THERE IS SOMETHING AT THE NEW YORK OFFICE OF THE Federal Bureau of Investigation that demonstrates the Crimes Against Children Squad’s level of commitment and passion for the work that they do to protect children. It is called the Wall of Shame and it is located in the squad area for all to see. There, prominently displayed, are the photos of those who have been arrested by the squad for committing crimes against children. I’ve been up to the FBI building and I have seen the Wall, and I have to admit that I look at it with a great sense of pride. Many of the faces are familiar to me, because I was personally involved with their cases. Those pictures are symbols of what the FBI agents do every day of their lives and what I have done to assist them in their very important mission. I am so honored to be a part of their work and to have been given the trust and respect that they have so generously bestowed upon me.
Besides the sexual predators whose stories fill the pages of these chapters, there are many others whose arrests I was involved with that I haven’t written about yet, and whose pictures are included on the Wall of Shame. Some of them were cases that happened so quickly that there isn’t enough material to fill a chapter, while others are so typical that their stories would have been redundant. A couple were just not worthy of any more attention than they already had. However, those predators were just as deviant, just as perverted, and just as culpable as all of the others. So, I will briefly let you know who some of them are.
As Julie, I had made several phone calls for Agent Berglas to a man named Ernesto Morales. His screen name on AOL was Tito708. At the time, I was acting as thirteen-year-old Julie from Astoria who went to school in Manhattan. Morales told Julie that he was thirty-four and lived in Astoria with his mother and brother. He wanted to pick the young girl up and take her back to his house for a weekend of sex because his brother was going to be away and his mother would be asleep. During one of our phone conversations, he asked me to turn on the television to prove to him that I wasn’t calling from a police station.
On March 17, 2004, Morales was arrested at his home for the numerous pictures of child pornography that he had sent to Agent Berglas while chatting with him as Julie, as well as the chats that he used to entice “Julie” to meet him for sex. On November 17, 2004, after pleading guilty, Morales was convicted on charges of using the Internet to attempt to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity. He was sentenced on February 23, 2006, to five years in a federal prison.
Another sexual predator that I spoke to as Julie was Joseph Zito, who was using the AOL screen name Jazliny. He was arrested on March 30, 2004, on the same two counts as Matt Brand, when he showed up at a Manhattan restaurant to meet the young girl he thought he had been chatting with on the Internet and talking to on the phone. He was convicted on February 16, 2005, and sentenced to five years and ten months in a federal prison.
David Camus, known on AOL as Local1DC, was a forty-three-year-old man from Orangeburg, New York. I chatted with him on the computer under the AOL screen name Angelnybaby13 and the name Jen, and I spoke to him on the telephone as Julie, who he was also chatting online with after I had made the usual introduction. Camus arranged a date with Julie and on June 2, 2004, he arrived at the agreed upon meeting place. When he realized he was about to be arrested, he tried to drive away. Agent Berglas had to physically block his car from leaving the scene. Camus was taken into custody and held without bail due to his Internet conversations with several agents from all over the country. On December 22, 2004, he pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to five years in a federal prison.
Michael Brennan, a man from Deer Park, New York, using the AOL screen name Diesel pwr, first instant messaged Angelnybaby13, also known as Jen, on March 6, 2004. She was thirteen and he was thirty-eight. He was extremely domineering, giving Jen and eventually Julie specific instructions about her daily life. For example, he told her what she was allowed to wear, or not to wear, to school each day. She was not to wear panties, a thong, or a bra under her uniform, and she had to sleep naked at night. He made an exception, allowing her to wear a thong, but only on gym days, saying that he would let her “slide” on those days. He told Jen that her “ass belongs to him” and that she was to “do what he says, no questions asked.” He also wanted the young girl to call him “Daddy.”
