The FBI has long established the routine. Pick the sort of person who is all fantasy and no action; whose fantasies are such that they could NEVER have a chance of happening and whose fantasy-life is a SUBSTITUTE for RL interactions.

Then meet them on the Internet. Create fantasy people they could never meet in RL because such people DON'T exist in RL. Coach them and encourage them to break the law every time they raise an objection or shy away from breaking the law. Lure them into meet-ups based upon such delusions. And arrest them in order to claim the prevention or REAL crimes against REAL people.

Think it doesn't happen often, or only in a small percent of cases?

If the issue is "homegrown Jihad;" a survey of ALL prosecutions from 9/11 to 2011 reveals that in over 900 cases, all but 5 were fantasy-entrapment of the unreal. 100% followed a scenario which has NEVER been observed in the field. And only 1 of over 900 was a "credible threat" outside of this scenario which has never been seen in RL. ( Read The Terror Factory: Inside The FBI's Manufactured War On Terror. )

Even more seasoned lawyers are unprepared for blatant entrapment to NEVER be viewed as such in these cases. But this is because the public is encouraged by the FBI to think of Muslims as being entirely unlike "us." They have a harder time with your money-launderers and your meth dealers who might otherwise be urban or rural businessmen. But accuse a "monster-outsider" and you eliminate the possibility of empathy.

So it comes as no surprise that the arrest chronicled here depends on a deluded ineffectual fantasist being presented with a sex-forward older gerontophile interesting in hooking-up her gerontophile kid-sister to a stranger met online as an act of charity.

"F.B.I.’s Crimes Against Children Unit told the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security that the online pornography trade had created a “vast network of like-minded people, who believe it is acceptable to engage in sexual fantasies about children, thus lowering their inhibitions . . . and increasing the likelihood that they will actually molest children.”

This, despite the fact that they know that barely 1% of KP offenders have a potential for contact offenses.

Dante