A top engineer at Facebook-owned virtual reality company Oculus was arrested last week after allegedly offering an undercover police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl $360 to have sex without a condom. King 5 first reported the bust, which went down in the Seattle suburb of Tukwila, and notes that according to the accused perpetrator's LinkedIn page he is the head of Computer Vision at Oculus VR.
Dov Katz has been charged with attempted commercial sexual abuse of a minor, and Geek Wire managed to get a hold of the rather damning charging documents (embedded below). The report details the December 21 arrest, which followed Katz allegedly responding to an ad posted by a cop posing as a sex worker. Text messages reportedly exchanged between the two show the officer telling Katz that she was in fact 15 and asking him not to say anything about her age — to which Katz is accused of responding "sure."
The 38-year-old Katz showed up at an Embassy Suites in Tukwila, Washington, with $600 in cash and several condoms. After he was arrested by police, he told officers that he was there to rescue the girl. Officers told him that he should have contacted them first.
Katz is an Israeli citizen who lives in California, and his LinkedIn page says that he has worked at the Oculus VR Menlo Park office for two and a half years. "We believe truly immersive VR will allow people all over the world to have and enjoy experiences that would never otherwise be possible," Katz wrote of his job on LinkedIn.
His bail was set at $125,000, and he is to be arraigned on January 5. Facebook did not respond to Geek Wire's request for comment.
Related: Facebook Employee Arrested For Alleged Rape, Knifepoint Imprisonment