Sting Operations

A Thousand Oaks man who allegedly tried to arrange to have sex with an FBI agent posing as a seventh-grade girl in an Internet chat room was denied bail Friday after his appearance in federal court in Los Angeles. Authorities said they believe that Michael Scott Baird, 36, a registered sex offender, might have contacted other minors.

Federal agents and police arrested 31 people in a drug sting Wednesday, including a man alleged to be the leader of a Mexican Mafia-linked gang that trafficked in methamphetamine. Agents took Richard Gastelum, 29, into custody at his home Wednesday and served warrants on other members of a San Gabriel Valley-based gang and a Long Beach-area gang. The suspects have been indicted on various drug charges and are being held in Los Angeles.

Thirteen men, including an off-duty California Highway Patrol lieutenant, have been arrested in an Internet sting operation aimed at luring would-be molesters to a Laguna Beach apartment where they expected to rendezvous with teenage girls. Some of the men had arrived with candy, flowers, sexual paraphernalia, cameras or alcohol, only to be greeted by police officers during last weekend's arrests, details of which were announced by authorities Wednesday.

A sting to capture attempted child molesters netted 49 men in Riverside County, including a U.S. Homeland Security agent and a high school teacher, law enforcement authorities announced Friday. The arrests, to be aired on a "Dateline NBC" television segment, followed police-monitored Internet chat room sessions with authorities posing as girls and boys.

State regulators on Wednesday shut down a Los Angeles skid row liquor store whose owner was arrested in a sting operation last fall on suspicion of buying stolen alcohol and cigarettes to resell to his customers.

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."

After their wedding guests had streamed into Atlantic City, N.J., for the festivities Sunday aboard the yacht Royal Charm, the happy couple surprised them all -- by having them arrested as part of an alleged international Asia-based organized crime syndicate. Unbeknown to the attendees, many of whom came from China for the occasion, the supposed bride and groom were FBI agents.

A Downey fire captain was among 10 people charged Thursday after an Orange County sting of individuals who allegedly offered cut-rate prices for illegally transporting hazardous waste. Edward L. Haupt, 44, of Placentia was charged with three misdemeanor counts of transporting toxic materials, officials said. He and nine men from Orange and Los Angeles counties were snared in a three-day sting in March, said an investigator from the California Department of Toxic Substance Control.

When the FBI began a massive drug sting targeting American military personnel and public employees near the Mexico-Arizona border, Mark A. Fillman was among the first to bite. An Arizona Army National Guardsman for 32 years, Fillman bluntly told undercover agents that he wanted to become a narcotics trafficker. And on Jan. 21, 2002, he transported 11.8 kilograms of cocaine from Nogales to Tucson, wearing his uniform and using an Army vehicle. In return, he picked up $4,500.

A judge ordered that a state senator be placed under house arrest Friday over the objections of prosecutors, who played a video of the lawmaker watching an undercover agent count out $10,000 and an audiotape of him threatening a potential witness. The tapes were played at a bond hearing a day after Sen. John Ford was charged as part of a two-year FBI sting operation nicknamed "Tennessee Waltz."