This PlayStation Executive Has Some Explaining To Do
“People v Preds” is a youtube channel that runs sting operations against pedophiles, documenting their confrontations and forwarding information to the police. It’s the usual fare – they make fake underage accounts on various dating apps/sites, and see who takes the bait. Normally it’s some random person, but their most recent target was anything but. A high-ranking PlayStation executive has found himself in hot water.
According to the allegations, George Cacioppo (a senior VP engineer at PlayStation) went through that process. He invited someone he thought was a 15 year old boy over to his house, for explicit purposes. Cacioppo didn’t say much in the video, retreating into his house as soon as he caught wind of things. But a face was clearly visible, and that shirt says a lot.
Cacioppo has not commented on the situation, so far. Sony’s response has been minimal, though we do know that the man no longer works at PlayStation. They’ve said: “We are aware of the situation and the employee in question has been terminated from employment.”
As always with issues like this, it’s important to stress that these are just allegations so far. The man in the video could be different from the Cacioppo we know. The encounter was outside a home, there are many other reasons why someone could be outside at night. The main evidence seems to lie in the text conversations, and though they’ve been linked in the video’s description, they could have been faked. Could they be damning? Absolutely, but “could” isn’t enough for the legal system.
A representative from “People v Preds” explained to Kotaku why they preferred to release this video publicly. “The police department doesn’t work with ‘Cyber groups’ like us. That’s when the internet takes over.” They added, “evidence has been turned into the authorities.”