These days, it’s hard to tell if people are who they appear to be on social media, and a recent case in Wesley Chapel is a prime example, in which an adult posed as a minor online to obtain nude photos of more than 40 juveniles.
According to the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO), Wesley Chapel High (WCH) assistant boy’s wrestling coach Carlos Perez, 22, was arrested on June 17 just after 10 p.m. at his Bridgeview home in Wesley Chapel and charged with two counts of transmission of material harmful to a minor.
PCSO reports that, for the past five years, Perez has posed as a female named Alayna Dentry on Facebook and KIK (an online messaging service), adding underage males as “friends.” Pasco Sheriff Chris Nocco said at a press conference that Perez started the account in 2011 when he still was a WCH student. Perez has worked with the wrestling team for the past four years.
Perez reportedly would send nude photographs of an unknown female from the Dentry account in exchange for nudes of the boys he connected with on the sites. The PCSO report says that Perez admitted to knowing that the victims were underage and that he even personally knew some of them through coaching.
“It’s troublesome as a parent to think that this person was out there as a coach, helping to wrestle kids,” Nocco said. “Then he was turning right around and exploiting them.”
The victims provided PCSO with the nude photos and chat logs with Perez, who provided the agencies with the photos of the victims, two of which already have been identified.
Perez is not a Pasco County School District (PCSD) full-time employee and is contracted as an assistant wrestling coach at WCH only during the high school wrestling season, which ended in March.
“Everyone that knew him was shocked it was him,” said PCSD spokesperson Linda Cobbe, the only District employee authorized to speak about the case. “I’ve talked to the principal (Carin Hetzler-Nettles), she was shocked. She’s known him for years.”
Dentry’s Facebook page has 18 “Friends,” all of which are male and many are high school students. There also is an “Alayna Dentry” Twitter page that follows 44 other profiles, most of which are young males.
Nocco told parents to search their kids social media profiles for Dentry, as they could unknowingly be victims.
Perez was released from the Land O’Lakes Detention Center on June 18 on a $10,000 bond. Nocco said that Perez could face additional charges as more victims are identified.
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