Disney World Employees, Nurse Among 17 Arrested in Florida Child Predator Sting

Disney World employees, a nurse, and a pizza delivery driver were among 17 arrested in a child predator sting operation, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office in Florida announced Tuesday. In total, the 17 suspects—most of whom are from central Florida, with one from Los Angeles—face 49 felonies and two misdemeanors. “These are nasty, nasty people,” Sheriff Grady Judd said in a press conference, per WTVT. “We can’t even use the words that they used. We obviously can’t show the pictures and video clips that they sent to what they thought were 13-year-old little girls and little boys.” Officers posed as teenagers to nab the suspects, with some being arrested at the location of the proposed hookups. The case bears striking resemblance to a 2019 child predator sting operation in the county, which also arrested 17 people.

The suspects include a couple, both of whom work at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, who allegedly wanted to have a threesome with a 13-year-old girl; a lifeguard at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge hotel, who allegedly left his pregnant girlfriend to meet a teenager; and a Domino’s driver, who allegedly wanted to use a safe word with a girl. “We have a safe word,” Judd said at the conference, “jail.”