Gullible Kiddy Porn Fan Busted
“Last fall, Richard Leitenberger received an unsolicited letter at his New Jersey home offering him a catalog listing kiddy porn films. Addressed ‘Hello Friend!,’ the missive from JMG Products in Charlotte, North Carolina noted that the catalog featured ‘taboo, very rare, forbidden and ILLEGAL MATERIAL’ and assured that, ‘we are NOT a law enforcement officer.’ If Leitenberger wanted the catalog, the letter asked him to confirm that he, also, was not a cop or ‘trying to set us up.’ After assuring the firm that, ‘I am not affiliated with any law enforcement agency,’ Leitenberger, 40, received the catalog and later ordered nine films, mailing JMG a $180 Western Union money order for the illicit titles. When Leitenberger went to his post office box to pick up the videos in mid-July, he was arrested by federal agents who had ensnared him in a carefully orchestrated (and rather involved) sting. According to a criminal complaint filed Friday in U.S. District Court, Leitenberger was targeted by U.S. Postal Inspection Services agents as a result of his name turning up, years ago, as a customer of an online ‘global child pornography enterprise.’ The complaint, an excerpt of which you’ll find below, details the government ruse.” — The Smoking Gun (US)
(Thanks to “Chris Finch” for the link.)
Sage advice: if you begin to receive snail mail offering you child pornography, you’re fucked. Quit your job, sell your house, move to Latin America, and live a clean, pure, and devout life. Otherwise you’ll be sure to find yourself in jail, like Mr. Leitenberger.
The criminal complaint archived at the Smoking Gun makes for fascinating reading. It contains the initial solicitation letter. Here is part of it. Take note of the clever maneuvering — for example, the clear acknowledgement that the videos feature illegal material (which will serve to show criminal intent on the part of Mr. Leitenberger), or the agent’s attempt to build a sense of solidarity with his correspondent.
We received your name from a trusted source and understand we share a common interest. We would really like to send you our catalog. What we got (and what we really enjoy viewing) is taboo, very rare, forbidden and ILLEGAL MATERIAL. We have tried to be very discreet because of our profession and the fact is we like to keep our private lives very private. We do not do business over the internet. We are strictly a mail order business. We have found that mail order is the most secure and discreet manner to distribute our products. We wanted to let you know these things up front because you can get into serious trouble with our materials if you treat them lightly or are just curious.
We offer top quality kiddy porn videos, CD-ROMs, and DVDs (homemade and commercial). Our products contain underage sex, rape, showers, pets, and other hard to find items (note: underage really means under age 18, not just actors made to look young)… We also have extensive contacts and will attempt to fill any special requests. Just tell us what you want!
We are also willing to trade our products for kiddy porn videos (homemade and commercial), magazines, photos (homemade or commercial). Tell us what you have to trade and we can make a deal.
The criminal complaint also includes the catalog of verboten videos. Basically it’s a list of illicit scenarios culminating in a “great kid orgy video” in which a foursome goes at it “like little porn stars.” The catalog ends with the admonition to “destroy if not interested.”
Unfortunately for him, Mr. Leitenberger was interested. The complaint gives a number of emails he exchanged with the agent. At one point he wanted to back out of his order, but the agent roped him back in. And while Mr. Leitenberger may indeed have been gullible, he wasn’t completely unself-conscious about the whole thing. In one email he wrote: “Understand where I’m coming from, you got my name from what you call a reliable source, that kind of freaks me out. I’m on somebodies [sic] list that deals with this kind of material…” In the end, Mr. Leitenberger was more pedophile than paranoiac. He was arrested when picking up his package, which the complaint specifies contained “actual images of child pornography.” (The government can mail out real kiddy porn? Hey, unless they produce it, isn’t that copyright infringement? And what if the package had ended up in the wrong hands?)
Nowadays busting pedophiles is like shooting fish in a barrel. It happens countless times a day — but it all happens online. What’s astonishing about this particular incident is that it reverted to what you would have thought were outdated methods. You can imagine higher-ups even scoffing at the idea of mailing Mr. Leitenberger a letter… “A letter? You want to mail the guy a letter? On a piece of paper? With a stamp? Nobody’s that stupid, agent……. But boss, doncha see that that’s the brilliance? It’ll catch him unaware, put him off his guard…… All right, agent, just this one time. But if this don’t work, you’ll be busted down to selling money orders on the night shift….. Don’t worry, boss. I know how to work ‘em. You’ll see.” And damned if he wasn’t right!
The sheer idiocy-factor alone makes this story outrageously funny.
The really disturbing thing about most entrapment cases, is that no actual crime was committed. Example:
The “To Catch a Predator” series on NBC. Law enforcement officials pose as teen girls online, where they set up a meeting for sex with adult males.
