A recent missing-persons case in Virginia was solved thanks to an unconventional tool, as The Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed a Nintendo Switch was used to locate a missing 15-year-old girl and return her to her family.
According to court documents obtained by ABC 15 in Arizona, the girl–whose name has not been disclosed due to her status as a minor–had disappeared from her home on August 3, 2022. After attempts to find her in the neighborhood failed, a friend noticed the girl’s Nintendo Switch Online account was showing recent activity and alerted the authorities.
The girl had befriended a then-28-year-old man named Ethan Roberts on the internet. Roberts traveled to Virginia to meet the minor, and then brought her with him to his home in Tolleson, Arizona, and eventually forced her into child pornography.
As the court documents reveal, Roberts allowed her to bring her Nintendo Switch on the trip, and when she connected it to the internet to “watch YouTube and download a game,” a friend notified police of her online status. After an inquiry from Nintendo turned up Roberts’s IP address, authorities were able to find his apartment and arrest him 11 days after her disappearance.
“It’s probably nothing that anybody even had thought of at this point,” retired Arizona Department of Public Safety director Frank Milstead said to ABC 15. “The fact that somebody else down the road–another child–was bright enough to go, ‘Hey, look, my friend is online, and she’s been missing, and I need to tell somebody.'”
Roberts was indicted in federal court on multiple charges, which included child pornography and transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. After a plea deal, he was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.
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