FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 8, 2026

CITIZEN WATCHDOG GROUP EXPOSES RACINE COUNTY COVER-UP: CHILD EXPLOITATION RING OPERATED INSIDE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT USING ENCRYPTED APPS WHILE SUPERVISOR SUPPRESSED COMPLAINTS — SWORN COURT TESTIMONY NAMING LAW ENFORCEMENT COLLEAGUES NEVER INVESTIGATED, NEVER REPORTED

H.O.T. Government Demands Federal Investigation; Documents How Encrypted Applications Gave a Uniformed Deputy Cover to Operate a Statewide CSAM Network; Reveals Sworn In-Court Disclosure About RASO Colleagues That No Media Outlet Has Reported

RACINE, Wis. — H.O.T. Government — Honest Open Transparent — today releases a comprehensive public accountability package documenting a sprawling child sexual abuse material distribution network that operated inside the Racine County Sheriff’s Office, reached across multiple Wisconsin counties into federal jurisdiction, exploited encrypted communications technology designed to defeat law enforcement surveillance, and was met with institutional silence rather than full investigation.

The release follows the publication of HOT Topics, a two-part audio investigative series produced by H.O.T. Government, which examines the documented paper trail surrounding former Racine County Sheriff’s Deputy Preston Kite, now serving 65 years in state prison, and the institutional response — or deliberate lack thereof — by the Racine County Sheriff’s Office, its command staff, and the officials who have since endorsed the department’s highest-ranking supervisor for the office of County Sheriff.

The August 11, 2026, Republican primary for Racine County Sheriff is 69 days away. The frontrunner, Captain Cary Madrigal, was found by an independent investigation to have suppressed formal complaints about Kite’s predatory behavior for at least eight months. She accepted a 10-day suspension without contest in February 2025. She then ran for sheriff.

PART ONE: THE COVER-UP — WHAT MADRIGAL KNEW AND WHEN SHE KNEW IT

The Records She Fought to Hide

Before the documented facts about Madrigal’s conduct could reach the public, they almost didn’t. With the August 11, 2026, primary approaching, Captain Madrigal filed a Woznicki lawsuit — a specific Wisconsin legal mechanism allowing public employees to proactively sue to prevent the release of their personnel records. In her sworn affidavit, she argued the records would fatally harm her candidacy.

On May 14, 2026, Racine County Circuit Judge Gasiorkiewicz rejected her arguments and ordered the release. Rather than appeal — which would have delayed release past the August election — Madrigal pivoted. She released the records herself and issued a public statement saying she had ‘nothing to hide’ and should not be defined by ‘past mistakes.’

H.O.T. Government’s analysis is direct: spending thousands of dollars in legal fees to seal a document and then claiming nothing was in it is the textbook definition of the Streisand Effect. The fight to hide the records illuminated precisely what was hiding behind them.

The Eight Months That Should Never Have Happened

The independent investigation conducted by outside counsel Attorney Samuel C. Hall Jr. commissioned by Sheriff Christopher Schmaling and filed as RASO Internal File No. 25DC20 — established the following documented timeline:

• Summer 2022: A RASO deputy received an unsolicited sexually explicit photograph directly from Deputy Preston Kite. The complaint was known inside the department.

• June–July 2023: Captain Madrigal approached the complaining deputy in the hallway of the Law Enforcement Center and told him she had ‘heard about the Kite stuff.’ Rather than initiating formal disciplinary proceedings as required by RASO supervisory policy, she asked the deputy to informally talk to Kite about his behavior — keeping it entirely off the books.
• November 2023: The deputy reported directly to Madrigal in her office. A second deputy was present. Madrigal responded: ‘I guess we will have to address it.’ No formal action was taken. No report was filed.
• February 4, 2024: Kite was arrested — not by his own department — by Kenosha County Sheriff’s deputies after being caught masturbating in a public bathroom while on active duty in full uniform, with his badge, service weapon, and radio. His arrest exposed a massive cache of child sexual abuse material on his devices, including images of toddlers.

