CFO accused of drugging and raping teen at Midtown Hotel

A 54-year-old finance executive assaulted a 14-year-old girl through her Instagram account, posing as his daughter on cross-country trips, drugging her and raping her in New York City hotel rooms, prosecutors with the Manhattan the prosecutor’s office said on Thursday.

Prosecutors said the executive, Michael Olson, had texted several other girls and the investigation would continue. The 17 charges against him so far stem from the experience of a single victim, who prosecutors said was found last month in a Midtown Manhattan hotel room with Mr. Olson, overdosing on cocaine and ketamine.

A prosecutor, John Fuller, said the drugs were given to the girl before and after Mr. Olson had sex with her. The overdose was not fatal.

“Searching an iPad that the defendant had with him that day revealed numerous other victims,” ​​said Mr. Fuller Thursday at the arraignment of Mr. Olson on the New York State Supreme Court. “There were hundreds of screenshots from various Instagram accounts of young Asian teenage girls that the defendant messaged.”

Mr Fuller said the defendant kept screenshots of teenage girls’ Instagram accounts on the iPad and that he targeted children whose messages stated they had no money or depicted themselves harming themselves.

An attorney for Mr Olson, Jeffrey Lichtman, declined to comment. District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg called on all other victims to come forward.

The 17 charges against Mr. Olson included five counts of second-degree rape, seven cases of patronizing a minor for prostitution, and one case of facilitating a sex offense involving a controlled substance. He will be held in prison as his case progresses, and faces up to 44 years in prison based on the charges already filed.

Prosecutors said Mr Olson originally found the 14-year-old when she posted on Instagram that clothes were overpriced, sent her a gift card and paid to spend time with her. He eventually paid her $700 a week for sex acts in hotel rooms and took her to Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Miami.

Mr. Olson told authorities he was employed by Dwight Mortgage Trust, a New York-based financial firm focused on real estate investments.

Experts said the behavior of Mr. Olson is accused of being typical of sexual predators, who can more easily attack their victims through social media.

“Predators seek out vulnerable victims,” ​​said Jane Manning, a former sex offender prosecutor with the Queens District Attorney’s Office and the director of Women’s Equal Justice, a nonprofit that helps survivors of sexual assault.

“That’s their standard operating procedure,” she said. “And digital technology has given them a whole new way to do it.”

Mr Fuller said the age of Mr Olson’s targets was clear from their profiles, which referred to their middle and high schools. He told his targets how much he would pay them to meet and have sex, talking to them about their schools and about taking vacations during school holidays.

The iPad also contained nude photos of minors and photos of girls performing sexual acts; Mr Fuller said Mr Olson was expected to face further charges for those photos.

Mr Olson posted $1 million bail after he was first arrested and charged last month and – despite electronic surveillance and confinement – continued to try to contact young girls, Mr Fuller said.

The evidence in the case includes spreadsheets that prosecutors said Mr. Olson had made with details of the drugs he administered to children and the amount of money he paid them. On his phone, he had screenshots of the public school calendar and Uber pickups from elementary and middle schools.

“It should be society’s responsibility to keep our children safe. It cannot be left to each individual parent to confront themselves,” Ms Manning said. “In the case of social media companies like Instagram, this generation of teens has been conditioned to give up their privacy and open their inner lives to the world in ways previous generations could never have imagined.”

An Instagram spokeswoman said in a statement that the company was working aggressively to combat child exploitation and supported law enforcement “in their efforts to apprehend and prosecute the criminals behind it. We are reaching out to local officials regarding this matter.”