--- title: "Michigan Police Use AI-Generated Teenager to Arrest Illinois School Worker" description: "Christopher Mertens faces a federal charge after driving from Chicago to a Livonia park to meet a 15-year-old boy who didn’t exist." author: "rews desk" published: 2026-10-16T13:57:18Z modified: 2026-10-16T16:29:35Z url: https://rews.cc/a/michigan-police-use-ai-generated-teenager-to-arrest-illinois-666f12 language: en tags: ["ai", "police", "crime", "child-safety", "surveillance", "us"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Michigan Police Use AI-Generated Teenager to Arrest Illinois School Worker *Christopher Mertens faces a federal charge after driving from Chicago to a Livonia park to meet a 15-year-old boy who didn’t exist.* By rews desk · October 16, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/michigan-police-use-ai-generated-teenager-to-arrest-illinois-666f12 ## In brief - Livonia, Mich., police arrested Chicago-area school maintenance worker Christopher Thomas Mertens on Monday at a park - He faces a federal charge of travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct; reports put his age at 55 or 56 - An undercover officer posed on the Taimi app as ‘Caleb,’ 15, using an AI-generated image of a teenage boy - Police identified him with Clearview AI and Thomson Reuters CLEAR and tracked his car with Flock cameras - NCMEC received more than 1.5 million generative AI-related tip line reports in 2025, up from about 67,000 in 2024 Police in Livonia, Mich., arrested a Chicago-area high school maintenance worker on Monday at a park where he expected to meet a 15-year-old boy, a persona an undercover officer had built with AI-generated photos. The man, Christopher Thomas Mertens, is charged with 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, [CBS Detroit reported](https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/livonia-michigan-man-arrested-meet-undercover-officer-posing-as-teen/). CBS Detroit gave his age as 56. [Hoodline put it at 55](https://hoodline.com/2026/10/livonia-sting-nabs-chicago-school-worker-who-drove-in-for-sex-with-teen/). He has been charged, not convicted. The case, [reported by Samantha Cole of 404 Media](https://404media.co/undercover-cops-using-ai-generated-child-arrest/) with Court Watch, an outlet that digs up overlooked court records, rests on an affidavit by McKailey Scott, an FBI task force officer who works with the Livonia Undercover Resistance to Exploitation Unit, or LURE. The unit identifies and prosecutes child sex offenders. Officer Scott set up an account on Taimi, a dating app aimed at queer users, with “an AI generated image of a teenage-appearing male with the name ‘Caleb,’ and no age listed on the profile,” the affidavit says. A user going by “Chris” made contact on Sept. 23, CBS Detroit reported, and the conversation moved to WhatsApp. It took minutes for him to ask Caleb’s age. When Officer Scott, writing as Caleb, said 15, the man answered “Im interested” and “Im hard now,” according to the affidavit. ![A black silhouette on a cream portrait card dissolves into pixels, casting a handcuff-shaped shadow across a textured blue background.](https://rews.cc/img/d804f40e9ab1a1d576b59a7d6ce91e699f5f07e0.webp) Investigators ran his phone number through Thomson Reuters CLEAR, a commercial records database, and his photos through the facial recognition service Clearview AI, and identified him as Mr. Mertens. CBS Detroit reported that they also checked the Law Enforcement Information Network. For days the two exchanged sexually explicit messages. Mr. Mertens said he lived and worked in the Chicago area but also had a home in Michigan, and he suggested meeting on Oct. 12, when he’d have Columbus Day off, [Fox 2 Detroit reported](https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/illinois-school-employee-arrested-trying-meet-livonia-teen-sex). He believed Caleb’s parents wouldn’t be home. There were no parents. On Monday, officers used Flock license-plate cameras to confirm his car was in Chicago and, at about 7 a.m., to follow it east on Interstate 94 near Gary, Ind., according to the complaint. They hardly needed to. Mr. Mertens kept texting Caleb the whole way, saying he was coming and then that he had arrived. Police took him into custody at Beverly Park around 10:15 a.m., when he stepped out of the car. About two hours after he was booked, Mr. Mertens told jail staff he wanted to speak with Officer Scott. When the officer got there, he confessed, according to the affidavit, and said he worked at a high school in Illinois. The complaint doesn’t name the school. Livonia police did not respond to a request for comment from 404 Media. ![A black car follows a winding red trail through a monochrome wooded park, passing a bench beneath a large surveillance camera.](https://rews.cc/img/ad76945f32864b376172ae2464ed54d1bf4c900c.webp) Fake children have been part of these stings for years. In 2013 the Dutch children’s rights group Terre des Hommes built Sweetie, a computer-generated child, and used it to talk with men online. In August, a 24-year-old Connecticut man was arrested after soliciting an undercover officer who used what was described as “age regression technology” to look 14 in videos. He was charged with enticing a minor and criminal attempt to commit risk of injury to a child. A 45-year-old man arrested in 2025, after investigators used AI-generated images of children to catch him distributing child sexual abuse material, was recently sentenced to 12 years in federal prison. And in 2024 New Mexico sued Snapchat after state investigators set up a decoy account with AI-generated images of children. The platform allegedly recommended that account to “dangerous accounts, including ones named ‘child.rape’ and ‘pedo\_lover10,’ in addition to others that are even more explicit,” according to the New Mexico Department of Justice. The same tools reach well beyond child predators. Police departments at the U.S. border use AI-generated online personas to interact with and monitor protesters and activists, according to documents 404 Media obtained. Offenders use generative AI too, to extort and entice children, and children use it to bully one another. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received more than 1.5 million CyberTipline reports tied to generative AI in 2025, up from about 67,000 in 2024, [according to the center’s first look at its 2025 data](https://www.missingkids.org/blog/2026/the-work-never-stops-first-look-at-ncmecs-2025-data). The tip line took in 21.3 million reports of all kinds last year.