Summary: Colorado sex offender pretends to be making a charity calendar to lure parents into letting him photograph their children.
Michael Kenta, of Thornton Colorado, seems nonplussed by his 2013 conviction for attempting to lure a minor online. Indeed, he’s back at it, having devised a scheme to win the trust of parents. Police arrested Kaneta, 36, for failing to register as a sex offender, and are investigating into his recent ploy to pose as a photographer for a calendar and asking parents to allow their children to model for him.
“Not sure if this is allowed,” said Kaneta on a community Facebook page, Colorado Angels, an online support group for parents, “I am a photographer looking to put calendar together for children’s hospital for a fundraiser. I need families, children, models, individuals to help. I just need people to allow me to take photos of them to use for calendar and you will get copies on a disk. Let me know if you can help. No charge for anything.”
Children’s Hospital Colorado know nothing about this guy and his calendar, and though Kaneta apparently never touched the children involved, police nevertheless are determining whether he violated the terms of his probation in photographing the children.
“It was a good deed for the children that are sick and for their families, and so why not help them out?” explained Kristi Coffie, a mother who participated in the calendar shoots, as reported by KUSA. “It makes me sick to my stomach. Who knows what he’s doing with them, or who he’s already shared them with!”
A natural concern for the mother, though it seems the situation is rather mild, and was caught before such Kaneta’s plotting escalated. If Kaneta’s approach had gone unnoticed, who knows what it could have led to?