Could you be arrested for stomping your foot in a restroom? Prosecuted for accepting "hot money?" Or imprisoned for clicking your mouse on a hyperlink that pops up in your Internet browser?
If you live in the United States, the answer is yes. Welcome to the world of government stings.
Former Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) is only one of the most familiar victims of a government sting. Last year, Craig visited a men's room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. There, according to the report of an undercover male police officer, he stomped his foot, rubbed his fingers together, and made other gestures that supposedly indicated he wanted to have sex with the officer.
That was sufficient evidence for the officer to arrest Craig for disorderly conduct and "peeping." Not long afterward, Craig resigned from the Senate.
How else might you become lured into an undercover sting operation? Lots of ways. Take money laundering, for instance.
Let's say you work in a bank. One day, an undercover officer approaches you and says he needs to take care of some "hot money." The implication is that the funds were generated illegally. If you accept the money--or even permit the officer to put it in a safety deposit box--you could be convicted of money laundering.
You don't need to know where the money came from. All you need to know is that it came from, or was represented by an undercover investigator to come from, some form of illegal activity. That makes undercover laundering sting operations a lucrative source of criminal convictions.
What's more, all property "involved in" a laundering offense is subject to civil or criminal forfeiture. Since the bulk of forfeited monies generally remain with whatever agency seized them, the incentives for abusive stings are immense.
A textbook example was the 1999 conviction of Esperanza de Saad, a South Florida banker who was the target of a money-laundering sting. In setting aside his conviction, a judge ruled that an undercover informant who testified against de Saad never represented that the funds he was seeking to "launder" were the proceeds of illegal activity.
Increasingly, government stings occur in cyberspace. Click on the wrong hyperlink, and you could go to jail.
Undercover FBI agents now routinely post links in online discussion forums, social networking Websites, and elsewhere purporting to depict minors having sex. If you click on the link, and the FBI can trace your Internet connection, you can expect arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment for attempted possession of child pornography.
That's what happened to Roderick Vosburgh, a doctoral student at Temple University. Vosburgh allegedly clicked on a FBI hyperlink that pointed to child porn videos. Vosburgh, who has no prior criminal record, now faces a 10-year prison sentence. Upon his release, he must register as a sex offender.
Some may defend government stings aimed against persons who might be predisposed to download child pornography as necessary to protect children from sexual predators. But here's the scary part: using the same logic and legal reasoning, the FBI could send billions of unsolicited spam emails advertising illegal drugs, weapons of mass destruction, or anything else that's illegal. Respond to the e-mail message in any way, and you just might be in for an extended visit at Club Fed.
How can you protect yourself? Don't stomp your foot in a men's public restroom. Don't accept or otherwise deal with money that has a dubious origin. And be very, very careful of where you surf on the Internet.
For hundreds more suggestions on how to protect your privacy and property, click here.
Copyright © 2008 by Mark Nestmann
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