A convicted sex offender was arrested at O’Hare International Airport where he thought he was meeting a 14-year-old Alabama girl he had enticed to come here for sexual purposes, authorities said Friday.
To the surprise of the suspect, Stanley G. Beckmann, the girl he knew as “Tiffany” was fictional, and he had actually been exchanging explicit e-mail messages from his home computer for several weeks with a watchdog group in Alabama and local detectives, investigators said.
Beckmann, 43, of Woodridge appeared in federal court Friday, charged in a one-count criminal complaint with attempting to persuade a minor to engage in a sexual act. He is a registered sex offender as a result of a previous conviction in Lake County for molesting a young teenage girl over a 2-year period, according to authorities and court records.
When Beckmann began communicating by computer with the girl he knew as Tiffany, he was actually in contact with a member of a child-advocacy group in Alabama that monitors the Internet for pedophiles, authorities said.
When the communications became sexual in nature, the group contacted law enforcement. A police detective in Naperville, which has a computer crimes unit, picked up the role of Tiffany, authorities said.
According to investigators, Beckmann booked a seat for her on a United Airlines flight that arrived at O’Hare on Thursday. But instead of a 14-year-old girl, Beckmann was confronted by FBI agents and Naperville police and arrested.
In earlier e-mail messages, Beckmann talked in sexually explicit terms and told Tiffany of the importance that she pretend to be 18 if questioned about their relationship, according to the charges.
“If we were caught making love, and they found out your age, I would be charged with a felony and have to do 7 years in prison,” the criminal complaint quoted Beckmann as writing in one message. “THAT (sic) is why you have to say you are 18 . . . OK?”
Authorities seized Beckmann’s computer in a search of his home, said FBI spokesman Bob Long.
In court Friday, Assistant U.S. Atty. Paul Garcia asked that Beckmann be detained while awaiting trial because he is a danger to young girls. A bond hearing was scheduled for Monday.
Beckmann pleaded guilty to aggravated criminal sexual abuse and was sentenced in early 1989 to four years of probation and 18 months of periodic imprisonment for fondling a Winthrop Harbor girl between 1986 and 1988 when the victim was 13 to 15, court records showed.
It was later ruled that Beckmann violated probation by attempting to communicate with the girl and he was resentenced to 7 years in prison in 1990. Beckmann served four years.