The guy arrives at the supposed girl’s home, where he is tackled by the cops and charged with attempted statutory rape.
Since no sexual activity ever occurs, and the teen “victim” is imaginary, it is truely a victimless crime.
I can’t help feeling sorry for all the guys whose lives have been ruined by this pseudo crime. Yes, they were stupid to fall for it, especially considering this show has been running for such a long time, but stupidity is not a crime.
What a unique and effective method.
thats really funny.
Thanks for featuring the story and crediting me.
Kathy, I don’t agree about it being a victimless crime at all. These guys are surfing for underage girls to have sex with.
If I had my way, the NSA (National Security Agency), based at Fort Meade, Maryland would get involved in intercepting all instant message and chat room conversations, and anyone that talks about or looks for sex with young kids would be given life in prison!
Think how easy it would be: a list of keywords like preteen, lolita etc, and anyone speaking about it would be recorded.
Listening in to other people’s electronic communication is deeply deeply erotic.
Chris Finch,
Really? You’re willing to live in that world, with the repercussions that that action would have, to catch a few guys who want to have sex with underage girls — underage girls who are inviting said guys to have sex with them? ‘Cause I’m not.
Also, how is this not entrapment? The agent talked him into continuing to break the law? That smacks of entrapment to me.
Re entrapment:
if you bother to read through all the documents on the Smoking Gun, you’ll see how subtle the game of cat and mouse is. The agent never comes out and says, “hey, this is illegal, do it.” Rather, he says “hey, this is illegal,” and then does everything he can to make it comfortable for the perp to take the next step.
It’s a fine line between the two, but you can be sure that most law enforcement agents understand not to step over the line into entrapment. That would end up being a waste of their time.
Yes Sven, I am willing to live in that world. Hell, we’re 2/3 of the way there already.
The NSA measures computing power in ACRES. They have supercomputers which can carry out 64 billion operations a second. They have a direct fibre link into British Telecom’s data network. The NSA have Narus STA6400 Semantic Traffic Analyzers in every major US data hub across the country
Why are targeting terrorists, which are a tiny minority, and not those willing to fuck little kids, who are a much bigger minority? I am much more concerned about the 56yr old man with a beard who likes 8-9 yr old girls, that some raghead with fertilizer bombs.
5-15% of registered sex offenders are using Facebook…
Put it this way, if 1% of the American population pursues sex with children then, that would be between 2.84 and 3 million people. That’s not exactly “a few guys” is it? The problem is only getting bigger. It’s time to crack down hard on them, and intercepting and listening to everything that sex offenders do is just the start.
I never understood pedos, what is so sexually appealing about a child that you couldn’t get out of a midget or an Asian woman? I personally think that if your going to be a pedo move to a country that is ok with you poking a kid. Though I think the crime of pedophilia should come with a hefty amount of counseling followed by mandatory enlistment to the army for half your sentence.
Kathy–it is not a victimless crime and it is not entrapment (by this I mean the “To Catch a Predator” show). The guys showed up with the intention of raping a minor; that is a crime. Had the police/Chris Hansen not interrupted (”cockblocked”) the pedophile in question, he would have gone through with it. Then there would be a victim. They are basically stopping a lot of crimes before they happen. Those men are made aware that they were doing something illegal and they did it anyway. While I love the show, I’m sure Bubba loves it even more.
Chris Finch and Jessica,
I assert that the “To Catch a Predator” entraps men for a crime which never occured. The only “victim” is the guy whose life is ruined by a legal system which permanently brands these guys as sexual predators, when all they did was attempt to have sex with a willing minor, who in reality did not exist.
In the exchanges between the role-playing cop and these men, the intent of both the girl and the man is made quite obvious. They are meeting for consensual sex. This is not rape.
“To Catch A Predator” doesn’t charge guys with crimes that never happened. Note, they are not charged with statutory rape, but with ATTEMPTED statutory rape. He showed up with very clear intent to screw an underage person, so by entering the house (he usually has to fully enter for them to charge him), he is showing a clear ATTEMPT to get to an underage person he fully believes is there. This tactic is used a lot in murder and murder-for-hire plots. Use a decoy, get the people before the crime is committed, and charge them with the attempt, whether the victim was there or not. The point is to get these guys before there’s a victim. Rather ruin the life of a sicko than ruin the life of an innocent kid (a lot of the kids who are asking for sex still wind up with serious problems later… I’d rather they get their lives together before they get what they’re asking for, not after).
If someone came up to you and asked “Hey, wanna go burn down this building?” or “Wanna buy this completely illegal item?” you get to say no. If you say yes, it’s your fault. You can’t say “Hey, they offered! That makes it ok!”
