Md. Firefighter Among Many Charged

By Dan Morse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 8, 2009

The arrest of a longtime Montgomery County firefighter on charges of soliciting sex from a minor was part of a broader online sting operation that netted at least 17 men from a variety of backgrounds, one of whom lives as far away as Ohio, Montgomery County police said Friday.

Police said the sting, which goes back to March, worked this way: Officers placed an advertisement on Craigslist purporting to offer sex. Men who responded were directed to MySpace, where they were told the woman was 16 years old. Police said the men continued their inquiries even after being told the age.

An attorney for four of the men said the operation has been aggressive and unfair because the men were lured with a photograph of an adult-looking woman. “They’re attacking people looking for normal sex, and they’re destroying lives,” said the attorney, Rebecca Nitkin.

In some cases, her clients didn’t realize they were communicating with a purported minor, Nitkin said. Those who did realize her age did not know it is illegal to arrange online for sex with a 16-year-old or thought the claim that she was a teenager was more of a “marketing” tool than reality, Nitkin said.

A police spokesman said the initial Craigslist site might not have disclosed the age. “There’s no 16-year-old area on Craigslist,” Lt. Paul Starks said.

In ensuing exchanges, either by e-mail or text messages, the officers clearly presented themselves as underage, police said.

The sting eventually apprehended men ranging in age from about 17 to 60, Starks said.

One of those charged was Lt. Wayne A. Mothershead, a Montgomery firefighter for more than 20 years. Police said he initiated contact at a Craigslist site and was referred by police to a MySpace page that indicated that the person was 16 years old.

Nitkin, who represents the firefighter, said there is insufficient evidence to prove the charges.

According to charging documents, Mothershead was taken into custody and admitted to police that he communicated “with a subject he believed to be a 16-year-old female for the purpose of prostitution.”

Nitkin said that of her three other clients, one pleaded guilty to marijuana charges and the soliciting charges were dropped. She said the other two have entered pleas of soliciting prostitution from an adult and await sentencing.

At her office Friday, Nitkin allowed one client to speak to a reporter on the condition that his name not be disclosed. The client, an engineer, said that after his initial Craigslist query, he learned that the subject of his interest claimed to be 16. “First I thought, ‘No good,’ ” he said.

Then he said he considered several things, among them that the person had to be older to have a credit card to set up an online presence, and concluded she was older.

By Abigail Goldman

Sat, Nov 29, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Mahria is a “beautiful blonde” offering “erotic wrestling” for $100.

Dru is charging $80 for an hour of “sensual massage.”

Alicia can be at your door in half an hour.

These advertisements, which come with photos a family newspaper won’t print, are a small sample of what can be found in the “erotic services” section of Craigslist in Las Vegas — an online classified ads Web site that, aside from helping people find roommates or sell old lawn mowers, has become one of the most popular ways for Clark County escorts to peddle their wares to the electronic masses. It’s an Internet buffet of costly companionship, but perhaps not for long.

Just over two weeks ago, Craigslist began charging a fee to advertise on the site’s “erotic services” section. The fee is small — $5 — but the consequences are huge.

The fee must be paid with a credit card, and Craigslist will supply this credit card information to law enforcement officials, should they subpoena it. Erotic services advertisers must also provide a phone number, which an automated system will call before any posting is published online.

In short, Craigslist is working with the police.

Erotic services advertisements in the dozens of American cities Craigslist serves have fallen dramatically since Nov. 6, when the fee took effect, the company’s chief executive, Jim Buckmaster, told the Sun. On Monday in Las Vegas, that meant there were only 362 erotic services ads posted on Craigslist. The Monday before the traceable fees, there were more than 1,100 ads.

Craigslist entered into the agreement with 40 attorneys general, including Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, to clamp down on illegal services being offered online. And the shrinking number of erotic services ads are a clear victory for law enforcement, at least on the surface. Some critics, however, including local Vegas escorts, suggest the move will only force prostitutes onto the streets in search of clients they once could have courted from the comfort, and relative safety, of their laptops.

There are numerous Web sites that charge escorts considerable fees to advertise their services. Craigslist, because it was free, was a forum for escorts who didn’t have money to market themselves — escorts who are, in many ways, the most vulnerable, UNLV sociology professor and prostitution researcher Barbara Brents said.

When asked whether taking away the free online forum would endanger prostitutes by forcing them onto the streets and into casinos, a spokeswoman for Cortez Masto, Edie Cartwright, said via e-mail, “Prostitution has always been a fluid problem. It is the secrecy of anonymous ads on Craigslist that the agreement targets.”

Craigslist’s chief executive would not comment on whether the company has provided law enforcement officials with any identifying information about those who post erotic services ads.

But not everybody is scared off. Randi, a 28-year-old escort who has been working in Las Vegas for several years, said paying five dollars and risking arrest still pencils out in an escort’s favor.

“If you get arrested, it’s a few hundred dollars’ bail, a few hours in jail, and you’re out,” she said. “It’s worth it.”

She hasn’t been caught so far, she said.

For all the criticism of the clampdown, the flip side is easy to see as well: With fewer escorts advertising, prospective johns have less opportunity. And just as some prostitutes are loath to walk the streets, some johns are hesitant to hire company off the curb. Men who normally find escorts on Craigslist are increasingly scared to do so, according to one prostitute, who says her clients are equally put off by the idea police can subpoena details about their date.

The anonymity once offered by Craigslist made it easy for minors, or people selling their bodies to support a drug habit, to advertise themselves online, even though established escort companies wouldn’t employ them, Metro Vice Sgt. Gil Shannon said.

