It is rare, but sometimes journalists just do what we've always said they should do... if you want to know about Perverted-Justice.com and our work, ask the police that we work with about it. That's what Dan Johnson of the Petaluma Argus-Courier did and the results? Predictable.

His article title says it all: Police laud impact of sex sting - Petaluma Argus-Courier

Fact is, when you talk to police that have first-hand knowledge of how we work and our methods, you will find the consensus result that this article found. We bring effective tactics and quality manpower that reduces the viability of their community as a destination for internet sexual predators. It's rare to see a journalist stick to the facts and talk to people with first-hand direct knowledge about what we do. How refreshing!

We'd like to thank the Petaluma police force for their outstanding partnership during that sting operation and for their open honesty when asked about the results of that work.

Schillaci sentenced to 20 years in jail

Jon Schillaci, a former FBI's top ten most wanted fugitive, was recently sentenced to 20-50 years in prison. The Schillaci case was a product of an investigation by our parallel website Wikisposure.com. Recently Trent Spiner of the Concord Monitor did a nice writeup of how Schillaci was caught and the aftermath of the arrest. It is well worth a read as the Schillaci case is one of the more bizarre cases that we've ever been involved in.

You can read his article at the following link: Concord Monitor: Fugitive pedophile gets 20 years. While we're happy that he's been arrested, it is a tad disappointing that Schillaci was not charged for his ten years on the run as a fugitive in Mexico, where he had set up his base of operations. Schillaci's trail of molestation through Mexico will likely and unfortunately, never be accounted for fully. You can read our profile of Schillaci at his Wikisposure profile page.

While we're very happy to have put together the Schillaci-Thomas connection and to have gathered information leading to his arrest, and indeed, extremely happy that prosecutor's were able to lean on him in order to save a young child... Jon Schillaci knew most of the names of those in the online pedophile movement and it's guaranteed that he knows far more than the location and name of one felon.

Perverted-Justice.com: 500 convictions!

Many years ago when we started doing what we do, long before the Dateline NBC shows and before the issue of internet predators was as "known" as it is today, some people who thought we were "uppity civilians" said we'd never get a conviction. Not a single one, let alone two, or a hundred, or five hundred. The refrain was always that working on and helping to get convictions was impossible since we ourselves are not law enforcement. Well, it's December 2009 as of this update and we have hit our 500th conviction.

Statistically, we've averaged a conviction every four days for the last five years and six months since our very first conviction. That is an enormous pace to maintain and it's taken a lot of work over the years, but it has all been worth it. Each predator out of the darkness and onto RSO registries and this website is another predator families and communities know about. Each one kept locked away is one that has no chance to re-offend during that time.

A myriad of volunteers has helped us get to this milestone. They range from phone verifiers who call up predators while sounding underage, further establishing recorded intent... to content creators who spend every month pumping out creative ideas to add to our underage profiles, making sure that we're always "current" with a changing internet. Our researchers have tracked down individuals that for whatever reason didn't show, but who we knew were potentially molesting someone... they've performed so well that even NBC decided to just go with what we had in-house than have their own identity research team put in place for "To Catch a Predator" episodes. Of course, our people who conduct the chats, chat-log contributors, who logged the bland and boring hours talking to these cretins... we've had many contribute to this milestone and it's been a ton of work for them as well.

Over the last five years, inane criticisms and blatant stupidity hurled at us have evolved and changed over time, new volunteers have arrived and left, cycling through various stages of burn-out, our foundation itself went from being slapped together with a pro-active idea to a federally registered non-profit... but one constant that has not changed is that we have tactics and training that gets results across the entire country.

In the future, we will leave this milestone behind as we have left all milestones, we will continue to work on quality cases and we will continue to log convictions in our archives. Thanks to everyone who has volunteered and helped us achieve this goal... and thanks yet to those who will help us hit further statistical milestones in the future!

Note regarding site impersonators

Putting up a quick note that if you have come to this website because someone has contacted you randomly claiming to work for our organization, then you are dealing with a scam artist who has recently gone around attempting to extort money out of individuals online, claiming that the person will be put up on our website if monies are not paid to them.

If anyone contacts you with such a scenario, they are breaking the law and you should immediately contact police regarding the extortion attempt. Our organization works with police to get sexual predators arrested, we do not appreciate attempts by scam artists to use our name in order to make a quick buck. Pay them nothing and call the police to report any attempt at extortion.

Speaking from experience in getting internet predators arrested... no matter the medium involved in the online criminal attempt, servers such as Yahoo, Microsoft, Google will work with police to track people who break the law down for arrest and prosecution.

Another Michigan sting in the books, 9 arrested

We went back to Michigan in order to work with Attorney General Mike Cox and his internet child protection unit. We were all joined this by by the Livingston County Sheriff's Department for a three day sting in August 2009. While plenty of men wanted to talk to us, only a few truly obsessive predators actually stepped out to go to a meeting point where they thought they would meet an underage child.

All together, nine were arrested over the sting operation. This is our third sting operations in Michigan with the Attorney General's office, and as always, they were a dream to work with. Previous stings had generated arrests of 27 and 21. One of the perks of working in Michigan, however, is the aggressive action they take after the sting, picking up individuals who expose themselves on webcam and who send pornography to what they think are underage children. Previous stings have seen dozens arrested after the fact, and we hope this sting will be no different!

