By David Perry
The Lowell Sun
LOWELL, Mass. — Though he doesn’t have kids of his own, Don Colcolough wants to know when someone is preying on children.
So, yesterday, he told a room full of the state’s cyber-crime investigators, to call him. They could probably e-mail, too, or shoot him an Instant Message.
Colcolough, director of Investigations & Global Security for AOL, the global Internet services and media company, was in Lowell yesterday to address the start of a two-day Middlesex Community College-sponsored forum, “Protecting Our Children in the Cyber Age: Investigating a Cyber Tip.”
He may not be a father, but professionally, “I have about 25 million kids,” said Colcolough during a break between sessions at MCC’s Federal Building.
The training session was geared toward helping law enforcement better understand, track and prosecute cyber-predators who target children. Colcolough was there to say his company has sophisticated ways to help.
Seventy investigators, most from the 48 Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council (NEMLEC) towns, attended the session. NEMLEC and the Middlesex County district attorney’s office served as co-sponsors with the college.
Gerard Leone, Middlesex County district attorney, said that a year-old Emerson Hospital survey of 8,000 high-school students showed that 24 percent of them and 20 percent of middle-school students said they had given out information about themselves over the Internet to someone they had never met. The survey also said that 14.8 percent of high-school students said they had met someone in person who they met online, while 13.65 percent of eight-graders and 12.8 percent of sixth-graders said the same thing.
And a national survey conducted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEP) states that one in seven young people have received unwanted sexual solicitations online.
Leone said that one of his first missions after being elected DA was to establish the Cyber Protection Program, the first time the DA’s office has fused a team of prosecutors, state police and investigators whose job focuses on cyber crime. To lead the team, he rounded up prosecutor Dana Leccese Babbin from the Suffolk County DA’s office, State Trooper Matthew Murphy and Melissa Marino, a digital-evidence investigator.
Leone said over the weekend a pediatric dentist from Missouri was arrested after chatting online with a person he thought was a 14-year-old in Belmont.
“It turns out the person he was online with was an undercover cop,” said Leone.
Colcolough, who has worked for AOL for more than 15 years, called Leone’s cyber unit “the most perfect” form of cyber enforcement.
“You have investigators who are up to speed, people who do the forensic work, and Dana, a shining star, who makes it all work in court.” Typically, he will work with jurisdictions “who have one or two of the three elements, but not all of them. ... About half the time, the prosecutors don’t know the right questions to ask.”
For all the wonders and access technology provides, computer predators are its underbelly, using technology to harm. Colcolough says he typically testifies once a week in court, and is actively investigating other cases simultaneously.
He said that while chasing predators is a never-ending job which requires cooperation between law enforcement and experts, “over the last year or so we’ve begun to be able to reverse the mushroom” that abusers use to commit crimes. “We’re fighting fire with fire.”
Copyright 2008 The Lowell Sun