Nichole Yegge was a horrific example: The 17-year-old Vegas teen was advertising on Craigslist, allegedly pimped by the couple arrested this August in connection with her slaying.

If Yegge hadn’t been so easily sold on Craigslist, if she had had a harder time becoming an underage escort, perhaps she might not have been wound up mutilated in the Nevada desert.

Told of the drop in erotic services ads, Shannon said, “That’s fantastic.”

You could hear his smile through the phone.

Metro vice has worked with craigslist before, particularly when it was clear that underage escorts were posting nude photographs of themselves on the site — child porn, essentially. When detectives would subpoena information about the person posting these advertisements, however, the information available was often of little use because everything was so easily made anonymous online. Now connecting the dots between an escort advertising online and an arrest will be much easier for the department. The vice section has yet to subpoena the newly available credit card information, but, Shannon said, it’s “coming to a courtroom near you.”

Again, you could hear his smile.

Thirty million ads are posted on Craigslist’s global classified ad sites every month, for such things as apartment rentals and rescue dogs. Buckmaster said he wasn’t aware of any study that broke out the number of erotic services ads, but it seems safe to assume that at $5 a pop, the new fee structure will generate a considerable amount of revenue. That money will be donated to charities that address human trafficking and child exploitation, Buckmaster said. But the charities haven’t been chosen. That was one reason Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum would not join his 40 colleagues in supporting the changes at Craigslist — it’s unclear where that money will go, and how it will be distributed.

Cortez Masto’s spokeswoman, when asked whether this was of any concern for the Nevada AG, said “we understand that the choice of charities is up to the company; the purpose of the use of a credit card is to create an identification trail for the advertiser.”

Of course, escorts are already coming up with payment techniques that make that identification trail harder to trace, one escort said. She wasn’t willing to explain the techniques because they seem to be working so far.

That’s the nature of the beast, Shannon, the vice sergeant, said. Every step forward may be followed by one or two steps back, as escorts look for another way to ply their trade. Many will join up with agencies, he said. The men snapping handbills on the Strip aren’t running out of little cards to pass out any time soon.

And it’s only a matter of time until someone, shielded by free speech protections, comes up with another free Web site for escorts to advertise on.

Craigslist sex ads reined in

By SCOTT GUTIERREZ
P-I REPORTER

Intending to help police shut down illegal sex-for-hire ads, Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna and his counterparts in 39 states announced an agreement Thursday with Craigslist.com in which the company adopted new policies.

Under the agreement, the free classified ad site will require users who post ads under “erotic services” to provide a working phone number and pay a fee using a valid credit card. The information will be provided to police if the company is served with a subpoena.

	McKenna

The site is used by more than 40 million people each month to shop, sell or rent apartments, services and other goods, according to the company. But police say it’s increasingly used as a medium for pimps and prostitutes to reach clients, and in some cases, to sell the services of women or girls who were forced into prostitution.

“I think these steps will effectively deter a good deal of the illegal activity in the personal services section of Craigslist,” McKenna said. “First of all, a lot of these individuals don’t want their real identities revealed. Plus, it provides a trail for law enforcement to follow if they decide to offer illegal services, anyway.”

Earlier this year, police and federal agents in Lynnwood arrested 15 people, including women and girls, who advertised escort services on Craigslist. One of two teenage girls arrested was an illegal immigrant, and police were investigating whether human trafficking played a role.

Two years ago, in one of the largest Craigslist busts in the region, Seattle detectives posted their own ads on the Web site and arrested about 100 male customers who responded to a downtown hotel room rented for the operation. In addition, detectives posed as customers, answered real ads on the site and arrested 14 prostitutes, including girls under 16.

“We’re pleased that Craigslist is taking proactive steps to police its own site. Time will tell whether or not its measures will have a net reduction in Internet-brokered sex crimes,” Seattle Police Sgt. Sean Whitcomb said.

McKenna likened the Craigs- list agreement to similar approaches taken with social networking sites such as MySpace.com and Facebook.com to guard against child predators luring children online. He said it could be used as a template for other online service providers.

“It’s appealing to their better nature and common sense in terms of protecting a brand. We didn’t threaten a lawsuit. They were very cooperative and collaborative,” he said of the Craigslist agreement.

Escort ads also appear in publications such as The Stranger and Seattle Weekly, but they’re paid for through transactions that are documented, and police can obtain warrants to review them, McKenna said.

As part of the agreement with the attorneys general, Craigslist will employ new technology to aid police and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in finding missing children and potential victims of human trafficking.

The company also has agreed to sue 14 software and Internet companies whose products are used to help circumvent the site’s terms of use, Chief Executive Officer Jim Buckmaster said Thursday.

The company also is refining its protocols for blocking inappropriate content. The site provides a system for people to flag ads containing illegal content.

Craigslist has always warned users that ads involving illegal activity violate its terms of service. The company enables users to flag inappropriate or illegal ads for removal, although it has been criticized in the past for not taking more aggressive action.

“The incidence of crime on Craigslist is actually exceedingly low, considering the tens of millions of legitimate ads posted each month by well-intentioned users,” Buckmaster said in a statement.

“But no amount of criminal activity is acceptable, and as Craigslist has grown, we have become aware of instances where our free services were being misused to facilitate illegal activities.”

The amount of the new user fee was not specified. All proceeds from the fee will be donated to charity, McKenna said.

Other states that signed the agreement were Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam also joined