Sting Operations

An alleged drug dealer was shot to death and another was critically wounded Thursday evening in a wild shoot-out with police officers and sheriff's deputies during a "reverse sting" drug sale in the parking lot of Alpine Village, a popular dining and hotel complex near Carson, authorities said. Three other men fled the scene and were still at large, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Larry Mead said. No officers, deputies or civilians were injured in the shooting that erupted at 6 p.m.

Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, FBI Director Robert Mueller issued a memo to his field offices detailing "one set of priorities" for the agency: Stop the next terrorist attack. This directive marked a new "preemptive" style of law enforcement that has since become the hallmark of our domestic front in the war against terrorism. Under this system, catching an actual terrorist would constitute a failure because the perpetrators would have committed the act. Instead, we are in effect seeking "pre-terrorists" — individuals whose intentions, more than their actions, constitute the primary threat.

A local pastor was among 68 people arrested during a prostitution sting by police, authorities said. The Rev. Craig Ward, 40, of Brookins African Methodist Episcopal Church, flagged over a female undercover officer to his church-issued BMW just after 10:30 p.m. Thursday and tried negotiating a $20 oral sex act, police said. "It was blatant," said Officer Mark Turpin of the Oakland police vice squad. "He wasn't there trying to save anybody."

Congressional Republicans have been upset at the management at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which authorized a botched sting operation near the Mexican border that put guns in the hands of drug criminals. But Republican leaders, responding to complaints from gun-rights lobbyists, have refused to confirm a director for the bureau since it was split from the Treasury Department eight years ago. "They have had nothing but acting directors. Do you wonder why some things would go wrong there?"

Onetime model Samantha Burdette testified Wednesday that she earned between $1,000 and $10,000 for sexual favors while working for alleged Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss. Burdette, a leggy miniskirted brunette from Colorado, gave a Los Angeles Superior Court jury its first glimpse inside Fleiss' alleged prostitution ring since Fleiss' criminal trial began Monday.

Limelight Films seemed from the outside like so many upstart production companies in Hollywood: It had a Sunset Boulevard address, a connection to Tinseltown royalty and deals to distribute a small slate of low-budget films. But federal authorities have alleged that the film corporation was a front for an international drug-smuggling and money-laundering operation stretching from Los Angeles to Switzerland.

The Supreme Court said Monday that it would decide whether government agents may repeatedly entice a presumably innocent person to commit a crime, setting the stage for a major ruling on sting operations. The justices agreed to hear an appeal from a 60-year-old Nebraska farmer who was sent at least 10 mailings by Postal Service inspectors trying to interest him in child pornography.

A criminal complaint has been filed against an auto repairman accusing him of grand theft and insurance fraud after a sting operation by state authorities. The investigation was triggered by a woman who complained to the state Bureau of Automotive Repair that Liberty Auto Center operator Mark Nodd billed her insurance company for car repairs that were never done, said Deputy City Atty. Mark Lambert. The shop, which was located in the 9500 block of DeSoto Avenue, has since moved, Lambert said.

Augustin Renteria's ad seemed to be working. He got a call asking him to bid on a house-painting job in Glendale. On Tuesday morning, he walked around the outside of the vacant house at 800 E. Elk St. and jotted down his bid of $1,100 on a scrap of paper and handed it to the man. That's when his trouble began. He was handcuffed and brought into a makeshift booking area in the house's detached garage.

A controversial undercover operation in which authorities manufactured crack cocaine to snare drug buyers on Santa Ana streets has been quietly shelved in the face of a key judge's opposition and other roadblocks, and is now probably gone for good, police said Tuesday. Superior Court Judge David O.

Two men who officials said complained that Muslims "were being treated like dogs" were accused Thursday of conspiring to blow up a synagogue and were being held on terrorism and hate-crime charges in New York. The men were arrested Wednesday night while they buying guns and an inert hand grenade from undercover officers, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at an afternoon news conference attended by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Manhattan Dist. Atty. Cyrus R. Vance Jr. The case began before the killing of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden on May 2 during a U.S. raid in Pakistan.

