Interesting Article on Undercover Agents and Sex Crimes
I read an interesting article yesterday on yahoo.com called "More Internet Predators are Challenging Agents". This article discussed a special unit in Wisconsin called the "Internet Crimes Against Children" unit, or "ICAC" unit, which combats sexual predators on the internent. According to the article, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's cyber tip line took 85,301 reports of child porn and 8,787 reports of online enticement last year. Investigations of Internet crimes against children resulted in 3,000 arrests nationwide in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. This is a clearly a growing and serious problem in the United States.
I previously worked for the United States Attorney's Office in Newark under Chris Christie. While working there, I assisted the "Sex Crimes" unit and worked on a trial team that was prosecuting one of these "online enticement" cases. In our case, the defendant was a 40+ year old car salesman who seemed like a normal everyday guy. However, he was involved in an online relationship with what he believed to be a 14 year old girl. Unfortunately for him, this 14 year old girl was actually an undercover FBI agent. It was a pleasure working with the assistant United States Attorneys and the FBI on this project. In the end, the defendant decided against bringing the matter to trial because the evidence was overwhelming against him. He reached a plea agreement with the federal prosecutors.
