The FBI used a Nintendo Switch console to locate an abducted 15-year-old girl, who had been missing for 11 days back in August 2022, ABC15 reports.
In a horrendous case involving kidnap and sexual exploitation, a teenage girl was found and rescued only after she logged online with her Nintendo Switch.
The unidentified Virginian teenager is a homebody, said family and friends, and unlikely to run away. However, she met a stranger—then 28-year-old Ethan Roberts—on the online chatting platform Omegle in January 2022, when she was just 14 years old. The two talked for a few days, then moved their conversation to Discord and Snapchat. Roberts sent nudes of himself to the girl and requested explicit images of her as well, to which she complied. Later, Roberts traveled 2,000 miles from his apartment in Tolleson, Arizona to the young girl’s hometown. Their encounter culminated in Roberts kidnapping the girl and bringing her back to Arizona. Roberts coerced the teen, “insisting” she meet strangers on Omegle to sell them nudes via Snapchat between August 3, 2022 and August 14, 2022, according to court documents viewed by Kotaku.
When the girl went missing on August 3, folks in Virginia put up fliers to locate her. Keitra Coleman, a volunteer with the local nonprofit Hear Their Voices (which helps find missing and exploited children, domestic violence victims, and people experiencing homelessness), told ABC15 they were on the case.
“We immediately reached out to her family and spoke with her grandmother and her stepdad, and that next day, we were out there ‘boots on the ground.’” Coleman said. “She went through a lot in those few days [and] reminded me so much of my daughter.”
Unfortunately, no one was able to pinpoint her location—until the girl booted up her Nintendo Switch to watch YouTube videos and download a game. A friend saw that she was online and informed the authorities.
FULL STORY: https://kotaku.com/nintendo-switch-fbi-abduct-missing-child-ip-youtube-1850647227
