t need 14-year-old girls, dude. I got all kinds of girls.

And has even more to say when he’s brought to the jail.

Schumacher:  NBC again.  How y’all doin NBC?

It turns out there was at least one thing he said earlier that turned out to be true: He has quite a long rap sheet. In 2002, he led police on a high speed chase in a stolen car. He was also convicted of grand theft and trying to sell the stolen goods. And twice he was convicted of battery, the most recent case in January.

Back at the transfer station police are searching suspect’s vehicles.

This car belongs to the 31-year-old man who was planning on meeting a girl who said she was 14.

Police officer:  He had some condoms that were in there, the address of the location was on there on a piece of paper, so we took all of that as evidence...

And one car belongs to the 45-year-old who was too afraid to come into the house and meet a girl who told him she was 12.

Police found a bottle of VasoRect.

Police officer:  What’s VasoRect?

Other police officer:  Like an over-the-counter Viagra type thing.

What kind of effort did it take for the police to handle an operation this big?  Chief Hilton Daniels is the man in charge.

Chief Hilton Daniels: We had 50-something police officers.  We had officers from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and we had attorneys from the State Attorneys office directing the take down.

And it was the police interrogations, according to Chief Daniels, that proved to be their best evidence.

Chief Hilton Daniels: They confessed to exactly what was read to them off the chat logs.

Remember Michael Wilusz, the 49-year-old who came to meet a girl who said she’s 15? While he could walk away from Dateline’s interview, he couldn’t walk away from Detective Jennifer Ladelfa.

Det. Jennifer Ladelfa: He confessed to everything— that he had solicited her over the Internet, stated that he knew that she was underage, and that he’d come down here to make his fantasy come to fruition.

While for some men, it might take getting arrested and then being interrogate before confessing, back at the house you’re about to meet two men who admit doing things you won’t believe.

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