The Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) -- At first glance, the 20-by-30 foot room could pass for a dorm room. Its walls and desks are covered in Marvel Comics actions figures. Superhero figurines rest atop computers.
But the people who occupy the room are not teenagers, they are investigators with the Wayne County Sheriff’s Internet Crime Unit. Posing as teenagers, they surf the Internet from their office in the county jail, accessing chat rooms in search of people trying to arrange dates with minors.
They are good at their work, as two Wayne State University graduate students found out the hard way last week. The two were arrested after police say one of them set up a date with investigators posing as a 14-year-old girl.
“For the kind of work we do, having the comic characters and dressing the way we do helps keep your mind off of the stuff you’ve got to deal with every day,” investigator Norman Gibson said. “There is some pretty harsh stuff out there.”
The two men nabbed last week were the unit’s third and fourth arrests in about a month.
Authorities say Sachin Rathi set up a meeting with a 14-year-old girl. When he and his friend Shobit Jain showed up, they found the investigators.
Rathi was arraigned in the 31st District Court in Hamtramck on two counts of illegal use of the Internet, a 20-year felony, and one count of conspiracy to commit criminal sexual conduct in the third degree, a 15-year felony. Jain faces one count of conspiracy to commit criminal sexual conduct. They are being held on bond of $300,000 and $250,000, respectively pending a preliminary hearing scheduled for Feb. 26.
While seated in the squad car, Rathi reportedly told investigators they wouldn’t have hurt the girl.
“Yeah, we hear the same thing all the time,” said Erin Diamond, an investigator with the unit. “But what do you think would have happened if there was a real girl that showed up.”
Both men declined comment for the story.
Including the arrests of Rathi and Jain, the unit has helped nab 58 men for illegal use of the Internet and child sex abuse in the past six years. They have a 100 percent conviction rate.
As well as tracking cyber predators, the team is also the most successful computer crime prevention agency in Michigan, based on the number of arrests and convictions last year.
“My motivation for doing this was to protect my daughter,” said William Liczbinski, a 13-year veteran of the force and the primary Internet chatter on the team. “I believe that in all of the cases I’ve been involved in, a real girl would have been assaulted if we didn’t arrest a guy.”
A study by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that while one in five children who use the Internet regularly receive sexual solicitations online, only about one in four report such incidents to their parents.
Investigators with the unit say, in their experience, all the perpetrators have been men, most of whom are well-educated suburbanites with middle- to upper-middle income jobs.
“It is a huge problem, and it is one that is statistically under-policed,” said Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans, who wants to bolster the unit’s ranks with another two full-time officers this year.