Earlier this week GamePolitics reported on the arrest of a 52-year-old Canadian man charged with violating probation for a past kiddie porn conviction. George "Spike" Finley, an admin of top gaming clan The Green Berets, was arrested when it came to light that he was soliciting young boys he had recruited for the team.

Today, GGL has an must-read investigative piece on the "Spike" case. Author Mahmood Ali searches for answers as to how Finley, by all accounts a terrible player, achieved a high-level position with The Green Berets evan as rumors swirled about his character. Should his warped objectives have come to light long before they did? And are there other "Spikes" lurking out the in the online gaming community?

GP: Definitely worth a read. And yes, there are almost certainly others. Pedophiles tend to go where they think they might find victims. Does that make online gaming bad? Of course not. Does that mean players, parents and clan leaders need to be more vigilant? Definitely.

From Got Frag comes word of a disturbing incident.

A 52-year-old man who helped manage the Green Berets, a competitive video game clan, was busted by police in London, Ontario following accusations that he solicited obscene pictures of young boys he recruited for the Green Berets' Counter-strike team.

The London Free Press reports that George "Spike" Finley, found guilty of possessing child pornography in 2005, was charged with violating the terms of his probation by having contact with minors.

It is alleged that Finley recruited 10 to 13-year-old boys to help manage the Green Berets, advising them to lie about their ages to seem older. Finley then used the popular voice chat program Ventrilo to solicit nude pictures from the boys. The convicted pedophile promised the boys PC hardware and promotions to clan leadership positions as enticements. Potential victims who refused Finley's overtures were dropped from the team.

The leader of the Green Berets, 24-year-old James O'Connor became suspicious after several former members complained to him about Finley's scheme.

"Those children would come to me with crazy accusations..." said O'Connor. "George went on to tell us that this person was just making up the meanest things possible to get back at him for being removed from the team. This whole thing, about George possibly being a pedophile... seemed almost inconceivable. I didn't believe it at first."

After suggesting that one of the boys record the Ventrilo conversations, however, O'Connor and other clan officials turned the matter over to law enforcement authorities.

"Similar situations kept occurring every other month or so for about 4 months," said O'Connor. "I would ask these children for logs of IRC chat and they would always say that they never had any. George was careful to only talk about his perversions on Ventrillo."

GP: Coupled with January's Xbox Live pedophile incident, it's clear that some online predators are turning to multiplayer gaming venues as a source of potential victims.

A shout-out to GP reader Steven Strasser for the story...

Listen up, oh my droogs...

Police in Barcelona, Spain, say three teens accused in the torture and brutal murder of a homeless woman were fascinated by the 1971 Stanley Kubrick film Clockwork Orange and obsessed with Counter-strike, a popular first-person shooter.

According to the Times Online, the boys set Senora Endrinal on fire as she took refuge in a doorway. The break in the case came when investigators overheard patrons in an Internet cafe talking about the murder.

The suspects, who reportedly had neo-Nazi political beliefs, filmed the murder on their cell phones and shared the video with friends at the Internet cafe.

GP: For our money, both the Anthony Burgess novel and the Kubrick film adaptation of Clockwork Orange are not-to-be-missed classics of social commentary. And wouldn't Clockwork Orange make a brilliant adventure game, if done well?

Interestingly, the Times Online article reports that Kubrick himself pulled the film from British cinemas in 1973 following a series of copycat crimes.