One night, he instructed her to strip down in her living room and walk into her room naked, even though her mother was home and had already seen her in her pajamas. He also told her that whenever she received email she was to send it to him right away. He actually believed that the girl was listening to his crazy demands. He eventually made a date with Julie and was arrested on April 21, 2004, when he arrived to meet her at a prearranged meeting place. He was charged with using the Internet to attempt to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity. He was not released on bail. He was convicted on July 11, 2005, after pleading guilty. On October 3, 2005, Brennan was sentenced to five years in a federal prison.
Josef Badash, also known on AOL as Motek, first instant messaged Angelnybaby13 on July 13, 2004, while he was at work. He was a forty-eight-year-old Israeli citizen, who lived in Brooklyn, New York, and he wanted to meet Jen right away. He was very clear about wanting to have sex with her, even telling her that she would feel good right after they did it. He also asked her for a naked picture of herself which, of course, he never received. At the same time that he was chatting with Jen, he was chatting online with Julie. He arranged to meet Julie and on July 15, 2004, he arrived at the meeting place and was arrested. He was charged with using the Internet to attempt to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity. He was released on $500,000 bail. After pleading guilty, he was convicted on August 27, 2004, and sentenced on May 17, 2005, to five years in a federal prison.
I spoke to Joseph Minnici on the telephone while posing as Julie. Minnici had been on AOL under the screen name Poetdom4u when he first instant messaged the young “girl.” He was a fifty-one-year-old insurance salesman and a coach for ten- to fourteen-year-olds. He was also a cross-dresser. Every time Julie responded to one of his questions on the phone, he would say, “Mmmm.” It was revolting! He also sent Julie a package and instructed her to put a pair of her worn panties in it and send it back to him.
On August 31, 2004, Minnici drove for three and one-half hours from Pennsylvania to New York to meet Julie for sex. Agent Berglas said that when the FBI agents asked Minnici to step out of his car, Minnici blurted out that he was only going to spank Julie. He was carrying with him directions to the meeting place, lubricant, condoms, and a planner with Julie’s name in it. He was arrested and charged with enticement. He was released on a $200,000 bond and put under house arrest. His attorney argued for bail using an old law that said it was okay to have sex with a minor. He pleaded guilty on November 9, 2005. At his sentencing, he received five years in a federal prison and five years supervised release.
Robert Riley, also known on AOL as BigD4u2com, was a Jamaican resident alien who lived with his brother. He worked as a copy tech and had a criminal record consisting of seventeen convictions and five bench warrants all issued on drug-related charges. He instant messaged me while I was using the screen name Teen2hot4u. He told Lorie that he was thirty and immediately began talking sexually with very vivid descriptions about the things he wanted to do to her. After an introduction by Lorie, he also chatted with Julie and was arrested on April 15, 2005, after showing up to meet her at a fast food restaurant. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced on November 16, 2005, to seventy months in a federal prison.
A US Weekly reporter, Timothy McDarrah, using the AOL screen name “Ps41alum,” answered an advertisement posted on June 22, 2005 on Craigslist.com offering “the freshest, youngest girls available in all ages.” Not realizing that he was communicating with Agent Berglas, he offered to pay $200 to have sex with a thirteen-year-old girl. He then began communicating with Julie (Agent Berglas) and from July 2005 through September 14, 2005, McDarrah chatted with Julie on the Internet and on the telephone (me, acting as Julie) and described explicit sexual acts that he wanted to perform with her. He also offered to buy her various items, including CDs, an iPod, and clothes. On September 14, 2005, when McDarrah showed up to meet the person he thought to be the thirteen-year-old girl with whom he had been communicating, he was arrested by FBI agents and charged with using the Internet to persuade, induce, entice and coerce an individual younger than eighteen-years-old to engage in sexual activity. On December 20, 2006, after a jury trial in Manhattan Federal Court, McDarrah was found guilty. The following day a New York Post article entitled “‘Kid Sex’ Perv Writer Nailed” announced his conviction. He faces between five and thirty years in prison.
