Sting Operations

The yellow cab pulled over to pick up a passenger across from the Empire State Building as its driver, Mahbub Hossain, chatted on his cellphone headset. If this had been a test, Hossain would have ended up with a $200 fine.

LUCERNE VALLEY, Calif. -- Despite the 95-degree heat this week, Elsie Wenger has shut off her evaporative cooler, stopped flushing her toilets and forgone showers. Wenger, 86, and others who live in remote high desert patches started saving water in a panic Friday after state health officials and the California Highway Patrol impounded several water trucks that supplied these far-flung homesteads with the precious resource. Authorities said the trucks were delivering non-potable water.

Congressional investigators set up a bogus company with only a postal box and within a month obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that allowed them to buy enough radioactive material for a small "dirty bomb." Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), who will ask the NRC about the incident at a Senate hearing today, said the sting operation raised concerns about terrorists obtaining such material just as easily.

A team of international investigators infiltrated an Internet chat room used by pedophiles, rescuing 31 children and identifying more than 700 suspects worldwide. The chat room, called "Kids the Light of Our Lives," featured images, including live videos, of children being subjected to horrific sexual abuse, said Jim Gamble, chief executive of Britain's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center.

Federal agents went undercover, conducting nighttime surveillance, setting up remote cameras and digging through trash cans, searching for possible criminal activity among Southern California's roller pigeon rings. Roller pigeons, you ask? Roller pigeons are bred for a genetic quirk that strikes in mid-flight, causing a brief seizure that sends the birds spiraling uncontrollably toward the ground. Thousands of hobbyists compete to see who can best make their birds roll in unison.

A recent court decision may force the Police Department to abandon or change its use of sting operations in which officers disguised as civilians file complaints to see whether the complaint-takers respond properly. A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge reversed a sergeant's five-day suspension for failing to initiate a complaint "face sheet" after the sergeant contended that he knew that the complaint was part of a sting and therefore was not real.

In a major sweep across Southern California, law enforcement officials targeting some of Los Angeles' most notorious gangs raided 41 locations Thursday, arresting 22 suspects on firearms, narcotics and counterfeiting charges. More than 500 federal and local law enforcement officials were involved in the sweep, which was the culmination of a two-year undercover operation conducted by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

When felons walked into Boulevard Sales and Service, a fortress-like gun store in Compton, they weren't turned away. Instead, law enforcement officials said they were coached. Can't pass the background check? No problem, as long as they had a friend who could.

Republic of Georgia authorities, aided by the CIA, set up a sting last summer that led to the arrest of a Russian who tried to sell a small amount of bomb-grade uranium in a plastic bag in his jacket pocket, U.S. and Georgian officials said. The operation, which neither government has publicized, represents one of the most serious cases of smuggling of nuclear material in recent years, according to analysts and officials.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said Wednesday that a sting operation by his office had turned up an auto insurance scam resulting in criminal charges against 101 defendants.