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Six Men Caught in Sting for Soliciting Sex

Unnamed Sterling Hotel Site of Vice Operation by Sheriff's Office
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By
Jason Jacks
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
 
Six men were arrested at a Sterling hotel last week after soliciting sex from an undercover member of the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office.
 

Members of the Sheriff’s Office Vice/Narcotics Unit made the arrests on Feb. 17 during a sting operation, where the men negotiated with money to have sex with the undercover officer.

Sheriff’s Office spokesman Kraig Troxell would not reveal which hotel the operation occurred at so as not to disrupt future operations, but said prostitution at hotels “has been in an issue in the Dulles and Sterling areas,” with advertisements appearing on Web sites like Craigslist seeking people willing to meet at area hotels for sex.

He said the department has worked with several hotels in the county in the past to rout out prostitution. The department has gone as far, he said, to ask hotels to bar certain people from entering the property.

“This is not just about prostitution. This could also lead to narcotics or violence,” he said.

In the sting operation, investigators placed personal advertisements on Web sites known for prostitution listings. Several men responded by contacting the undercover investigator. They then traveled to the hotel where they were arrested after attempting to solicit sex.

Those charged with solicitation were Stanley Vincent Johnson III, 39, of Waterford; Sandesh Mohan, 43, of Ashburn; Thomas Darius Sonntag, 34, of Charles Town, W.Va.; Brent Dittman, 25, of Alexandria; Jessie Brian Ontiveros, 21, of Alexandria; and Matthew Peter O’Donnell, 38, of Sterling.

In 2008, the Sheriff’s Office worked on eight prostitution cases compared to 19 in 2009. In addition in 2009, authorities barred 25 individuals from area hotels after they were suspected of being involved in prostitution.

 
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Comments

M.A.S.T. Cyber Team (not verified)

It's for stories like this that we've created Cyber Flag-Day 2010; Taking Back The Net.
On 3/10/10, we need help flagging thousands of Craigslist prostitution ads. For details, visit www.MakeAmericaSaferToday.org

Ed Myers (not verified)

I have a serious problem with government breaking the law claiming to do so in order to catch someone else breaking the law. Advertising in a way that encourages people to come to a hotel thinking that sex is easily obtained with a cash gift is illegal. To justify it as an enforcement action confuses the public into believing that prostition is acceptable as long as the police are getting their cut.

I think vice between consenting adults where no one considers themselves a vctim should be legal. If a hotel doesn't want to be party to unsavory activity then police should help them out using trespass laws. Otherwise everyone should butt out.

An anology might help. When we see police cars speeding without emergency signals we conclude that we are going too slow and we speed up to match the officer's speed. Later, after traffic becomes used to the higher speed the officers set up a speed trap (a sting) and we feel entrapped. The officer explains that they aren't subject to the speed limit laws and thus people should not have been emulating their driving patterns. How is exceeding the speed limit a safety enforcement issue if police routinely exceed the speed limit?

When government engages in vices the public gets a mixed message. The public is better educated when government does not engage in sting operations and does not exempt itself from obeying the laws it is intrusted to enforce.

(I have the same problem with police setting up under-age minors to buy alcohol and when they succeed arresting the cashier.)

Anonymous (not verified)

Hey, if you break the law, you break the law, and you should expect to be arrested if you're involved in prostitution.

But the Sheriff's Office spokesman should read the Constitution of the United States and maybe "1984" as well. He said "“This is not just about prostitution. This could also lead to narcotics or violence."

Justifying an arrest because it might have stopped some as-yet-to-be-committed crime in the future is downright Orwellian. It's also unAmerican as hell.

Anonymous (not verified)

Wow, Ed Myers never tires of making a fool of himself, does he? And he always comes back to the same "analogy," i.e.: he doesn't like that police on emergency calls are allowed to drive faster than he is.

Time to grow up, Ed. Nobody but you looks at this as an "educational" experience. This was nabbing men for buying sex. It's been a crime in virtually every society on earth for 5000 years.

And "the government" wasn't having sex, as you imply. They were catching guys offering women money for sex. It's different.

Let's hear how you "educated" us by trespassing on school grounds to vandalize those school buses, Ed. Maybe you should stop pontificating and start following some of your own advice.

Ed Myers (not verified)

I think anonymous might have me confused with someone else but it's easy for the police to talk trash since they have immunity and they can claim to always be on an emergency call even if it is to the donut shop. Nevetheless, contributing to the delinquency of minors by helping under age police cadets buy beer is still a crime if anyone else were to do it so why should we let the police get away with it?

It is government advertising sex for money (not government actually having sex) that is the crime the police were engaged in. None of the 6 people arrested had sex either but they were still charged with a crime. If it is a crime to give gifts to someone to grease the romantic skids into a sexual liason then where were all the arrests on Valentine's Day when hotels were pushing this big time?

Without a [potential] victim there is no real crime. The only victims I see are the men the policewoman enticed into a trap by lying to them about how quickly they planned to engage in sexual acts if only they had a sugardaddy that would treat them with cash gifts. I guess police lying to civilians and misrepresenting the conditions of an oral contract is not the crime of fraud like it is for the rest of us.

Anonymous (not verified)

Ed. Try educating yourself before mouthing off. You display such incredible ignorance.

First..."contributing to the delinquency of minors by helping under age police cadets buy beer is still a crime if anyone else were to do it so why should we let the police get away with it?" Because they are catching criminals, Ed. Because having members of the police force or volunteers participate in a sting that involves them doing nothing more than attempting to buy alcohol is only considered "contributing to the delinquency of minors" by people with a very limited mental capacity.

