Deerfield Man Arrested In Child Solicitation Sting Operation

DEERFIELD, IL — A Deerfield man faces felony charges after he was arrested on his way to meet a person for sex who believed to be 14 years old, according to the Lake County Sheriff's Office. The man thought he was meeting with a teenage boy but was instead by met with detectives. It was the second arrest announced by the office's cybercrimes unit in the past seven days.

Jeffrey R. Weiss, 59, of the 300 block of South Waukegan Road, Deerfield, communicated with the purported teenage boy he met on an online social network, according to the sheriff's office. He asked to meet with the person to "engage in sexual acts" and drove to an unspecified location in Warren Township around 1:30 p.m. on Friday to meet with the "14-year-old boy."

Sheriff Mark Curran, whose office arranged the sting operation, said such cases provide a valuable reminder of the need to keep tabs on what your children are doing and who they are in contact with over the internet.

"Children with unsupervised access to a cellular device or the internet can be very dangerous," Curran said in a release announcing Weiss' arrest. "Parents should remember to continually monitor their children’s use of electronics.”

Weiss' arrest followed a similar operation that resulted in the Oct. 4 arrest of 23-year-old Thomas C. Casey of Algonquin, who also thought he was meeting with a teenage boy.

According to the sheriff's office and court records, Weiss faces two felony counts of indecent solicitation of a child. One, for soliciting a child over the internet, is a class 4 felony with a maximum penalty of one to three years in prison. The other, for an act that would have constituted aggravated criminal sexual abuse, is a class 3 felony with a maximum sentence of five to 10 years in prison. He was also ticketed for driving with a suspended license to meet the sheriff's detectives who had been posing as the teen.