What Does Roblox Have to Do with Sexually Exploiting Children? (Turns Out, A Lot!)

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Roblox Sextortion Lawsuit

Is There a Sexual Predator in Your Child’s Bedroom?

You think your child is tucked in tight for the night, lights off, home alarm on. They’re safe and sound, right? Hmm. Not when a predator can sneak into their bedroom disguised as a new virtual friend intent on sexually exploiting them.

SOS, parents! If your child plays Roblox, you need to know about the predator problem targeting kids.

Roblox is the world’s biggest user-generated game zone “geared for children,” hosting 78 million active visitors every day and supposedly monitoring 50,000 private chats every second for audio and text.¹ But if your child enters this place, they are vulnerable to unrestricted X-rated content, sexual predators & sextortion scammers – blackmailers disguised as friendly avatars scouring games for unsuspecting kids.

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We’re changing the narrative about lawsuits.^™

“Parents who would never let their kids use TikTok don’t think twice about letting them on Roblox.”

– Reddit

Does Roblox Have a Predator Problem?

Yes, and it’s news to many parents who are under the impression the site is carefully protecting their children, as it claims to. Allegedly, it does a crappy job, which is one of the reasons parents are suing the company.

Roblox knows it has a predator problem but denies that its protective measures are insufficient. By 2023, it had reported 13,316 sextortion cases to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. By July 2024 (for 2024 alone), Roblox had responded to 13,000 separate requests from law enforcement for more information, a jump of one-third from 2022.² We’re still talking about people who are chatting and playing with your kids in their favorite obb (obb-bee is slang for Roblox games).

“Since 2018, police in the US have arrested at least two dozen people accused of kidnapping or sexually abusing victims they met or groomed on Roblox.”

– Bloomberg Businessweek³

Doesn’t Roblox Have Safeguards in Place?

Its developers say the platform is equipped with sophisticated AI chatbots responding in real-time + 3,000 humans filtering the 50,000 private chats per second using moderation protocols. Ben Simon aka Ruben Sim says the filtering process is a joke because silly chats are flagged while the concerning ones slip by.⁴

In comparison, TikTok has triple the number of active daily users and 40,000 human chat monitors.

“Roblox spends so much time, effort and money convincing parents that their platform is safer than it actually is,” said Simon, a self-appointed vigilante who tried to get Roblox to ban a criminal pedophile.

Just How Big Is Roblox’s Pedophile Problem?

Huge. Predators go where children go. The same Roblox system of avatars and pseudonyms originally designed to protect a kid’s identity also protects bad people.

Psychologists say the best predators feel no remorse in pretending to be who they aren’t to take what doesn’t belong to them – always from those most vulnerable: 60% of sextortion targets are under 16 and 55% are under 12. A scary 75% of all American children 9-12 play on Roblox.⁵

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, there was a 98% increase in online enticement reports from 2019-2020. Most tragic is that between October 2022 and March 2023, at least 20 male teens committed suicide after being tormented by sextortion scammers.

Who Is DoctorRofatnik & Why Is His Story Important?

Ben Simon aka Ruben Sim led a posse of Roblox vigilantes who loved the platform before it became sketchy – they’d grown up with it. In 2020, after receiving messages from gamers who wanted to take down a creepy antihero called DoctorRofatnik, Simon reposted private chat messages sent by Doc to a preteen girl, and produced a 7-minute video to force the attention of Roblox security.

“You’re 12. I expect you to be a little slow on the upbringing.”

“You have no idea what I’m going to do to you.”

“But soon I’ll corrupt you beyond your wildest dreams. You’re the reason why I’m gonna wind up behind bars.”

But Roblox’s halfhearted response didn’t meet Simon’s expectations. Yes, Doc’s account was immediately closed, but he transferred ownership of his smash-hit copycat game Sonic Eclipse to a friend who kept it running in his absence, and Doc soon reappeared under a different pseudonym. “Guess who’s back, back again. Shady’s back tell a friend.” At the time, no other disciplinary action was taken from Roblox and Doc was still able to communicate with kids in the game.

In retaliation, Roblox sued Simon for leading a “cult-like cybermob harming its reputation,” and banned him from Roblox forever.

The efforts to expose Doc continued while Roblox maintained that “the company has no tolerance for predatory behavior.” Two years later Arnold Castillo aka Doc aka Shady aka Jadon Shedletsky was arrested for kidnapping and assaulting a 15-year-old child. Authorities were able to rescue the child, tracking Castillo through the Amazon account linked to gifts he had been sending the child prior to the kidnapping.

Castillo is now serving 15 years in federal prison and his Roblox accounts, along with Sonic Eclipse, have been deleted.

