A former Walt Disney World Mickey Mouse impersonator, a local youth football coach and a U.S. Navy sailor were among 281 people arrested in a weeklong Florida sex sting, the New York Post reports. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd announced the results Friday and called it the largest sting operation in the county’s history.
The seven-day operation, dubbed “Polk Around and Find Out II,” also netted 12 other Disney employees and four Universal employees, according to the Post.
Among them was Colin Klaco, 24, a former Mickey Mouse impersonator. Judd noted that Klaco had the character’s “high spooky voice too, by the way.” Authorities said Klaco brought two backpacks full of diapers that he planned to wear and to put on the young boy he believed he was talking to online. The “boy” was an undercover agent.
Another suspect, Adam Snyder, was working at the Roundup Rodeo restaurant in Disney’s Toy Story Land and did not change out of his uniform before he was caught trying to have sex with a little boy, police said. Judd played footage for reporters showing an ice cream truck driving past during Snyder’s arrest and called the timing “apropos.”
Judd singled out Rashiod Crayton, a 31-year-old local youth football coach, as the “worst of the worst.” The sheriff said Crayton’s messages to a person he believed was a 14-year-old girl were “so graphic” that he could not share most of them. Judd did read a few lines, saying Crayton wrote, “I can pick you up at school, and then we can have sex in the car,” and, “You see, we’ve got to be careful because just these texts will put me in jail.” When Crayton arrived, Judd said, he brought a battery-powered sex toy.
Investigators also arrested U.S. Navy machinist Dang Thai, who Judd said claimed to be 17 when he is 24. After he was arrested for allegedly trying to have sex with a minor, Thai protested that he had “top secret clearance,” the sheriff said.
“The focus here is to go out into the underworld and look for those who want to prey upon our folks,” Judd said.
Most of the arrests involved prostitution. Of the 281, 117 were caught by undercover agents and charged with soliciting prostitution, including an Orange County deputy. The sheriff’s office said 11 people were identified as victims of human trafficking and rescued.
Thirty-two of those arrested were in the country illegally, from nine countries including Italy, India, Peru, Ecuador and Haiti, according to the sheriff’s office. Twenty-two of them were illegally collecting public assistance worth more than $100,000 a year combined.
Judd confirmed that everyone who was working at Disney at the time of their arrest has been fired, then quipped, “At least they were as of the time that they were arrested. I don’t know what their significant other thinks about them today.”