Officials: 29 arrested in cybercrime operation

The 29 Central Florida men arrested in a seven-week cybercrime investigation include a military police officer, a hospital administrator and a Tampa man authorities say was abusing the two young daughters of a woman he molested when she was a child.

"There's no typical predator," said Stephanie Bergen, section chief of the state's Child Predator Cybercrime Unit. "They're successful; they're students; they're unemployed."

Two of the men arrested are registered sex offenders, officials said. One had nearly 50,000 graphic images on his computer.

"It's hard to believe that people are that sick," state Attorney General Bill McCollum said at a news conference today to announce the arrests as part of "Operation Broken Heart," which ended Tuesday.

When Hillsborough County deputies went to arrest registered sex offender Michael Kelley, 58, they found two girls, ages 7 and 10, who told investigators Kelley had been sexually abusing them, said Sheriff David Gee.

The girls were taken into protective custody.

Kelley was arrested in 1993 and charged with molesting the girls' mother when she was a child, Gee said.

According to state records, Kelley was sentenced in 1998 to a year in prison for lewd and lascivious conduct involving a child younger than 16. He also was convicted in 2007 of failing to register as a sex offender.

Kelley now faces 60 counts of possession of obscene material and two counts of sexual battery, authorities said.

Operation Broken Heart involved 16 law enforcement agencies and 45 search warrants. Bergen said the investigation was initiated after she noticed a high concentration of Florida's sex offenders were grouped in a swath across the state's center.

Of those arrested: 12 are from Hillsborough; five from Pinellas; three each from Manatee and Sarasota; two from Citrus; and one each from Pasco, Osceola, Sumter and Orange counties.

The charges range from possession and distribution of child pornography to sexual battery.

The youngest defendant is 17.

For a complete list of the defendants and their charges, go to myfloridalegal.com.