More Internet predators are challenging agents

MADISON, Wis. — Eric Szatkowski is a Wisconsin Justice Department special agent, but on that Sunday afternoon he entered an online chat room as a 14-year-old boy.

He claimed he was into weightlifting, AC/DC and muscle magazines. Then he waited.

Within hours, screen name Paul2u sent a message: "Hi. u realy 14?"

Over the past decade, agents and computer experts have gone after hundreds of people like Paul2u who solicit sex from kids or trade child pornography online. Police efforts around the country were all the rage with the media in the early 2000s, reaching a crescendo with Dateline NBC's "To Catch A Predator" series.

Despite the publicity then and now, the bad guys haven't gone away. They've quietly multiplied. Trading child porn online and grooming underage targets in chat rooms has exploded nationwide. With arrests more than quadrupling in 10 years, Wisconsin's agents and analysts feel overwhelmed.

"I don't think we've made significant progress at all," Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said. "Our community leaders don't even know how bad the problem is. The general population has no idea."

In the past year, Van Hollen has raised the profile of Wisconsin's Internet Crimes Against Children, or ICAC, unit, recruited local police departments to help and asked for more state dollars to help agents like Szatkowski, who adopted the 14-year-old's persona.

"If I'm too young that's ok," the agent wrote back to Paul2u that Sunday back in 2002, adding: "Lots of dudes call me jail bait."

"Well, yeah, if you get caught," Paul2u replied, "but if you're willing its doable."

The hook was set.

The Internet was just gaining traction when an online child porn arrest was made by Wisconsin's Justice Department in 1995. The next year saw six arrests. The year after that, 13. By then agency officials realized what the future held, said Mike Myszewski, administrator of department's Criminal Investigation unit.

Using $300,000 in federal seed money, he set up one of the first units to combat Internet crimes against children. Today about 60 such task forces exist nationwide.

Szatkowski, a homicide investigator with years of undercover experience, was an early volunteer for the group, which focused at first on "travelers," people like Paul2u who solicit sex from children online and arrange meetings with them. The unit made 18 arrests the first year, 36 in 2000 and 24 in 2001.