Undercover

A physician from Arbutus was ordered yesterday to spend a year and a day in federal prison after he was found with pornographic images of children. Michael Sapko, 31, pleaded guilty in November to possession of child pornography. He could have received up to 30 months in prison from U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake. According to the plea agreement, an undercover Greensburg, Pa., police officer posed online as a 30-year-old female and contacted Sapko in May 2004. In online conversations, Sapko discussed how he had accumulated a personal collection of child pornography from the Internet, prosecutors said.

Baltimore police yesterday rejected allegations by a woman who says she was the victim of retaliation for her public protests over the arrest of her 7-year-old son. The boy, Gerard Mungo Jr., was arrested March 13 for riding a dirt bike outside his home in the 2100 block of E. Federal St. - an incident that attracted national attention and prompted an apology by Mayor Sheila Dixon. Then on Saturday, Gerard's mother was arrested, too. Lakisa Dinkins, 31, was charged with hindering a police investigation into an apparent drug deal.

SMICKSBURG, Pa. -- The undercover police operation in rural western Pennsylvania has been unusual, to say the least.Undercover officers usually don't ride in horse-drawn buggies, and they usually don't announce their strategy to the public in advance.But in an attempt to crack down on the harassment of Amish residents in Smicksburg, an isolated community 60 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, police officers have been sitting next to Amish drivers as they travel the area's narrow two-lane country roads.

Georges Debeir was exactly the kind of cyber stalker the FBI wanted to catch: He had solicited more than 50 children from around the world on the Internet, went to malls to meet children he contacted by computer and regularly spoke online about his wish to molest minors.But instead of a victory for Innocent Images, the FBI's premier undercover Internet operation based in Baltimore, Debeir's case turned out to be a bust.He was sentenced to six months of home detention, despite a federal prosecutor's insistence that he was a predator intent on "trolling for young girls."

The Howard County Board of License Commissioners has fined an Ellicott City liquor store $2,000 for selling alcohol to an undercover police cadet.The board voted 4-0 -- member C. Vernon Gray was absent -- to penalize Allview Liquors in the 9400 block of Old Annapolis Road after a store owner acknowledged that on Aug. 24 a clerk sold a $6.70 six-pack of beer to an undercover cadet who was younger than 21 without asking the cadet for proof of age.The board's...

MIKE COLLEGE, Mike Smith and John Campbell look more like three street toughs than the Maryland state troopers they are. But as undercover narcotics cops, that's how they're supposed to look.College -- that's Sgt. Mike College -- has worked undercover for 20 years."He taught me how to buy dope," said Maj. Greg Shipley, the state police spokesman who also worked as an undercover narc. Smith and Campbell, both corporals, have worked undercover five and seven years, respectively.They note their undercover experience to let folks know that when it comes to the business of taking down drug rings, they know what they're doing.

Shoppers take heed. The man or woman browsing too long over the compact disc of your favorite artist might be an undercover trooper, ready to nab a nearby shoplifter.State police in Westminster announced yesterday that they will team with undercover troopers from the special operations division in an aggressive effort to make Carroll County crime-freeand safer for holiday shoppers.Troopers will focus on robbery, auto theft and shoplifting -- crimes that traditionally increase between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, according to 1st Sgt. Dean Richardson of the Westminster barracks.

Ruthann Aron's murder-for-hire trial was to resume today with the testimony of the man prosecutors say introduced her to an undercover police officer posing as a hit man.The Montgomery County Circuit Court jury of 10 women and two men heard one day of testimony Thursday, then were sent home Friday after two jurors and a defense attorney complained of illness.Aron, 55, is being tried on two counts of solicitation to commit murder. The former Potomac businesswoman and unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate has pleaded not criminally responsible to charges that she hired a hit man last summer to kill her husband, Dr. Barry Aron, and Baltimore lawyer Arthur Kahn, who testified against her in a defamation trial.

Howard County police have arrested two Columbia men accused of selling $100 worth of crack cocaine to undercover detectives on an Ellicott City parking lot, police said yesterday.About 6 p.m. Wednesday, police set up a drug purchase with the suspects near the Allview Liquors in the 9400 block of Old Annapolis Road, said Detective Mark Verderaime of the vice and narcotics section.The alleged dealers drove up to Allview Liquors, Verderaime said, and one of them sold drugs to undercover detectives waiting in an unmarked police car.Terence Dwight Butler, 23, and Nathanial Byrd, 34, of the 9400 block of Columbia Road are charged with conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine, distribution of crack cocaine, possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine and possession of crack cocaine, police said.

Undercover police officers posing as drug dealers arrested more than 70 would-be drug buyers -- 31 of them suburbanites -- yesterday and Wednesday at three West Baltimore intersections known for heavy narcotics activity.Police also seized 31 vehicles and nearly $800 during "Operation Decoy," said Lt. Michael Kundrat, operations commander of the Western District drug enforcement unit.Suspects in custodyThe suspects, with the exception of two juveniles, were being held at the Central Booking and Intake Center, pending bail hearings, Kundrat said.