Kite remained on active duty, in uniform, with full public access, for at least eight months after Captain Madrigal first received credible, direct complaints about his predatory behavior. This was not a paperwork error. The Hall investigation and multiple corroborating witnesses document that informal resolution was a deliberate choice — one that neutralized the department’s ability to track predatory behavior on paper.

The Hall investigation further documented that witnesses reported a pervasive belief inside RASO that Madrigal had a personal relationship with Kite outside the workplace — including claims that he rented property from her. The investigation did not confirm a romantic relationship, but confirmed these perceptions were widespread and that they caused rank-and-file employees to lose confidence that Madrigal would take formal action.

The Departmental Forum: A Public False Statement and Retaliation

After Kite’s February 2024 arrest, RASO held an open departmental forum to address the arrest. In that forum, Captain Madrigal publicly claimed that Kite’s behavior was the first she had heard of it.

The Hall investigation found this statement to be directly contradicted by multiple witnesses with corroborating accounts. When a deputy stood up at that same forum and confronted Madrigal directly about the complaint he had previously made to her, she warned him he was ‘on thin ice’ for calling Kite a predator.

A public false statement to fellow officers in the aftermath of a child sex crimes arrest. Retaliation against a complaining witness. These are the documented facts of what occurred inside Racine County’s law enforcement command structure after one of its deputies was arrested for 45 felonies.

The Consequence: Ten Days

For suppressing formal complaints over eight months, making a materially false public statement, and retaliating against a complaining witness, Captain Madrigal received a 10-day unpaid suspension. She accepted the discipline without appeal at a Loudermill meeting on February 20, 2025. The official who imposed that discipline — Sheriff Christopher Schmaling — has since publicly endorsed her for his own seat as sheriff.

The same sheriff who once called Kite ‘an excellent example of how deputies use their unique skills and talents to serve the community’ gave his supervisor a 10-day suspension and then backed her for his own office. That is the institutional response H.O.T. Government is documenting.

PART TWO: THE NETWORK — ENCRYPTED APPS, GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS, AND THE ROT THAT RUNS DEEPER

How the Arrest Happened — and What It Accidentally Revealed

On February 3, 2024, a citizen driving from Milwaukee toward Illinois stopped at a Petro gas station in Sturtevant, Wisconsin. He opened a location-based hookup application called Sniffies — a hyperlocal proximity app that shows users who is active within walking distance in real time. He received a message. He walked into the men’s room. Standing there was a fully uniformed Racine County Sheriff’s deputy, pants undone, actively engaged in a sexual act.

Before leaving the parking lot, the citizen photographed the marked patrol car — Car 5051. That photograph allowed Kenosha County detectives to identify the deputy as Preston Kite within minutes. It is not an exaggeration to say that a single citizen with the presence of mind to take a photo brought down a statewide child exploitation network.

The Encrypted App That Law Enforcement Couldn’t Penetrate From the Outside

When detectives seized Kite’s personal cell phone to corroborate the Sniffies communications, they discovered something that transformed a local indecency case into a federal conspiracy. On Kite’s phone was an application called Session.

Session is categorically different from standard encrypted messaging applications. WhatsApp, iMessage, and even Signal all require a phone number or email address to create an account — meaning that even when message content is encrypted, the metadata (who sent it, when, which cell towers were pinged) is still logged by telecommunications providers and accessible through carrier subpoenas or Stingray devices.

Session requires none of that. It uses permanent alphanumeric strings as usernames with no phone number or email attached. It uses a decentralized network modeled on onion routing — messages bounce through multiple nodes, completely masking the origin point. It collects no geolocation data. It is, in the plain words of H.O.T. Government’s analysis, purpose-built to evade law enforcement surveillance.

