Cops use Craigslist in child sex sting
By: Freeman Klopott
Examiner Staff Writer
March 5, 2009
Washington-area law enforcement ran a Craigslist sting operation recently, posting advertisements in which federal agents and local police pretended to be pimps peddling children.
The FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and detectives with Northern Virginia departments put up posts on Dec. 2 and Dec. 3 with titles like: “In Town for 2 Days-Mom W 2 Grls” in the “erotic services” section, and “2 nite only- fmly fun - u wn’t forget” in “casual encounters,” court documents filed in Alexandria’s federal court show.
The advertisements described fathers selling their 14-year-old daughters for sex, and mothers selling their daughters who were as young as 8.
Within hours of making the posts, the investigators had hundreds of responses, court documents said. Over the next few days, they arranged meetings with at least five men, some of whom drove more than an hour and were willing to pay upward of $200 to have sex with children.
Among those caught in the sting was a West Virginia elementary school art teacher, Douglas E. Hunt, who pleaded guilty Friday to enticing a minor to engage in sexual activity. Hunt called a Leesburg detective from a phone at Shepherdstown Elementary School to arrange a meeting with 12- and 13-year-old girls advertised in the detective’s Dec. 3 Craigslist posting.
The advertisement was posted in the personals section on the Washington, D.C., board and titled “my2 gurls and me.” It read: “38 female, and two daughters looking for fun times, willing to please.”
The early December operation was a “variation of the typical strategic approach,” said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. It’s more common for law enforcement officials to pose as children on the Internet, he added.
“In order to combat the sexual exploitation of children, investigators must use the same tools as the predators to identify them and determine the scope of their illegal activity,” said FBI Supervisory Special Agent Melissa S. Morrow, who runs the Washington field office's Child Exploitation Squad.
Craigslist Chief Executive Officer Jim Buckmaster said in an e-mail to The Examiner that staff members don’t monitor the content of each of the thousands of posts that go up every day. Rather, postings in sections such as casual encounters and the personals are policed primarily by users who flag inappropriate messages that staff then remove, Buckmaster said.
Craigslist is unique in that it’s so large and pervasive, Allen said. “It’s used by so many people, and that’s the success of Craigslist, but also what creates the opportunities for people to use it for illegal purposes. ... People doing those kinds of activities can hide in plain sight.”
