HOUSTON -- The Internet has become a new playground for child predators looking for unsuspecting victims. But the state Attorney General's Office is hitting the Net, looking for these unsuspecting "sex travelers."

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Undercover Officers Pose As Young Girls In Chat Rooms

Daniel Robert McCarthy is one of those travelers. He thought he was going to meet a teenage girl at a Houston body art shop and then have sex with her. However, that girl wound up being an undercover police officer, posing as a young girl on an Internet chat room, where the two met.

McCarthy is one of 21 people arrested since May when state Attorney General Greg Abbott launched Texas' Cyber Crimes Unit.

"Investigators spend a vast majority of their day on the Internet in chat rooms that are of all sizes and types, and we're actually involved in online chats on a daily basis," Chief of Criminal Investigations David Boatright said.

The unit's approach to luring child predators on the Net is aggressive while the undercover officers' approach must come off as innocent as a child.

The key is for the child predators to groom their targets -- manipulate kids with just the right words that will entice them to get together and meet, more than likely for sex, police said.

"All parents need to know is that this is a new problem. Because of the Internet, there are people out there who are preying upon their children," Abbott said.

Boatright said that some of the people already arrested were highly degreed professionals and that most parents would probably not be afraid of these predators.

The attorney general said there are at least 200 parole violators in Texas who have a background involving sexual misconduct with a child. Abbott said his next mission is to go after the parole violators.