A Baltimore police officer was arrested for shaking down an undercover internal affairs officer posing as a drug dealer, the department said. Michael Sylvester, 29, was arrested Thursday morning after he stole $70 from the undercover officer in the 3900 block of Carlisle Ave. in Northwest Baltimore as part of what the department refers to as an integrity test, according to Anthony Guglielmi, the department's chief spokesman. Guglielmi also said police recovered three small bags containing suspected cocaine in Sylvester's locker at the Northwest District police station.

A few observations from the first sentencing of a waterman who was part of the black market that stole millions of dollars worth of striped bass from the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River. It was nice that U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte recognized that his decision on prison time, fine and restitution for Thomas Hallock would be watched by officials, recreational anglers and watermen along the East Coast. He called it a "serious crime" that "deserved time." What a breath of fresh air when compared with state district court judges - especially those on the lower Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland - who don't seem to mind seeing the same bad actors again and again because the puny penalties are just the cost of doing buinsess.

Two indicted in theft of stamps for resale Two men were indicted Tuesday in a scheme to steal more than a half-million dollars' worth of postage stamps and sell them at a discount, sometimes on eBay, the Maryland U.S. attorney's office announced. According to the indictment, Marvin Lamont Foster, a 54-year-old window clerk at the Elkridge post office, stole nearly $683,000 worth of stamps from June 2008 through last month and passed them to others to sell. Kyle Mathias, 23, of Joppa is accused of setting up an eBay account to sell the stamps.

Virginia watermen used illegally submerged nets to fish out of season and altered and reused fish tags as part of the black market responsible for illegally catching millions of dollars worth of striped bass from the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River, according to affidavits for federal search warrants. The court records, filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., present a picture of a much larger operation, one in which one waterman boasted to undercover officers of making $600,000 in one year of poaching and hinted at making bribes.

A plainclothes Baltimore City police officer was shot twice in the face last night while attempting to make an undercover drug purchase in the Seton Hill neighborhood, officials said. The officer, a seven-year veteran of the force, was rushed to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was in critical but stable condition last night. His injuries were not considered life-threatening. The 33-year-old officer and his partner, also in plain clothes, were at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Orchard Street shortly after 8 p.m. when they saw a group of people who appeared to be involved in drug transactions, said Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III. The officer was shot in the jaw and cheek when he tried to make an undercover purchase, Bealefeld said.

A police sweep of Anne Arundel jewelry stores found that 18 had violated laws designed to prevent the sale of stolen jewelry - including a downtown Annapolis shop owned by a state delegate. As part of an effort to curtail a rise in property crimes in the county, undercover officers found that stores did not ask for identification before purchasing precious metals, resold them before an 18-day waiting period had passed and did not report sales to police as required by law. Several stores that are not licensed to buy jewelry also purchased items from the officers.

A Baltimore police officer who was criminally charged with assault after he punched an undercover internal affairs detective during an "integrity test" was found not guilty in Circuit Court yesterday. Whether the officer, Jerome K. Hill, hit the detective was not in dispute in the trial. Instead, the verdict turned on whether Hill's action was justified. Circuit Judge John C. Themelis found yesterday that it was impossible for him to second-guess the instincts of the accused officer, saying that Hill might have had good reason to act aggressively.

Undercover Maryland State Police officers repeatedly spied on peace activists and anti-death penalty groups in recent years and entered the names of some in a law-enforcement database of people thought to be terrorists or drug traffickers, newly released documents show. The files, made public yesterday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, depict a pattern of infiltration of the activists' organizations in 2005 and 2006. The activists contend that the authorities were trying to determine whether they posed a security threat to the United States.

No charges will be filed against the undercover officer who accidentally shot two Jessup teenagers police suspected of dealing drugs in April, the Howard County state's attorney's office said yesterday. State's Attorney Dario Broccolino wrote in a letter to Police Chief William J. McMahon that prosecutors have concluded the shooting was an accident. About 5 p.m. April 7, undercover narcotics officers stopped two teenagers, Dwain Usery, who was 14 at the time, and Garcia Wilson, who was 15, in the 8300 block of Pleasant Chase Road in Jessup, police said.

A retired Indonesian Marine Corps general was sentenced yesterday to 30 months in prison for orchestrating a deal in Baltimore to smuggle hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of high-tech weapons to rebels in Sri Lanka whom the U.S. government considers terrorists. Erick Wotulo, 61, whom authorities considered the mastermind of the operation, is to be deported after serving his sentence in federal prison, according to the ruling by U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake. Authorities who conducted a three-year investigation of the deals said undercover FBI agents posed as weapons dealers, put up a Singapore arms broker in a four-star Inner Harbor hotel, arranged for him to attend religious services at a mosque in Laurel and invited him to test-fire machine guns at a Harford County firing range.