A senior executive was fired from Sony after being exposed for allegedly engaging in sexting and attempting to meet with a person posing as an underage teenage boy.
The People v. Preds YouTube channel, which has more than 15,000 followers, allegedly caught George Cacioppo in a sting operation. Cacioppo was formerly senior vice president at Sony Interactive Entertainment.
When reached via email, a People v. Preds representative told the Daily Dot that Cacioppo reached out to the group’s “decoy” in October and more recently on Thursday evening, engaging in a conversation that ended in him arranging to meet the boy on Friday morning at 4am, despite knowing his age.
Cacioppo identifies himself as “Jeff” in the text conversation, and his LinkedIn profile matches the man seen in the video. In a statement to CNET on Sunday, Sony acknowledged the incident and said the company had since fired him. Sony did not immediately reply to the Daily Dot’s request for comments.
The brief video shows the decoy walking up to Cacioppo iin the driveway of an affluent neighborhood in San Diego.
“Hey, how’s it going, Jeff?” the man asks as he walks up to Cacioppo, who is wearing a PlayStation 5 shirt. “Who you out here to meet tonight Jeff?”
As the camera gets closer, Cacioppo turns around and walks into his house, trying to close the door behind him.
“Jeff, we can have a conversation, or I can call the cops, Jeff!” the decoy says.
Cacioppo closes the door and says, “No.”
“You want me to call the cops? All right, I’ll call the cops!” the decoy yells outside the door.
The decoy then announces, “You invited over a 15-year-old kid tonight to have sex!” He asks Cacioppo if he’d like to have a conversation or alert the neighborhood about the situation.
When Cacioppo doesn’t respond, the decoy yells toward the street, “Excuse me, everybody, this man invited a 15-year-old boy to have sex with him tonight!”
Screenshots show Grindr messages between a person who said they were a 15-year-old boy and the man alleged to be Cacioppo. The conversation includes a discussion of sexual activity even after the older man was told that the person he was talking to is underage.
The decoy said they were 15 years old on two occasions. The person alleged to be Cacioppo didn’t seem to respond to either statement in their chats. In one part of a conversation, the user asks Cacioppo what they’ll do when they meet.
“Cuddling, kissing, mutual oral,” the person alleged to be Cacioppo writes.
He adds that he doesn’t want to have penetrative sex with the user, who then asks if Cacioppo wants him to shower before they meet.
“Are you clean?” Cacioppo asks.
“Yeah I’m 15 lol wth,” the decoy says. “Dang its nice lol.”
Cacioppo soon follows up to ask if the person is on their way to see him.
The timestamp shows the conversation taking place around between 3am and 4am, and the People v. Peds founder confirmed that the message exchange took place Friday early morning.
Cacioppo also asks the decoy for dick pics. He then asks the person if they are “really 15.”
“What? Lol,” says the decoy.
“How old are you?” Cacioppo asks.
“I just turned 15 2 weeks ago,” the decoy says. “Im sry.”
“Too bad,” Cacioppo says. He then proceeds to ask him further about the decoy’s preferences about sexual activities and asks for a dick picture.
The photos were shared through a Google drive by the People v. Peds group on their YouTube page. While the screenshots are separate, the timestamps on the text messages show Cacioppo continuing the conversation despite knowing the age of the decoy and asking them what they like sexually.
The People v. Peds representative told the Daily Dot that the San Diego County District Attorney’s office did not “feel the need to prosecute these cases” given that the group does not belong to law enforcement and that there was “no real child at harm” in the process.
The Daily Dot reached out to the DA office for comment.
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