Inside Kite’s Session account, operating under the username JustMe1169, detectives found active conversations with a user called Matt94. The content of those conversations instantly escalated this from a local indecency case into a federal criminal conspiracy. Kite and Matt94 were actively trading videos of child sexual abuse material. They used coded language — including a pizza emoji, a documented dark web cipher for child pornography — on Twitter/X to initiate contact before moving communications into the encrypted fortress of Session. 

Who Was Matt94: A Government Official Responsible for Hiring Other Government Officials

Matt94 was Adam Westbrook — at the time the Human Resources Director for Outagamie County, Wisconsin. He was, in plain terms, the person responsible for vetting and hiring public employees for an entire county government. He held the master keys to the building.

Westbrook had resigned from a prior position as Human Resources Director for the City of Sheboygan in September 2023 — citing vague ‘defamatory statements’ — and moved directly into the Outagamie County HR Director role. No red flag was raised between counties. The institutional trust loops that govern local government background checks are designed to look backward at public criminal records. They have no capability to proactively sweep an applicant’s encrypted dark web footprint. A man running a child exploitation ring from encrypted applications passed every standard vetting process and moved seamlessly between government HR director positions.

On May 15, 2026 — 19 days before the date of this release — Adam Westbrook was sentenced in federal court to 10 years in prison and 20 years of supervised release (PACER No. 3:24-cr-00019, U.S. District Court, Western District of Wisconsin, Judge James Peterson; prosecuted by AUSAs Elizabeth Altman and Anita Marie Boor).

The Snapchat Deletion That Nobody Has Explained

Federal PACER data reveals a timeline anomaly that has received no public explanation from any law enforcement agency or DA’s office. Adam Westbrook deleted his Snapchat account on February 4, 2024 — the exact same day Preston Kite was arrested at the Petro gas station in Sturtevant.

Kite’s personal phone was sitting in a Kenosha County evidence locker. Session’s decentralized architecture had not been penetrated. And yet Westbrook, two counties away, began scrubbing his digital footprint the day his co-conspirator was brought in. H.O.T. Government has formally demanded that the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the Wisconsin DOJ confirm whether this deletion was examined for potential federal obstruction charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1519. No public answer has been given.

The Full Network — Four Convicted, Multiple Counties, Federal Court

The investigation produced four total convictions across state and federal courts:

• Preston Kite — 65 years, Racine County Circuit Court, Case No. 2024CF000164, Judge Jon Fredrickson
• Adam Westbrook — 10 years federal, PACER No. 3:24-cr-00019, U.S. District Court, Western District of Wisconsin, sentenced May 15, 2026
• Jacob Boudreau, 32, of Appleton — 15 years, Winnebago County Circuit Court, Judge Michael Rust (nearly double the state’s recommendation). Open bestiality case in Outagamie County, hearing scheduled July 7, 2026
• Noah Thiel, 22, of Oconomowoc — 1 year jail, Outagamie County Circuit Court, sentenced January 29, 2025

The investigation required coordination between the Wisconsin DOJ Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI), the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. DCI was named as a lead investigating agency in the federal Westbrook prosecution.

The Most Explosive Fact in the Entire Case — The Sworn Statement Nobody Reported

On July 22, 2025, Preston Kite appeared in Racine County Circuit Court before Judge Jon Fredrickson for his sentencing hearing. He was given the opportunity to make a statement. Under oath, in open court, he said the following:

“I was having multiple sexual partners including two other deputies and a supervisor within my own department. And an ADA from a neighboring county who encouraged me to go to a rest stop to engage in sexual activity that he partaked in himself.”

— Preston Kite, sworn statement, open court, Racine County Circuit Court, Case No. 2024CF000164, July 22, 2025

A convicted child pornography distributor, in open court, before a judge, named two of his colleagues and one supervisor as sexual partners. He also named an Assistant

District Attorney from a neighboring county who allegedly encouraged and participated in public sex acts.