Second..."It is government advertising sex for money (not government actually having sex) that is the crime the police were engaged in..." No, Ed. If "the government" did that, it would be entrapment and would never result in charges. When police do this kind of thing, they advertise sexual availability. If those attracted to it offer money in exchange for sex, that's when it becomes a crime.

Third..."I guess police lying to civilians and misrepresenting the conditions of an oral contract is not the crime of fraud like it is for the rest of us." See above, and...really? You think "misrepresenting the conditions of an oral contract" is the problem here?

And I'm not confusing you with somebody else, Ed. Your silliness is pretty well know. Sometimes I think you're incredibly stupid, Ed, and other times I think you must be putting on an act, because nobody could really be as stupid as you act.

Anonymous (not verified)

He has the mind of a four-year-old. Maybe he really thinks that when men answer an ad on a website to meet a stranger in a hotel room and then offer her cash for sex and that is giving "gifts to someone to grease the romantic skids."

But that's the kind of thing johns always tell themselves.

Me thinks Mr. Myers doth protest too much.

Anonymous (not verified)

Mr. Myer, do you understand the definition of "soliciting"? You don't appear to. You are confusing human relationships with commerce.

Anonymous (not verified)

A quick look at craigslilst.com or backpage.com is all you need to learn this is a really big problem in every Northern Virginia county. I'm sure the hotels hate being host to the trade and if I was a hotel patron, I'd hate it, too. I am someone who is cautious about government/police having too much power and involvement in our daily life, but I am all *for* this kind of enforcement by our local police. I encourage enforcement in "both directions" - making an impact on the demand/desire for someone to engage a prostitute and also reducing the supply, by removing real prostitutes from hotels. If this trade continued without any effort to slow it down, what do we say when an "arrangement" goes bad and someone gets hurt?

Ed Myers (not verified)

The police make a fine distinction between relationships and commerce through a cultural lense that allows them to abuse the poor, uneducated, and powerless. Their distinction between a police woman falsely advertising "sexual availability" and a true advertisement from a prostitute is legalistic and contrived.

If you think sexual liasons are commerce then we should regulate it and not push it underground by criminalizing it. If it is a form of relationship (perhaps not in the traditional form I'd approve of) it should not be the concern of the police.

Since the "I'm buying beer for my parents" line doesn't make it legal to buy alcohol under age it should also not work for under age police cadets to explain that they are buying beer for their CO.

It is a police culture that enforcement ends justify the means that gets us on the slippery slope to corruption. I don't think it is morally right to use sting operations for law enforcement. Figure out another way to do it instead of attacking the messenger.

Anonymous (not verified)

Not sure who Mr. Myers is, but he doesn't seem to have any sense or logic at all. Trying to decipher his posts is a struggle.

Ed Myers (not verified)

Let's see...wanting government to stay out of one's business is a conservative ideal. Wanting government to stay out of one's sex life is a liberal ideal. Since I don't want government in either that makes me a libertarian and those that want the government to do both are statist. Giving a statist a gun and badge is dangerous to our community's health when they have opinons like those posted above.

Eleanor Roosevelt said: "Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people." I encourage those who assume they know a particular poster and whose only contribution here is crude opinions might want to ponder Eleanor's wisdom.

The discussion is about what methods of law enforcement are acceptable to our community. I'm presenting the opinion that sting operations are not valid police tactics because it corrupts the public's perception of what is legal and what isn't. Sex crimes are not so henous that the need to enforce laws justifies a sleasy means of doing it. The same goes for enforcing the prohibition against selling alcohol to the underage by store clerks.

Your opinions may differ and you have space below to express them.

Anonymous (not verified)

A nice description of Myers, from the Washington Post:

"In 2003, he affixed stickers with pictures of a burning U.S. flag on his children's school bus while it sat idle in a parking lot to protest flag stickers the county put on the bus not long after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. For that stunt, he was arrested and charged with trespassing and tampering with the bus. He spent a day defending himself in court, losing the case but persuading a jury to fine him only $1 for each of the six charges.

He has tried to buy an ad in the school yearbook to explain his beliefs. It was rejected. He stuffed brochures into teachers' mailboxes. He sued the sheriff's office because its uniforms didn't technically conform to state law."

Anonymous (not verified)

That's funny. Mr. Myers complains that the police definition of prostitution is too "legalistic."

Could that maybe be because it's a law?

Anonymous (not verified)

This isn't Nevada. Arrest everybody. The John's. The Girls. The Pimps. Break any link in the chain and
the rest will come crumbling apart.

Anonymous (not verified)

Myers has extreme views, but this is America and those views are protected. You can disagree and that's what this forum is for.

The one thing not mentioned is the printing of the names of the people above. We do not know all the circumstances of the arrests and the constitution states innocent before proven guilty.

With such accusations these people can never get their reputations back if we find out later that this "sting" had some entrapment qualities to it. I want to give the police the benefit of the doubt, but this publication of the accused names sucks if the sheriff was later found to be breaking some rules for publicity sake.

Raymond Decker (not verified)

If you disagree with the laws, vote your mind. In the meantime, today IS Cyber Flag Day in which you can help us fight the problem instead of just posting your view. Please help us flag CRaigslist prostitution ads today. For details please visit MakeAmericaSaferToday.org or Google Cyber Flag Day. . Thanks

Anonymous (not verified)

Posting an ad offering to have sex for money was the first crime, that is implicit in the description of the events. It is deplorable that this is the level of depravity exhibited by our government agencies.
Pandering is a crime. These guys showed up because the government was pandering.

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