Civilians go undercover online to lure predators

updated 6:37 p.m. ET April 28, 2006

BOSTON - This was Stacey DeLuca's plan: Chat online with child predators while pretending to be a young girl. Just a few hours.

"I'd rather have them talk to me than a real 13-year-old," the 21-year-old said.

It didn't take long before a 50-year-old California man allegedly told DeLuca — who was posing as 13-year-old "Jess" from Massachusetts — that he likes "younger girls" and that she wouldn't be his first.

DeLuca called police, and stayed in character for a month, saving transcripts of the man's lurid comments and graphic photos from the Yahoo Inc. chat room.

The result: Lawrence I. Katz of Oceanside, in San Diego County, was charged with attempting to send harmful matter to a minor via electronic means. He's fighting the charges.

"I was totally surprised," said DeLuca, a Worcester resident who works in the promotions department of a local radio station. "You get in a chat room and you get tons and tons of instant messages. These guys wait to talk to some little girl."

DeLuca is among a growing number of civilians across the nation who are conducting online stings to catch potential child predators. Perverted Justice, an organization that's dedicated to outing online predators, expects to double its volunteer corps, to 100, by year's end.

Critics say it borders on vigilantism. Criminal defense attorneys argue that it amounts to entrapment and that the nature of the charges — rather than the weight of evidence — forces people to plead guilty to avoid publicity.

Law enforcement officials warn that sloppy civilian investigations will push predators further underground, and that civilians may be endangering their own safety.

"In criminal justice matters, control is key," said Gerry Leone, a former state and federal prosecutor in Massachusetts. "Civilians who haven't been trained lose the aspect of control."

NBC's "Dateline" program has helped popularize the practice by teaming with Perverted Justice to lure adult men to a "meet." The men expect to find a young sex partner, but are instead met by TV cameras, and more recently, by police officers as well.

In the program's fourth sting, 17 men were arrested in late March when they traveled to a home in Greenville, Ohio, where they expected to meet an underage girl, according to the Darke County Sheriff's office.

Perverted Justice, which was paid by NBC to run its latest sting, boasts of having contributed to more than 50 convictions nationwide, all detailed on its Web site. The group, based in Portland, Ore., enlists volunteers to go undercover online.

It has inspired a rival organization, called Corrupted Justice, which decries Perverted Justice's practices as vigilantism. Corrupted Justice says investigations should be conducted only by law enforcement.

The Justice Department says stopping online predators is a top priority. Total federal prosecutions of child pornography and abuse cases increased nearly fivefold from 344 in fiscal 1995 to 1,576 in fiscal 2005, a top Justice attorney told a congressional panel in April.

And the federally funded Internet Crimes Against Children task forces' investigations resulted in 3,423 state charges and 563 federal charges in the first half of 2005, according to DOJ attorney William Mercer's testimony.

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