H.O.T. Government conducted a comprehensive statewide media archive search in June 2026. Not a single Wisconsin media outlet reported this sworn statement. Not the Racine Journal Times. Not Fox6. Not the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Not Wisconsin Public Radio. No investigation has been publicly announced by any law enforcement agency. The two RASO deputies have not been publicly identified, investigated, or cleared. The supervisor has not been identified, investigated, or cleared. The ADA has not been identified.

At the same sentencing, the prosecutor stated on the record that Kite was connected to three ‘higher-ranking’ individuals circulating CSAM across Wisconsin and beyond. Adam Westbrook accounts for one. The other two have never been publicly identified.

The Child Nobody Is Talking About

After Kite’s arrest, investigators were contacted about a 9-year-old child who had been in Kite’s care in January 2024. The child subsequently exhibited behavioral changes and told a detective that something ‘weird’ happened that the child was not OK with. This is a separate child from the five-year-old victim at Wisconsin Dells whose abuse was documented in the Westbrook federal case.

No public statement has ever been made by any official about the current status of that investigation. No media outlet has followed up. H.O.T. Government has formally demanded a public accounting from RASO, the Kenosha County DA, and the FBI.

THE INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE: HOW THE SYSTEM PROTECTED ITSELF

An Investigation Scoped to Find Almost Nothing

The Hall investigation — the sole official consequence in this matter — was described by H.O.T. Government’s analysis as a controlled demolition. Like a building brought down to collapse inward rather than damage the surrounding city block, the investigation was scoped specifically to avoid examining the surrounding institutional rot.

It examined Madrigal’s supervisory policy violation. It did not investigate:

• The two RASO deputies Kite named as sexual partners under oath
• The RASO supervisor Kite named as a sexual partner under oath
• The ADA from a neighboring county Kite named under oath
• Whether personal relationships between Madrigal and Kite — including witness reports that he rented property from her — affected how complaints were handled
• Westbrook’s deletion of his Snapchat account on the day of Kite’s arrest
• The status of the 9-year-old child who disclosed concerning behavior to investigators
• How Kite was able to seek placement on the ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) unit, which would have given him lawful access to the same material he was distributing

The result of a deliberately narrowed investigation was a deliberately insufficient consequence: a 10-day suspension for the supervisor of a department that housed an active child exploitation network.

The Jurisdictional Paralysis That Protects the System

When sworn testimony implicates a district attorney’s office, sheriff’s deputies, and a supervisor within the same county institutions responsible for investigating crimes, local agencies face insurmountable conflicts of interest. The Kenosha County DA originated the Kite investigation. The Racine County DA prosecuted it. The Racine County Sheriff’s Office employed the primary offender. When the rot is alleged to be inside the house, the house cannot investigate itself.

This is precisely why H.O.T. Government has bypassed the local institutional structure entirely and directed its demands to state and federal authorities with independent jurisdiction.

H.O.T. GOVERNMENT’S DEMANDS

What We Are Calling For

H.O.T. Government is formally demanding the following from the agencies identified below. All demands have been submitted in writing. All responses — and all non-responses — will be made public before August 11, 2026.

• FBI Milwaukee Field Office: Confirmation of whether the statewide CSAM network, the Mount Olympus/Westbrook child victim, and Kite’s in-court disclosures about RASO colleagues have been referred for federal investigation
• U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Wisconsin: Whether Westbrook’s Snapchat deletion on the day of Kite’s arrest was examined for obstruction; whether the three ‘higher-ranking’ network members identified at sentencing are all accounted for
• Wisconsin DOJ / Attorney General Josh Kaul: Whether DCI’s role in the Westbrook prosecution created any investigative obligation regarding Kite’s sentencing disclosures about RASO personnel
• Wisconsin Law Enforcement Standards Board (LESB): A formal decertification review of Captain Madrigal, based on three independently documented grounds — deliberate suppression of formal process, public false statements after Kite’s arrest, and retaliation against a complaining witness — plus a fourth ground added in June 2026: her May 18, 2026 public statement directly contradicting her own accepted disciplinary finding
• Racine County Board of Supervisors: Seven specific questions demanding public answers, including whether the Board was ever briefed on Kite’s sworn sentencing statement, whether the two named deputies are still employed by the county, and whether the Board will direct Corporation Counsel to commission a fully independent review

