Sipowicz Goes Cyber

By RON STODGHILL II/DETROIT

Marty Kolakowski doesn't fancy himself a gifted writer. But the nerdy 25-year-old has a knack for creating believable characters. Among his favorites is Melissa, a cute high school freshman who spends her evenings listening to Creed and Dream Theater--and chatting about sex online with adult men. Her mom, Melissa tells these men, is so strict that she is thinking of moving in with her stepsister, a party girl who shacks up with a boyfriend.

Kolakowski, an investigator for the Wayne County sheriff's department in Detroit, went online with the screen name Melissa83 about a year ago as bait for pedophiles who, in Detroit as elsewhere, tend to prey on naive, rebellious kids from broken homes. But Melissa is only one of the alter egos Kolakowski has invented. Some days he masquerades online as a teenage boy looking for an assault rifle, or a sports junkie betting on the Wolverines, or an old dude with erectile dysfunction shopping for a quick Viagra fix.

Kolakowski's work, most of which involves crimes against children, can be tedious: he and two fellow deputies, also Gen Xers adept at navigating the Internet, often spend months probing chat rooms and websites. And even after the deputies pull off a successful sting and arrest, antiquated state laws can make it difficult to win a conviction. The situation frustrates Wayne County Sheriff Robert Ficano. "It's like being on the side of the freeway where everybody's speeding," he says. "You get some, but so many just blow right by you."

For now, though, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno is just glad the cybersheriff is on the case. While crimes such as e-mail fraud, trade-secret hacking and child pornography are generally considered the province of federal authorities, they are so prevalent today that the Justice Department and FBI are outmanned. A survey of Fortune 500 companies by the Justice Department and the Computer Security Institute estimated that financial losses from computer crime exceeded $360 million from 1997 to 1999. With the volume of e-commerce predicted to rise, from more than $100 billion last year to $1 trillion in 2003, computer crime is expected to grow apace, and federal authorities are encouraging state and local lawmen to join the fight.

Earlier this year, the Justice Department launched Law Net, a network of federal, state and local computer-crime experts designed to share expertise and technology. The department is seeking $37 million in new federal funding for initiatives that include training officers to combat Internet crime, developing 10 regional computer forensic labs, hiring experienced cyberinvestigators and prosecuting child pornographers. "We have a limited pool of expertise and resources that we need to expand," says John Bentivoglio, associate deputy attorney general.

Even in Wayne County, whose cyberpolice work is regarded as pioneering, the results are mixed. The department's efforts began shortly after Sheriff Ficano looked in on an AOL chat that his 16-year-old daughter was having one night in 1998. "Someone started asking things about her appearance that made her very uncomfortable," he recalls. "It just made me think about how the Internet has given pedophiles an excellent vehicle to get in touch with children." The fbi's struggle to handle its growing Internet caseload, coupled with a mountain of complaints from local parents and kids, prompted Ficano to form the task force.

Before launching the five-member Internet Crime Bureau just over a year ago, Ficano had Wayne County prosecutors conduct a four-month review of which laws could be used to prosecute criminals on the Internet, as well as how to steer clear of entrapment issues. What Ficano and his cybersquad didn't anticipate was that the state law itself could be such a stumbling block.

Take the case of Christopher Thousand, 24, arrested last December after he showed up at a McDonald's restaurant in Detroit where, police say, he had arranged to meet someone he believed to be a 14-year-old girl. (It was actually a 40-ish deputy sheriff.) With his client facing up to 20 years in prison for child sexual abuse and other allegations--including solicitation of criminal sexual conduct and distributing obscene matter to a minor--Thousand's lawyer, David Fregolle, cited a 1975 Michigan supreme court case in which charges were dropped against a physician accused of a conspiracy to commit an abortion. Just as that case was dismissed because it was later learned that the woman wasn't pregnant, Thousand's attorney argued that the sexual-abuse law explicitly states that the victim must be a minor--not an undercover cop. "You can't solicit a minor unless you have a minor," says Fregolle. "He might be guilty of bad judgment, but you can't criminalize the behavior." The case against Thousand was dismissed, but prosecutors have appealed.

Of 17 arrests made by the sheriff's office for pedophilia and child pornography since the program was launched, none have yet ended in a jury conviction. (Two of those charged with child-predator offenses plea-bargained for reduced sentences.) Ficano has persuaded Michigan state senator Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent, to introduce new legislation that would explicitly allow police to pose as minors online, closing the loophole that it's a "legal impossibility" to intend to commit a crime against a fictitious child. "No law-enforcement official is ever going to subject an actual child to the kind of verbal assaults and trading of explicit pictures that occur online," says Ralph Kinney, the deputy chief of staff who commands the sheriff's cyberunit. "We've got to bring the laws up to date with technology."

Not long ago, Kinney's cyberforce headed north to Jackson, Mich., to conduct a sting operation of what they believed was a distributor of kiddie porn. The culprit, though, didn't turn out to be some reclusive pervert, just a couple of very frightened brothers, ages 15 and 12, collecting the stuff as a gag. Most impressive, though, was the boys' computer software and savvy. In their possession was Windows 2000, an operating system not yet available in stores at that time. Deputies decided to go easy on the kids. Their penalty: "They have to teach us everything they know," says Kinney.