Thanks to Michigan for being such welcoming hosts once again, and to Investigative Mechanics who filmed the sting operation.

Long-time harasser finally arrested by FBI

June 2009 marks the announcement of a arrest of a different flavor. Back in 2006, we wrote an article called "Ten things you likely don't know about Perverted-Justice.com." In the article, we wrote about how we may be the most harassed organization online. A snippet from the article...

"Since then, websites have sprung up to libel and harass us. Haters of what we do have never ceased to stoop to new lows to try to intimidate our volunteers. One such individual tried to pose as a member in chat-rooms in order to attempt to get that person assaulted by strangers. Another member received death threats and warnings that they will be beaten with a baseball bat."

A man who did much of the above, Bruce Raisley, was arrested by the FBI. Raisley had signed up for our forums in 2004 and made negative attacking posts about what we do. We removed him from our community. What followed was a campaign of harassment, threats and online attacks that have still not even ceased with his arrest today. Raisley would viciously attack our volunteers verbally and tried to pose as one of our staff in a chat room in order to get that person attacked. Luckily, these idiotic tactics failed and no harm came to our volunteers... but the intent was the same regardless.

When Raisley's escapades were covered in the press, he then moved to set up a bot-net in order to conduct distributed denial of service attacks against our organization and several media outlets. Traffic ranged from 216 gigabytes a day and sometimes went up as far as over 1 terabyte in generated traffic over a 24-hour period, depending on the size of the bot-net infections. At any time there may be between 100-200 requests to surges of over 10,000 different requesters at a given time. We block usually on average 500-2,000 ip addresses making requests from the bot-net daily. To sum it up for those who read the above and see mostly gibberish, the scale of the attacks is quite massive.

While we have mitigated most of these online electronic attacks with good coding, the cost and time spent defending the website against such harassment is always annoying. We've had to cut off access to most European countries because of the number of computers he was able to infect with his attacks. His arrest, unfortunately, has not put his bot-net out of commission. Truly, we may deal with these electronic attacks forever.

Today Raisley faces up to ten years in jail for his actions. We're quite pleased that he has been arrested, though dismayed that it took so long. We had supplied law enforcement with details regarding Raisley's online crimes years ago, but it wasn't until he attacked large media entities that anyone could get his case taken seriously. His case is a great example to internet trolls, griefers and other psychotics that DDOS attacks are quite illegal and carry a heavy cost once you're caught.

Hopefully the arrest of Raisley and people like him will signify that law enforcement takes internet harassment and electronic attacks more serious today than was the case just a few years ago.

Working hard and consistently

We're working hard and consistently, just under the radar. While we're best known for the series of specials we did with Dateline NBC called "To Catch a Predator", we existed for years prior to that series and have worked consistently before, during and after filming of specific investigations.

Currently we have volunteers doing decoy work across the United States and a cadre of volunteers working to support them both via this project and other projects our foundation has put together. Quiet on our main page means nothing, the real work and updates happen on our volunteer forums.

As always, we're a volunteer organization so if you have some time on your hands and want to help out... dive in feet first. Check out our non-profit foundation portal page at PJFI.org for more information on how to get started, as well as more information regarding our various projects online.

PJFI.org launched, non-profit status announced!

To long-time readers, it may have seemed to taken forever, but we've completed the non-profit process and now are an official 501(c)3 non-profit foundation! We've been working on this for quite some time and are very pleased to be able to announce it.

With this announcement, we also are pleased to present the umbrella portal for all our various projects, PJFI.org. This website is a nice simple overview of everything we do, from Perverted Justice to Wikisposure to HowtoDealwithCreepyPeople and more. It will be an easy way for anyone to keep up on the various work done by our various endeavors.

As a non-profit, we have now opened our foundation up to taking tax-deductible donations. If you're one of the many people who have contacted us about that in the past, the information is up on the PJFI.org donations page. In the coming week or so, we'll have an online donation option configured and available as well.

We're very pleased to be a non-profit foundation, thanks to everyone who has helped us achieve this important designation.

Must-read article in LE Technology Magazine

For anyone following what we do, there's a must-read article in Law Enforcement Technology Magazine over at Officer.com. They go in-depth into what we do, talk to the law enforcement that has knowledge of working with us and covers all the issues surrounding what we do, from the much-ballyhooed "entrapment" claims that the general public doesn't understand much about to what we bring to the table for law enforcement stings in general.

If you want to hear about what we do from law enforcement that has witnessed first-hand what we do, check out Internet Watchdogs - Officer.com. If you've ever had questions or even, gasp, uneasy qualms about what we do... well, it's the article for you. This is pretty much the only article and reporter who has ever actually talked to police regarding the work we do.

We've been saying it for a long time and proving it even longer, our operations are professional, effective and one of a kind. Thanks to those in law enforcement for stepping forward to tell the world what it should already know: We build quality cases that stand up in court, we're professional and we work. It is simply too bad more reporters don't search out the police we have worked with to find this out for themselves.

Snapshots of who we are and our work

Fort Myers, FL press conference sting announcement

Ocean County, NJ press conference announcement

i-Jam with Kentucky Attorney General

Long Beach sting operation wrap-up

Click to read the full-size letter from Senator Hatch

Petaluma sting operation wrap-up

Receiving award from Laguna Beach Police Department

The end-result of our work as seen in Ohio