SNARING CRIMINALS IN THE WEB

Detective Tracks Drug Trade With The Aid Of The Internet

Detective Mike Bowman is used to masking himself as a teen to catch
pedophiles trolling for little boys on the Internet. But pretending
to be a graffiti-savvy punk hip in the ways of the teen drug world,
was a new challenge.

But there he was, a relatively new member of the Palm Beach County
Sheriff's gang unit, surfing for the "411" on "gangsta" activity in
the south end of the county. Before he knew it, a 16-year-old girl he
began chatting up from Boca Raton was talking about "rolls,"
"marshmallows" and "beans."

"I didn't know what she was talking about," Bowman
said.

It sounded like your garden-variety grocery list, but the detective
soon learned that those were slang references to Ecstasy, the drug of
choice among many wayward teens.

Just days later, Bowman and fellow officers arrested the girl's
17-year-old friend, who showed up at a Winn-Dixie parking lot west of
Boca Raton ready to sell a guy named "Mike" 10 "trips," or hits of
acid. Officers found 37 more hits at the boy's Boca Raton house.

"That's how easy it is to be Joe little 17-year-old and get dope,"
Bowman said.

Bowman has been able to file two more drug cases since that July 3
arrest using the same tactics, though in those instances, the young
men he met with tried to sell him counterfeit drugs. Still, he said,
the point had been made: Drugs have joined the wares available on the
Web.

The cases show how cyber-sleuths are widening their net on the
computer screen to catch more pedophiles, pornographers and con men.

At least in South Florida, Bowman appears to be the first to use the
Internet to try to monitor gang activity and to turn that
surveillance into drug arrests. Officials at the Florida Department
of Law Enforcement, the Broward Sheriff's Office and the Metro-Dade
Police Department say they have not yet used their computers in this
way. But they all predict that it will catch on with other cyber-
sleuths.

"It's like anything else on the Internet -- we're finding something
new every day," said Jim Leljedal, spokesman for the Broward
Sheriff's Office. "I'm sure that if a detective in Palm Beach County
is using the Internet to search for gang activity, we'll pick up on
that as well."

Bowman learned about online networking as a way to catch the bad guys
when he worked in the Palm Beach County Sheriff's crimes against
children unit. There he took a class on how to ferret out pedophiles
and child pornography lovers.

When he reached the gang unit more than a year ago, Bowman realized
the same tactics can be used to detect gangs.

He has so far been unable to turn his Internet surveillance into
concrete leads on illegal drug activity. In the process, he has
gotten an instant education on how accessible drugs seem to be to
Palm Beach County teens.

"there's mad s--- in boca!" one 15-year-old girl wrote to Bowman's
teen-age alter ego on America Online, using the lowercase letters
common to Internet conversations.

"easy to get down ther?" Bowman wrote back.

"i walk down the street 6 houses. n-e [any] thing i want," the girl
responded.

Nothing came of that July 5 conversation, but the next month, Bowman
hooked up online with a girl named "Dawn," who eventually led him to
Nicholas Schmidt, 20.

Schmidt, of Delray Beach, and a 16-year-old girl were arrested on
Aug. 14 when they pulled up to the Boynton Inlet prepared to sell
Bowman five iron vitamin pills at $30 apiece, saying they were
"emerald" Ecstasy pills. Both were charged with sale of a controlled
substance in lieu thereof, a third-degree felony.

In a police report, Schmidt said he didn't trust Bowman from the
start, but he decided to try to sell him the fake drugs because he
was in debt. He agreed to enter a pretrial intervention program to
avoid prosecution and keep the conviction off his record.

Even for the unsophisticated computer user, Bowman's technique is
relatively simple.

He opens up an account on American Online, and uses a screen name
that makes him appear part of the crowd. He first began using
"Tagit," a modification of the term, "tag," which many teens use to
describe graffiti.

Bowman makes up a profile, saying he likes to "roll" (take Ecstasy),
"spray" (graffiti) and party. He then looks up the profiles of other
AOL users and tries to start conversations with teens who either seem
the type to be into gangs or drugs.

"It's amazing how easy it is," he said.

To those who think the tactics might border on entrapment, legal
experts say entrapment would only be called into question if the
officers made an effort to put the idea for a criminal undertaking in
the mind of someone who would not otherwise be predisposed to crime.

Defense attorney Richard Lubin, who lectures on entrapment, said, "If
you are someone who is into the drug culture, and a law enforcement
officer merely puts himself in the position of someone who is a
buyer, that is not entrapment."