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SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WICS/WRSP)— A Springfield man was arrested after police say he posted a Snapchat video showing himself firing a handgun into the air in a residential neighborhood on the Fourth of July. According to the Springfield Police Department, officers were called around 1:02 p.m. July 4 to the 1100 block of North 19th Street after a woman reported concerns about a Snapchat video. Police said the video showed 24-year-old Ronald W. Mercer Jr. firing a black handgun into the air in front of his face and pointing an AR-style rifle toward the camera. Investigators said Mercer also referenced an address in the 900 block of North Edmond Street and challenged an unidentified person to come there. Officers obtained a copy of the video through an evidence submission request before going to the North Edmond Street address to speak with Mercer. According to police, Mercer admitted to firing the handgun shown in the Snapchat video at the residence. He was taken into custody, advised of his Miranda rights and declined to speak further with investigators. A LEADS inquiry showed Mercer did not have a valid Firearm Owner's Identification (FOID) card, police said. Investigators said the firearm was discharged into the

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - A Fort Campbell soldier pleaded guilty Wednesday to child sexual exploitation and child pornography charges, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Middle District of Tennessee. Robert Cecilio, 40, of Clarksville, who was a soldier stationed at Fort Campbell, pleaded guilty to: 2 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor 4 counts of receipt of child pornography 1 count of possession of child pornography depicting a prepubescent minor Court documents showed that Cecilio used Snapchat accounts with variations of the name “Gabe” to communicate with underage girls from at least June 2024 until his arrest in August 2025. Cecilio would claim to be 19 or 20 years old and would persuade the young girls to produce and send him sexually explicit messages and videos of themselves. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Cecilio would receive the messages and videos over the internet and sometimes saved them. Five victims were identified as girls ranging from 13 to 18 in age and living in Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky and Tennessee. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Cecilio communicated with one victim even after she turned 18. “The FBI identified one of the victims, a 16-year-old girl in Florida, in

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Hamilton County Sheriff's Office James Lee Bauerle Jr. CARMEL, Ind. (WRTV) -- A 44-year-old Carmel man was formally charged Monday with promotion of child sexual trafficking and other child sex crimes, according to a court document from the Hamilton County Prosecutor's Office. James Lee Bauerle Jr. remained in the Hamilton County jail on Monday afternoon. Detective Sgt. Gregory Loveall of the Carmel Police Department said in the court document that a tip about Bauerle came from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about suspected online enticement of children for sexual acts. The nonprofit had received the tip, along with the IP address that sent the messages, from Snapchat. Another police officer, Lt. Doug Baker with the Fishers Police Department, learned Bauerle used the name "vbox2015" to chat with a juvenile in July 2025, the detective wrote. Snapchat had disabled his account at one point, he later told investigators. The chats, with at least two juveniles, included questions from Bauerle, investigators learned. About Bauerle's questions in the chat, one juvenile had said in a text, "They seem like inappropriate questions." Bauerle was charged with two mid-level felonies: promotion of child sexual trafficking, and attempt to commit promotion of child

A new lawsuit against Snap, Inc., the parent company behind Snapchat, alleges the social media platform’s features enabled a child predator to sexually assault a 12-year-old girl. The filing references patterns of abuse and negligence around Snapchat which child advocates have been calling out for years. The Social Media Victims Law Center and Holland Law Firm filed the suit late last month in St. Charles County, Missouri on behalf of 12-year-old JF and her family. It alleges Snapchat enabled 25-year-old Gabriel Joel Valentin-Rios to contact, groom and rape JF in September 2021. The predator pled guilty to one count of statutory rape or attempted statutory rape and one count of enticement or attempted enticement in June. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison. “The assault did not happen in a vacuum,” Matthew P. Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, argued in a press release. “It happened because Snap’s product design made it easy for a predator to reach and manipulate an unsuspecting child.” Dangerous Features JF reportedly started using Snapchat at just 11 years old — without her parents’ knowledge or permission. The app’s “Quick Add” algorithm, which recommends new “friends” to users based on

Peter Stokes, the 19-year-old American-Estonian extradited from Finland to face Scattered Spider hacking charges in the United States, is allegedly tied to a US$8 million ($11.5 million) ransom demand largely through a Microsoft global device identifier (GDID), a court affidavit suggests. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleged in its complaint that "criminal referrals from Microsoft" were among the evidence presented for Stokes' alleged offending. "Cyber security researchers at Microsoft, through the course of their job, have access to data, such as computer machine IDs, IP addresses, and malware samples associated with sophisticated cybergroups," the FBI said in its affidavit. Stokes allegedly hid his device behind a virtual private network (VPN) server which he then used to open an account on the ngrok secure tunnelling service. But doing so did not mask the unique GDID of the Windows installation he used. Microsoft identified that GDID for investigators after a court order, based on ngrok's time-stamped access records. Such GDIDs are typically used for diagnostic and crash reporting, feature-usage analysis, and detecting abuse patterns such as one machine repeatedly claiming free trials or licences. Security teams also use this kind of device-level correlation defensively, since a login from an unfamiliar

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Snapchat messaging is now on Apple Watch Snapchat has officially launched a native app for the Apple Watch, bringing its signature fast-paced messaging to users' wrists. (Photo: Snapchat) Listen Read this story aloud Listen to the clean text version of this article. Ready 2 min listen Audio reading is not supported on this browser. Unlike the photo-heavy experience of the main app, Snapchat’s Apple Watch version is focused on messaging. Snapchat on Thursday officially launched a native app for the Apple Watch, bringing its signature fast-paced messaging to users' wrists. While major tech players like Instagram and Uber have long exited the smartwatch scene, Snapchat is betting on the opposite: that users still want to stay connected in more compact, subtle ways. Unlike the photo-heavy experience of the main app, Snapchat’s Apple Watch version is focused on messaging. The app will allow users to view incoming chats and reply instantly, without pulling out their phones. You will, however, not be taking selfies or accessing the camera or watching stories from the watch. But you can respond using a tiny keyboard, emoji, voice dictation, or even Scribble. It is quick, lightweight, and designed for what Snapchat calls “micro-connections.” “We know people