"Operation Be Mine" sex-sting nets 23 arrests in Fla.

LAKE COUNTY, Fla. - Nearly two dozen men, including three Walt Disney World workers, an Orange County Fire Rescue paramedic and a National Guard soldier, were arrested in a Lake County, Fla. cyber-sex-sting dubbed “Operation Be Mine,” reports CBS affiliate WKMG.

The station says the investigation, which lasted a week,  involved law enforcement officers posing as children and parents online, who arranged to meet the suspects under the guise of sex, and then arrested them when they arrived, according to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.

One of the 23 men arrested, 47-year-old David Griffith, of Minneola, Fla., reportedly admitted to detectives he arranged with a 7-year-old’s mother to meet her child for sex in another county. Deputies say they later determined the child had been sexually abused by her own mother, reports the station.

The Orlando Sentinel reports another suspect, Alexander Vorobets, a 27-year-old valet attendant at an Orlando strip club, allegedly brought a McDonald’s Happy Meal and condoms to what he thought was a planned sexual encounter with a 13-year-old.

Other suspects brought jewelry, chocolate candy bars, a bottle of flavored vodka and marijuana with hopes of meeting children as young as 13 for sex, reports the paper.