Frank Gagliardi, a sixty-two-year-old cement mason who lived with his wife, used two AOL screen names to chat with Lorie and Julie. One was Brooklynfrank3 and the other was Scemonito. He instructed both girls to take their ages out of their profiles so he could claim that he thought they weren’t underage if he was caught with them. After chatting with both girls for several weeks and going as far as repeatedly offering one of them money in exchange for sex, he scheduled a meeting with both of them.
On the morning of October 5, 2005, he told his wife that he was leaving for work and called his boss to say that he would be late. He arrived at the arranged meeting place, a park, at 8:00 a.m. and was arrested when agents pulled him out of his car. He had one Viagra pill and two condoms with him, but he claimed that he wasn’t going to have sex with the girls. His family put up his $350,000 bail and he was released under house arrest. He opted for a trial and on May 8, 2006, jury selection began. I was called to testify. The experience was everything you would expect considering the descriptions of the trials that I have already discussed. On May 12, 2006, the jury reached its verdict, declaring Gagliardi “guilty of the enticement of a minor to engage in sexual activity.” On September 21, 2006, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
There are other predators whose cases I have been involved with but whose convictions are still pending, thus they are not mentioned here. There are also predators whose cases I have worked on who were arrested by local police while FBI agents were in the middle of their own investigation of them. For example, during November 2004, a man using the screen name Specimen29 began chatting with me while I was on AOL under the screen name Emily13LINY. He introduced himself to Emily with the opening line, “Long Island master here . . . hi there.” Then, in February 2005, he began chatting with Teen2hot4u and, at the same time, he was communicating with Julie13nyc. In July 2005, while still chatting with me under the name Specimen29, he began instant messaging me using the screen name Sniffler29, and when I told him I didn’t know who he was, he quickly identified himself as Specimen29 and reminded me of the things we had chatted about. He referred to himself as “Sexy Daddy,” and said he was “46, 6’4” and 220 lbs.” At other times, he said he was “40” and also “50.” He sent me his real picture and made it clear that he “was definitely not looking for cyber,” that he was interested in meeting for sex, saying that he wanted Lorie to “do some naughty things.” He was extremely explicit in telling the thirteen-year-old girl about the sexual things they would do together.
His name was Jan Kabas and he was a real estate attorney who had an office in Jericho, N.Y. On August 25, 2005, Kabas was arrested in Nassau County, New York, when he showed up to meet a person he believed to be a thirteen-year-old girl. In reality, he had come face to face with a member of the Nassau County District Attorney’s Technology Crime Unit that he had met while searching in the AOL chatroom “I Love Older Men.” At the time of his arrest, Kabas was out on bail pending a federal criminal trial on charges involving mortgage fraud. On September 9, 2005, he pleaded guilty in Nassau County Court to “attempted disseminating of indecent material to minors in the first degree,” a Class E Felony.
There are numerous other predators still trying to arrange meetings with “girls” like Lorie and Julie, so, my work continues.
By the time this book comes out, I will no longer be using the screen name Teen2hot4u, and Julie13nyc will also be retired. In fact, Agent Berglas’ excellent performance with the Crimes Against Children Squad has earned him a promotion. So, we will no longer be working on these cases together. He is currently the Supervisory Special Agent of Squad C-37 in Manhattan, also known as the “Cyber Crimes Squad,” which is responsible for investigating computer hacking, intellectual property rights, Internet fraud, and Internet extortions.
I recently asked Agent Berglas what his proudest moment with Squad C-20 was and this is how he responded, “All of it. They were all victories. The work was so important and I enjoyed it so much. I never thought any of the arrests were mistakes. I truly believed that the men would have had sex with any thirteen-year-old girl.”
It has been the greatest honor of my life to have worked with Agent Berglas and I wish him well in his new position.
The Wall of Shame awaits me and I will respond. It is a humbling experience to stand before it and look into the faces of the lowest species of society, the weakest of the weak, and the cruelest of the cruel. In the eyes of those deviants are the reflections of the numerous victims they have left in their wakes, and it is for those children that I continue to make new additions to the Wall in the sincere hope that I can save others from ever having to look into the eyes of sexual predators like those I have already identified for the FBI.