The Federal prosecutor for the case argued that his case should “send a message about the bigger social problem” and that predators like Castillo “know that children are on these social media applications. They know they’re on Roblox and they are exploiting them every day.”

What Is the Roblox Lawsuit About?

Parents of a minor gamer in California filed the first Roblox sextortion-related lawsuit against the company in October 2022 for enabling a culture where a young girl was sexually and financially exploited for months.⁶

Another proposed lawsuit alleges the gaming platform is “built on the exploitation of children,” charging that Roblox’s lack of child safety precautions resulted in monetary losses. Their children spent thousands of dollars on Robux (Roblox currency) to buy things inside the site, were exposed to adult content, and in danger of grooming.⁷

“It’s the Wild West,” said Alexandra Walsh, founder of Walsh Law Firm, one of the lead firms handling a class action lawsuit filed in California. “It is unregulated, inappropriately monitored, and it needs to change.”⁸

How Can Parents Help Their Child Avoid Sexual Exploitation?

“Specifically on the parents’ side, the parent pays for the phone,” FBI Special Agent Emily Steele told PBS. “You should know what is on that phone. So I think, if I had to pick one, just one measure to take, it would be having access to your children’s social media and knowing what applications they have.”⁹

Bottom line, if you notice that your kid seems “off,” like, obsessed about checking messages every second, you need to be able to find out what’s on the phone that’s making them so afraid to put it down. It’s a good idea to know your kid’s PIN code, passwords, and which platforms they visit most.

What If Your Child Has Already Been Tricked?

If your child has paid money to a sextortionist, they are not alone. It is not their fault and not your fault. Kids who have been played and you (their parent) are likely beyond freaked out. First, call the FBI at 1-800-225-5324 or submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov or CyberTipline.org.

Please don’t throw away any documentation of chats or images. Provide as much detailed information as you can to the authorities. We know it can be extremely cringey, but the tiniest detail might provide the key clue.

Talk to your kids. Assure them that you don’t expect them to keep bad secrets.
Check out Take it Down.
Do not blame your child.

How Is A Case for Women Helping People?

Remember, your child is not in trouble and neither are you.

After contacting the FBI, you could contact us 24/7/365 at 1-866-488-4786 or complete our form. You may have legal options, and the sex abuse lawyers we work with are not afraid to go up against evil empires. Our attorneys have fought rideshare giants Uber and Lyft, major hotel chains profiting from sex trafficking, and mega-corporations covering up sexual assault.

We don’t know about you, but we were caught off guard by the cruelty and sudden recognition of online sextortion, as well as by the destructive culture at Roblox. This didn’t just come out of nowhere, though. We realized our kids were unprepared to maneuver the tricks of this trade, much less the trauma if they suddenly learned their new best friend wasn’t what or who they thought.

We’re here if you need us 100%. Imagine your son or daughter coming face to face with evil in the form of a cartoon avatar springing to life from a fantasy world and threatening to upend their real life. They would need you more than ever.

“‘Kids can’t understand temporary versus forever,’ said Mary Rodee, the mother of Riley Basford, a 15-year-old from Potsdam, NY, who killed himself hours after he was enticed by a sextortion scammer posing as a girl his age.”¹⁰

– New York Times, May 15, 2024

We’re here if you need us.

Sources

Olivia Carville and Cecilia D’Anastasio, “Roblox’s Pedophile Problem,” Bloomberg, July 22, 2024
Ibid.
Ibid.
Marc Daniel Davies, “Roblox Is Fighting to Keep Predators Away – But Isn’t Always Winning,” Bloomberg, July 23, 2024
David Fox and David Gura, “The Gaming Platform With a Predator Problem,” Bloomberg, July 22, 2024
Brendan Pierson, “Game company Roblox enabled girl’s sexual exploitation, lawsuit claims,” Reuters, October 5, 2022
Olivia Carville and Cecilia D’Anastasio, “Roblox’s Pedophile Problem,” Bloomberg, July 22, 2024
Stuart Rucker, Dorian Hargrove, Keristen Holmes, “Class-action lawsuit against popular online gaming platform, Roblox, cites unauthorized charges and sexual grooming,” CBS/8 San Diego, November 6, 2023
Stephanie Sy, “How families can protect children as FBI sees increase in online sextortion cases,” PBS, May 13, 2024
Sarah Maslin Nir, “’Chelsea’ Asked for Nude Pictures. Then the Sextortion Began,” New York Times, May 15, 2024

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We are the ones, far more than men, who are injured by sexual assault, financial scams, the gender pay gap, toxic chemicals, and the misguided practices of powerful pharmaceutical companies.