• District Attorney Patricia Hanson: Whether her office reviewed the Hall investigation for any criminal referral obligation; whether the ADA Kite named has been identified and referred; whether her endorsement of Madrigal was made with full knowledge of these facts
• Speaker Robin Vos: Whether he knew of Madrigal’s disciplinary finding before presenting her the 2025 First Responder of the Year award at the Wisconsin State Capitol on October 14, 2025 — eight months after she accepted her suspension

The Legal Strategy: Weaponizing Administrative Law

H.O.T. Government’s approach is not to complain about politicians on social media. It is to execute a targeted administrative law campaign that bypasses local political structures entirely. The tools are Wisconsin’s Open Records Law (Wis. Stat. §§ 19.31–19.39), the LESB decertification process under Wis. Stat. § 165.85, federal PACER records, and the systematic creation of a publicly accessible record of non-responses timed to land before voters go to the polls.

By filing demands now, H.O.T. Government is boxing the system in. Every institution must either produce the documents that prove the cover-up — or go on the official public record actively refusing to release them, right before an election.

THE PUBLIC INFORMATION CAMPAIGN

H.O.T. Government is conducting a comprehensive public information campaign across all platforms to ensure Racine County citizens have access to the documented facts before August 11, 2026:

• RacineAccountability.com — full accountability web page with complete court records, official disciplinary documents, sworn affidavits, and all formal demand letters
• HOT Topics — two-part audio investigative series available on Rumble, documenting the full network, the encrypted technology, the institutional failures, and the unanswered questions
• Social media — documented fact distribution to citizens of Racine County across Facebook, Twitter/X, and Rumble
• 6×9 direct mail — accountability mailers to Racine County voters featuring endorser photos and documented facts
• Open letters to citizens — formal public accountability letters to Racine County voters

ABOUT H.O.T. GOVERNMENT

H.O.T. Government — Honest Open Transparent — is a Wisconsin-based citizen accountability organization. H.O.T. Government is a volunteer organization with no financial interest in any candidate or political campaign. All factual claims in this release are sourced from official public documents including court records, sworn affidavits, PACER filings, authenticated investigative reports, and verified news coverage. All source documents are available upon request.

Source Documents Available to Media Upon Request

• Sentencing transcript, State v. Kite, Case No. 2024CF000164, Racine County Circuit Court, July 22, 2025 — contains Kite’s sworn statement about RASO colleagues in full
• RASO Disciplinary Complaint No. 25DC20, February 19, 2025, and Acceptance of Disciplinary Charges, February 20, 2025
• Sworn Affidavit of Captain Cary Madrigal, Racine County Circuit Court Case No. 26-CV-280
• Criminal Complaint, State v. Kite, Case No. 2024CF000164, filed February 8, 2024
• Judgment of Conviction, State v. Kite, March 5, 2025
• PACER No. 3:24-cr-00019, United States v. Westbrook, U.S. District Court, Western District of Wisconsin — Sentencing May 15, 2026

• H.O.T. Government Accountability Package — June 2026, including all formal demand letters, open records requests, LESB complaint, and FBI/U.S. Attorney/Wisconsin DOJ correspondence

PRESS CONTACT:

H.O.T. Government — Honest Open Transparent

Jim Spodick, Citizen Investigator

hotgovernment.com

Racine, Wisconsin

— END OF PRESS RELEASE —

Produced and Paid for by H.O.T. Government | Honest Open Transparent | hotgovernment.com | Racine, Wisconsin

Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

All factual statements sourced from official court records, sworn affidavits, and authenticated public documents.