Naperville police ask parents to check Facebook contacts

Naperville police are asking parents in the Oswego, Batavia and St. Charles area to review their children's Facebook friends to see if they have been in contact with a 37-year-old man who they say had sexual conversations with minors on the website while pretending to be a high school student.

According to a news release, Eric Thor Hakala, of the 1100 block of Iroquois Avenue in Naperville, used a fictitious Facebook account under the name “Mike Evans” and purported to be a 15-year-old student from St. Charles East High School.

It is believed Hakala used the account to carry on numerous sexual conversations and trade inappropriate pictures with children in the Batavia and St. Charles area. Batavia police have identified several local teenage victims.

The Naperville, Oswego and Batavia police departments and the U.S. Marshals Service concluded a seventh-month investigation of Hakala, a previously convicted child sex offender, with his arrest.

Hakala has been charged with two counts of indecent solicitation, two counts of grooming, one count of harmful material and 10 counts of possession of child pornography.

Parents who discover their children were in contact with Hakala through the “Mike Evans” Facebook account or through a cellphone application called KIK are asked to preserve all conversations and photos their children may have exchanged with him.

Police are asking parents to not report the activity to Facebook and instead call the Naperville Police Department High Technology Crimes Unit at (630) 305-5384 or the Batavia Police Department Investigations Unit at (630) 454-2500.