Oh, and the idea of living in a society where anything I say online or elsewhere can be monitored makes me sick. We can find these people without doing a dragnet of the entire population! Besides, words like “kiddy” and “preteen” are used very often without sexual implications. It would be a waste of our time. And, I highly doubt 1% of the population wants to seek out underage sex. Seems kinda high.
Oh, almost forgot, on “To Catch A Predator” (I’ve watched the show a lot), the decoys never make first contact. They just surf around “hotspots” and say they’re 13 or 14 and guys come to them. They also never bring up sex first. The culprit talks to them and then brings up sex. The decoy usually gets them to admit it’s illegal in someway and then agrees to meet. There is no entrapment there at all. The guy sought out an “underage person”, admitted it was illegal, and then went to do it. That is totally on them. Idiots.
1% is actually very conservative estimate.
Quote from Kathy: “Oh, and the idea of living in a society where anything I say online or elsewhere can be monitored makes me sick. We can find these people without doing a dragnet of the entire population! Besides, words like “kiddy†and “preteen†are used very often without sexual implications.”
Here’s a reality check: we are already in that society. The NSA, along with partners in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand capture every electronic communication radiated worldwide, in a “vacuum cleaner” fashion, and then feed that data into massive supercomputers to decide what is junk and what is important.
Text Recognition, Phrase Recognition, Pattern Recognition, Voice Recognition, Image Recognition, Encryption Detection are all on 24 hours a day.
If you youtube “NSA” or “Echelon” you can watch 3-4 documentaries on this topic.
With two such diametrically opposed standpoints here, I’m actually yet undecided.
The whole question of ” Entrapment ” is something I only ever really heard about from ” Hill St. Blues “. Isn’t the fly response just to ask, ” Are you a Police Officer? ” ~ end of.
Sorry, I’m not that up on US ways.
Maybe they really Were one jump ahead in using ‘old fashioned paper and stamp mail’? If it’s getting so ye can’t mention ” Young ” in an on line key tapped sentence, without having some Orwellian presence pour over what ye said ~ and we’re now being, good as, assured of this on a site such as this?
How long before They figure out that no such resource will ever be expended on steaming open envelopes as is now on ’super computers’? And revert to ‘obsolete’ methods of communication.
Guy carrying a teddy bear in a forked stick would, seemingly, draw less flack that typing ” Kiddie “, these days.
Hey Chris, I said that, not Kathy. I should have been clearer. I’m not saying things like that are or are not happening, it was simply my opposition to such things. I hate the idea of generalized dragnets to catch criminals. I wouldn’t allow someone to go through my home just to check I was doing things legally, same should go with my IMs (if chatroom sites wanna moderate, great, but IMs and emails etc are private).
Sorry for the confusion
IM’s and emails are far from private. They are private if you use encryption but even then, just the very fact you have used encryption makes interception computers react.
If you are using encryption, you have something to hide.
If you don’t they can read the plain text.
In fact, one could argue that nothing electronic is private at all.
Sorry for the misquote of Kathy, my bad.
Again. SHOULD. My problem was not saying if something is or is not happening, it was not liking the very idea of such things happening.
I am fully aware of how our civil liberties when it comes to private communication are being trampled. And I hate it. My IMs and emails SHOULD be private and I disagree with anyone who claims catching criminals is a valid reason to search everyone’s communications.
I’m shocked at how many of you support throwing guys into prison for attempting to have sex with a willing minor. Are you really okay with an 18 year-old male being sent to prison for having consensual sex with a 17 year-old female? That’s an example of what this policy is doing.
Quote from Kathy: “I’m shocked at how many of you support throwing guys into prison for attempting to have sex with a willing minor. Are you really okay with an 18 year-old male being sent to prison for having consensual sex with a 17 year-old female? That’s an example of what this policy is doing.”
Kathy–
I would hate to be your daughter.
willing minor?–are you serious?
How DARE you blame the minor!
When I watch “To Catch a Predator”, I see 40 year olds trying to pursue 13 and 14 year olds–not 18 year old boys and 17 year old decoys…I’m guessing that was just your way of trying to validate your argument…
They are not catching high school age kids sleeping with other high school age kids–that is legal (I think many states have an age range in which dating is acceptable). So no…we are not supporting that.
But I hate to think that any normal person would allow an older man to molest (because that IS what it is) a young kid. On “To Catch a Predator” the decoys pose as kids that are usually about 11-14 and catch older, around middle age, men. Read up on what the policies are, who they are catching and why.
Tosha,
I’m not blaming the girls when I say they are willing to have sex with older males. If you doubt that young teen girls are willing and eager to engage in consensual sex with older guys, I suggest you visit some of the popular social-networking sites and see what these girls are posting.
I simply disagree with the notion that consensual sex between teenage girls and adult males, or teenage boys and adult females should be treated as a crime.
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