How do we break this to Ponch? Federal regulators on Thursday brought securities fraud charges against more than a dozen penny-stock promoters ? including Larry Wilcox, who played California Highway Patrol officer Jonathan "Jon" Baker on the hit TV show "CHiPs" in the late 1970s and early '80s. The Securities and Exchange Commission said it caught the promoters in "various illicit kickback schemes to manipulate the volume and price of microcap stocks and illegally generate stock sales.

Venus Mason wasn't wearing her uniform at the Los Angeles Police Department's press conference outside the Starbucks on Crenshaw Boulevard. With her bright blouse, matching necklace and auburn-tipped dreadlocks, she looked more like the folks watching from the sidewalk than like her fellow police officers behind the microphones. That seemed fitting to me, given Det. Mason's role in the drama that brought us together to mark the arrest of a local man on a murder warrant. This was no high-profile case, like the Grim Sleeper.

An insurance fraud sting targeting auto body repair shops in Orange County ended with the arrest of 53 mechanics Wednesday and Thursday, including Richard Evans, who once appeared on the Speed Channel reality show "Chop Cut Rebuild." Evans owns Huntington Beach Bodyworks. The Orange County district attorney's office conducted 152 covert investigations from January to May in Operation Straight Body, which targeted repair shops that had received consumer complaints over the last three years, authorities said.

A husband and wife have been arrested and charged with operating a high-end prostitution ring out of two upscale apartment complexes in Pasadena and Irvine, authorities said Wednesday. Thanh Ly, 35, and Li Chen, 32, are accused of managing two dozen women, who charged clients $200 per encounter in the discreet residential buildings, said Lt. Tom Pederson of the Pasadena Police Department, which worked with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on the case. The couple, who were arrested Dec. 16 after a two-year investigation, are being held in lieu of $2-million bail pending a preliminary hearing on charges of pimping and pandering, Pederson said.

An Iranian arms trafficker was sentenced in Delaware on Monday to five years in prison after being snared in a global undercover investigation. Amir Hossein Ardebili, 36, pleaded guilty last year to violating U.S. arms control laws by trying to purchase components for Iranian fighter planes and missile guidance systems. His case offers a rare look into the faceoff between Washington and Tehran that is increasingly reminiscent of the Cold War. Ardebili does not fit the profile of high-rolling arms merchants who have been arrested in similar stings around the world.

The U.S. has apologized for not letting Mexican authorities in on a sting operation against a money-laundering network involving 12 of Mexico's biggest banks. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called Foreign Minister Rosario Green after Mexico complained that its sovereignty had been violated. President Clinton also expressed regret on the matter to his counterpart, Ernesto Zedillo.

The city has received the 1998 California Cities Helen Putman Award for Excellence for a sting operation orchestrated by its police department, officials announced Wednesday. Redondo Beach was one of 23 cities to receive the award from the California League of Cities, said Clark Goeker, the league's assistant director. The award will be presented Oct. 4 at the league's Centennial Annual Conference in Long Beach. The Redondo Beach Police Department was elated at the news, said Capt. Jeff Cameron."

More than two dozen suspected illegal contractors were cited this week during an undercover sting operation launched by state authorities. The operation was conducted at a home in Long Beach, where investigators posing as homeowners sought bids for work that included welding, painting, landscaping and swimming pool repair, state authorities said Thursday. The investigators were from the Contractors State License Board. They were aided by Long Beach police and city prosecutors.

Two men who professed devotion to Al Qaeda -- one a convert to Islam, the other a Jordanian native -- were charged Thursday with plotting to blow up buildings in Illinois and Texas. In both cases, the men thought they were working with Al Qaeda operatives when they were really working with undercover federal agents. One man, according to authorities, planted what he thought was an explosive outside a Dallas skyscraper, while the other parked a van, supposedly armed with a bomb, outside a federal courthouse in Springfield, Ill. The devices were fakes.