This stuff does happen to kids in real life--one of the reasons you don't hear about it much, I would guess, is that it truly is pretty rare. Another, though, is that the way these people work is to get the kid to meet them and then continue a relationship.
We had a "scare the kids off Myspace" program at the middle school last year in which a mother described having a pervert move to Germany to avoid her attempts to get to him, while staying in contact with her daughter at all costs. This guy was sending cell phones to P.O. boxes for the girl to pick up so that her mother couldn't track her phone use. He coached her to break through additional security on mom's laptop. He got her to go to the airport with the plane ticket he had sent her, but mom got wind somehow and managed to stop the daughter.
After really intense counseling, the daughter seems more or less OK now, but he had her convinced that no one loved her except him.