Last year, in Arizona, the FBI successfully tracked down a missing 15-year-old girl with the help of Nintendo Switch. The girl was last seen in Virginia on August 3, 2022, before her abduction. The district was flooded with advertisements and it was discovered that the girl spent most of her time at home and was unlikely to have escaped.
Street searches yielded no results, and the parents gradually lost hope. Unbeknownst to them, the girl was already 3,000 kilometers away from home, traveling on a bus towards another state.
According to court records, a 28-year-old man named Ethan Roberts had befriended the girl online. In Virginia, where they had agreed to meet, Ethan took her out of the city and coerced her into engaging in child pornography.
However, Roberts allowed the child to bring her Nintendo Switch game console with her. The device left digital traces every time it connected to the internet.
The Nintendo Switch has a function that alerts friends about the user’s online activity. This function, designed for gaming purposes, potentially saved the teenager’s life. A friend, who knew that the girl had disappeared, noticed her online activity and informed the police.
By using the Nintendo Switch, law enforcement was able to obtain the console’s IP address, which led them to Roberts’ location. Eleven days after the child’s disappearance, the FBI and Tulleson police surrounded the man’s apartment and apprehended him.
The girl was safely reunited with her family in Virginia. This situation could have dragged on longer or ended in tragedy if it weren’t for the assistance of Nintendo.
“Probably, until that moment, no one thought that this was possible,” noted Frank Milstid, former DPS director of Arizona. “The fact that another child was clever enough to think, ‘Wow, my friend is online but she has disappeared, I urgently need to tell someone about this,’ is remarkable.”
Although Milstid was not directly involved in this case, he states that law enforcement officers frequently monitor digital devices to apprehend suspects and search for missing individuals.
“Everything is connected to Wi-Fi or LTE,” says Milstid. “Mobile phones, iPads, watches, anything – all these devices can be used to locate people.”
“Criminals should be aware that the police are tracking them and that they leave a digital trail wherever they go,” Frank concluded. “We will find you.”
In April, Ethan Roberts pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 years