from www.orlandosentinel.com – It took less than 10 seconds for MBI vice Sgt. Samuel Riggi to find a prostitution advertisement on Craigslist.
With a few clicks of the computer mouse, he pulled up a page for a local woman advertising her services as an escort. Translation: sex for money.
It’s the modern twist on the world’s oldest profession. Women who sell their bodies for money are no longer just walking the streets; they’re strolling the information superhighway.
On Wednesday, online escorts were center stage for Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation agents who worked a sting operation aimed at escorts who charge upward of $200 an hour for their services.
As the crackdown continued into the night, arrested five women for prostitution. Undercover officers captured Jessica Mathis, 20; [pictured] Malisa McGrady, 26; Aisling Harris, 20; Lindsay Buddenbaum, 22; and Marilyn Negron, 30.
MBI was the latest Central Florida law-enforcement endeavor to target prostitutes who market themselves online. A similar sting operation in Polk County led to 34 arrests last weekend. Those suspects included prostitutes and pimps, Polk officials said.
Buddenbaum and Mathis were among those arrested in the Polk County sting, records show. Also, Negron was arrested Monday in Orange County on prostitution charge, according to jail records.
Riggi is a 19-year law-enforcement veteran and supervisor of MBI’s Vice and Organized Crime unit. His years on the job have taught him how to spot a likely prostitution ad.
He clicked on an advertisement called “!Sweet as Candy!” posted in the casual-encounters portion of Craigslist. He finds a few short sentences and a picture of a scantily clad woman.
The posting, which may look distasteful to many people unaware of the subculture of escorts, pimps and prostitutes, doesn’t immediately appear illegal.
“Wanna play today? Come on over!” the listing says.
But it’s the next sentence that catches Riggi’s eye.
“*$erious Gentlemen Only Plea$e*”
Although there is no mention of money, the dollar signs used in the last line shows Riggi this isn’t just a girl looking for fun. She’s likely a high-dollar escort, so he logs into his undercover e-mail account and fires off a message.
He wants to get her to an Orlando hotel where a pre-arranged bust is already scheduled. But she does not reply.
The woman is one of several hundred escorts who live and work in the Orlando area, Riggi said. Some work independently. Others are employed by agencies that profit off the sex trade.
Those agencies are the ones Riggi and his team work to dismantle. “We want to attack the people who are profiting from this illegal activity — the sex or human trafficking,” Riggi said.
It was about 4 p.m. when the vice unit’s first suspect arrived at the hotel. As soon as the door opened, Mathis knew she’d been caught.
“Oh, man. Not MBI again!” Mathis said to the undercover officer, whom she recognized.
“Yup, MBI’s got you again,” the officer told her.
Mathis was arrested on a prostitution charge and sent to the Orange County Jail, where she was being held without bail. Mathis also was picked up in the Polk County sting this past weekend.
She refused to talk to a reporter about her recent arrests.
MBI has been looking for prostitutes on the Internet for at least five years, scanning ads in such online sites as Craigslist and backpage.com. The agency schedules several stings per year but will do them spontaneously if hotels or other businesses complain.
MBI also monitors massage parlors, some of which advertise on the Internet. But it leaves the streetwalkers who frequent high-traffic areas such as Orange Blossom Trail to local law enforcement.
“We’re never going to get rid of it,” Riggi said, “but it’s our job to look out for the silent majority who don’t want Orlando to turn into [Las] Vegas.”