Feds Arrest Hollywood Man For Online Porn Mousetrapping
NEW YORK -- Federal agents Wednesday arrested a Hollywood, Fla., man who authorities say runs Web sites that use misspelled addresses to direct children looking for Disneyland or the Teletubbies to graphic sex instead.
Officials said it was the first prosecution in the nation under a provision of the new Amber Alert legislation that makes it a crime to use a misleading Web address to entice children to pornography.
John Zuccarini, 53, was arrested just after dawn at a Hollywood motel, where authorities believe he had been living for months, Manhattan U.S. Attorney James Comey said.
Zuccarini registered thousands of Internet domain names and was earning up to $1 million per year off them _ much of it from sex sites that paid him when he sent Web users their way, Comey said.
The trick: Officials say Zuccarini used addresses that switched or omitted letters to lure children to his sites. Thus, a Web user who transposed letters or misspelled a site address might end up in a porn site instead.
Zuccarini used the technique to trap Web surfers trying to log on to sites for pop star Britney Spears, Disneyland and Teletubbies children's characters among others, according to a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan.
Once there, Web users often encountered a maze of pop-up advertising called ``mousetrapping,'' which sends up even more ads when surfers click the ``Back'' button on browsers or try to close the windows altogether.
Comey referred to the scheme as a ``cybermaze.'' He called it ``beyond offensive'' to prey on children _ many of them looking for sites acceptable to their parents _ who make a simple spelling mistake on a browser.
``Few of us could imagine there was someone out there in cyberspace, essentially reaching out by hand to take children to the seediest corners of the Internet,'' he told reporters.
Zuccarini was due at a bail hearing in Fort Lauderdale where prosecutors were likely to ask a federal judge to order him held and later sent to New York for prosecution.
There was no immediate information on an attorney for Zuccarini, who authorities said is originally from Philadelphia. Past attorneys have said they lost track of his whereabouts.
Last year Zuccarini was ordered to stop the scheme after the Federal Trade Commission sued him for registering misspelled variations of sites for the Backstreet Boys, Victoria's Secret and The Wall Street Journal.
And companies targeted by his Web sites have filed dozens of complaints with regulators and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the oversight body that doles out Internet addresses.
The FTC said Zuccarini has lost 53 state and federal lawsuits and has had about 200 Web addresses taken from him and transferred to copyright holders.
Federal agents were investigating Zuccarini as early as 1999, when they received a complaint from a computer user who was looking for Yahoo!'s travel site but instead found porn.
While authorities believe other people may be conducting the same type of scheme, they said they believe Zuccarini likely registered among the largest number of sites.
``I am not aware of others who have done it on the scale of Zuccarini,'' said Marc M. Groman, an attorney in the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection.
Still, federal authorities conceded they were mostly helpless to prosecute Zuccarini until Congress passed the Amber Alert legislation in April.
A section of the law called Truth in Domain Names makes it a crime to use a misleading domain name ``with the intent to deceive a minor into viewing material that is harmful to minors.'' It calls for a prison sentence of up to four years.
Zuccarini's misleading sites sometimes sent up a warning screen urging minors to exit but offering an ``Enter Here'' button, authorities said. The button led to sites depicting graphic sex.
``We cannot imagine a better way for this law to be used for the first time,'' Comey said.
NEW YORK -- Federal agents Wednesday arrested a Hollywood, Fla., man who authorities say runs Web sites that use misspelled addresses to direct children looking for Disneyland or the Teletubbies to graphic sex instead.
Officials said it was the first prosecution in the nation under a provision of the new Amber Alert legislation that makes it a crime to use a misleading Web address to entice children to pornography.
John Zuccarini, 53, was arrested just after dawn at a Hollywood motel, where authorities believe he had been living for months, Manhattan U.S. Attorney James Comey said.
Zuccarini registered thousands of Internet domain names and was earning up to $1 million per year off them _ much of it from sex sites that paid him when he sent Web users their way, Comey said.
The trick: Officials say Zuccarini used addresses that switched or omitted letters to lure children to his sites. Thus, a Web user who transposed letters or misspelled a site address might end up in a porn site instead.
Zuccarini used the technique to trap Web surfers trying to log on to sites for pop star Britney Spears, Disneyland and Teletubbies children's characters among others, according to a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan.
Once there, Web users often encountered a maze of pop-up advertising called ``mousetrapping,'' which sends up even more ads when surfers click the ``Back'' button on browsers or try to close the windows altogether.
Comey referred to the scheme as a ``cybermaze.'' He called it ``beyond offensive'' to prey on children _ many of them looking for sites acceptable to their parents _ who make a simple spelling mistake on a browser.
``Few of us could imagine there was someone out there in cyberspace, essentially reaching out by hand to take children to the seediest corners of the Internet,'' he told reporters.
Zuccarini was due at a bail hearing in Fort Lauderdale where prosecutors were likely to ask a federal judge to order him held and later sent to New York for prosecution.
There was no immediate information on an attorney for Zuccarini, who authorities said is originally from Philadelphia. Past attorneys have said they lost track of his whereabouts.
Last year Zuccarini was ordered to stop the scheme after the Federal Trade Commission sued him for registering misspelled variations of sites for the Backstreet Boys, Victoria's Secret and The Wall Street Journal.
And companies targeted by his Web sites have filed dozens of complaints with regulators and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the oversight body that doles out Internet addresses.
The FTC said Zuccarini has lost 53 state and federal lawsuits and has had about 200 Web addresses taken from him and transferred to copyright holders.
Federal agents were investigating Zuccarini as early as 1999, when they received a complaint from a computer user who was looking for Yahoo!'s travel site but instead found porn.
While authorities believe other people may be conducting the same type of scheme, they said they believe Zuccarini likely registered among the largest number of sites.
``I am not aware of others who have done it on the scale of Zuccarini,'' said Marc M. Groman, an attorney in the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection.
Still, federal authorities conceded they were mostly helpless to prosecute Zuccarini until Congress passed the Amber Alert legislation in April.
A section of the law called Truth in Domain Names makes it a crime to use a misleading domain name ``with the intent to deceive a minor into viewing material that is harmful to minors.'' It calls for a prison sentence of up to four years.
Zuccarini's misleading sites sometimes sent up a warning screen urging minors to exit but offering an ``Enter Here'' button, authorities said. The button led to sites depicting graphic sex.
``We cannot imagine a better way for this law to be used for the first time,'' Comey said.
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