Chicago-area man arrested after attempting to meet up with 15-year-old at Livonia park
A man who told an undercover officer he does maintenance work at a Chicago-area high school was arrested Monday at a Livonia, Michigan, park where he planned to meet someone he believed was a 15-year-old boy for sexual activity, according to federal court records.
Christopher Thomas Mertens, 56, faces a federal charge of travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
The person he had been messaging was an undercover officer with the Livonia Police Department who is assigned to the FBI's Southeast Michigan Trafficking and Exploitation Crimes Task Force, the complaint says.
The officer was running an account on Taimi, a dating app, with the persona of a teenage boy as part of the Livonia Undercover Resistance to Exploitation Unit, known as LURE.
On Sept. 23, the officer received a message on the app from a profile depicting a middle-aged man. The officer suggested moving the conversation to WhatsApp. During one of the early conversations, the officer said they were 15.
Over the next few days, the two had numerous sexually explicit conversations, according to the affidavit. Mertens sent several explicit photos of himself and said he did maintenance work for a high school, the affidavit says.
He said he lived and worked in the Chicago area but also had a home in Michigan, and he suggested they meet Oct. 12 because he would have the day off for Columbus Day.
By then, the officer had gathered enough information to tentatively identify him and found a 2008 Ford Escape registered to his name in Michigan. Court records say the Flock license plate camera system showed the vehicle was often in the Chicago area.
The two agreed to meet at Beverly Park, a neighborhood park on Hubbard Street in Livonia, and walk from there to the home of the teenager the officer was portraying, since the parents would be at work.
On Monday, according to the complaint, officers used the Flock cameras to confirm the vehicle was in Chicago, and at about 7 a.m. tracked it eastbound on Interstate 94 near Gary, Indiana. Mertens then messaged that he would be at the meeting spot about 10:30 a.m. Livonia detectives set up surveillance at the park that morning and watched him arrive.
He was taken into custody after he got out of his vehicle, the complaint says.
