Tony Aubermann is not on Facebook, though he seems sociable enough, joking about his one-sided sunburn from a Detroit Tigers game Wednesday with his youngest daughter at Comerica Park.

Anthony V. Aubermann is a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation assigned to the St. Joseph office for 14 of his 25 years with the FBI.

As he told the second annual Child Abuse and Prevention Luncheon sponsored by Cass County Youth Council Thursday at Southwestern Michigan College Mathews Conference Center, “Kids don’t know who they’re dealing with. Anybody can be anybody on the Internet. My daughter’s friend turns 12 today. They’re into these online games and she was talking about this nice Christian girl she met. I tried to make the point to her that ‘she’ could also be a 40-year-old man with back hair and tattoos. You have to be careful because you don’t know who you’re dealing with.

“The bottom line with Facebook and other social networking sites is you’ve got to evaluate on a regular basis what information your kids are sharing and what information you’re sharing and how that information can be used against you. Facebook can take you down paths you don’t anticipate. Employers look at it as part of background investigations, including who you’re friends with. For some jobs, they’re going to dig.”

Aubermann also said, “These sites share information you don’t know is being shared. Every time you ‘like’ something on Facebook, information about yourself and your tendencies go to advertisers. Below the surface, you might not like it if you realized what it was.”

Blogs, or online journals, without proper supervision, can be filled with inappropriate information. “They’re not secret diaries,” he reminded. “That information’s out there” for anybody to access.

Cell phones have evolved to where they are “portable computers” which allow teens to extend the Internet with privacy from parents.

“There are serious ramifications from what people do with their cell phones,” such as sexting, he said. “If a kid who is a minor voluntarily sends a nude photo, that’s child pornography if it meets the legal definition. If it gets forwarded to an adult who has it on their cell phone, they could be prosecuted and have to register as a sex offender. Sexting is a major issue because kids want to be popular, they want their boyfriend or girlfriend to like them, but they lose control of it when the boyfriend sends it to a friend, who sends it to three friends who send it the football team, which sends it to the whole school, and it’s out there forever.”

He played a video about an 18-year-old Ohio high school senior who texted a nude photo to her boyfriend and eventually became so ostracized she took her own life.

“All these ground rules have to be gone over when you give a child a cell phone,” Aubermann said. “If someone sends them an inappropriate picture, they need to report it to somebody, whether it’s a parent or a trusted adult.”

“Child pornography has been around for decades,” Aubermann said, referring to the Oakland County killings of the 1970s.

Four children ages 10-12 were kidnapped, raped and murdered. No one was ever prosecuted, though two suspects were identified. Both had been involved in child pornography. One committed suicide.

“With computers, digital photography and video, it’s just exploded,” he said. “Kids are molested, pictures are taken of them that are then shared with other people. Every single instance where they take pictures and produce child pornography, that’s a 15-year sentence. Child predators hunt where the prey is. They like 10-, 11-, 12-year-old girls or boys who are blond and not developed yet. They prey on these kids through online gaming, social networking, virtual worlds. Kids, even adults, have a tendency to share too much information. Predators identify kids by the information they share. They look for vulnerabilities to manipulate. They look to send pictures and to solicit pictures and, eventually, they try to get them to travel.”

Aubermann, introduced by Cass County Prosecutor Victor Fitz, has been a special agent for 21 years and was previously assigned to the Detroit and Dallas field offices, as well as temporary operational assignments in Virginia and FBI headquarters as an acting supervisor in the Intellectual Property Rights Unit of the Cyber Division.

He served as a Crimes Against Children coordinator in the Detroit Division, a Health Care Fraud Task Force coordinator in the Dallas Division and a Violent Crimes Task Force acting coordinator in southwest Michigan.

Aubermann has led numerous investigations involving production and/or distribution of child pornography.

One case involved the director of The Link, a Berrien County crisis intervention shelter for children, who fostered and adopted at-risk youth.

This defendant from Stevensville was convicted of production of child pornography, receiving a 40-year federal sentence.

“I wish that case was the only horror story,” he said, “but we’ve had foster parents up in Hartford who were adopting a kid — and I don’t want to slam foster parents because I have friends who are foster parents who are great — but the situation is what it is when people have access to kids and who seek access to kids and a certain percentage have evil intent. They got 30-year sentences. We’ve had biological parents who have done this in Niles. We’ve got another case that’s just come up in Van Buren County. We have a case that came up in Edwardsburg.”

Aubermann was recognized by the Chicago Police Department in August 2010 for his assistance on a highly-publicized triple homicide.

As a veteran field agent, he has worked a wide range of investigations, including complex white-collar crime cases; transnational and international organized crime and money-laundering investigations; violent crime, major offender and crimes against children cases; and cyber investigations.

He was one of the primary investigators on the Thriftcon and Maxbill major cases and assisted with the Illwind, Okbomb and Pentbomb major cases.

His work on the Thriftcon case led to federal prosecution and conviction of a high-ranking bank executive and a large real estate developer.

Aubermann’s efforts on the Maxbill investigation led to the prosecution of a high-ranking corporate executive, a Ph.D. therapist and two psychiatrists, as well as a $379 million civil settlement and eventual changes in health care industry practices.

He and his team of detectives were recently recognized by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Michigan for their Operation WEB investigation as one of the Cases of the Year.

This long-term investigation principally involved the trafficking of approximately $150 million of cocaine over a 12-year period by Mexican drug trafficking organizations to the upper Midwest and involved bulk cash smuggling and other forms of money laundering.

This case has resulted in 37 federal convictions in two judicial districts with sentences ranging from two to 35 years in prison.

This case also resulted in numerous seizures of illicit drugs, drug proceeds and guns, as well as asset forfeiture.

At least nine homicides, including the execution of a local drug informant, have been tied to these traffickers.