Who's A Rat - Largest Online Database of Informants and Agents

[voivod]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Police and prosecutors are worried that a website claiming to identify more than 4,000 informants and undercover agents will cripple investigations and hang targets on witnesses.

The website, WhosaRat.com, first caught the attention of authorities after a Massachusetts man put it online and named a few dozen people as turncoats in 2004. Since then, it has grown into a clearinghouse for mug shots, court papers and rumors.

Federal prosecutors say the site was set up to encourage violence, and federal judges around the country were recently warned that witnesses in their courtrooms may be profiled online.

"My concern is making sure cooperators are adequately protected from retaliation," said Chief Judge Thomas Hogan, who alerted other judges in Washington's federal courthouse. He said he learned about the site from a federal judge in Maine.

The website is the latest unabashedly public effort to identify witnesses or discourage helping police. "Stop Snitching" T-shirts have been sold in cities around the country.

In 2004, NBA star Carmelo Anthony appeared in an underground Baltimore DVD that warned people they could be killed for cooperating with police. Anthony has said he was not aware of the DVD's message.

Such threats hinder criminal investigations, said Ronald Teachman, police chief in New Bedford, Mass., where murder cases have been stymied by witness silence and "Stop Snitching" T-shirts were recently for sale.

"Every shooting we have to treat like homicide. The victim's alive but he's not cooperative," Teachman said. "These kids have the idea that the worst offense they can commit is to cooperate with the police."

Sean Bucci, a former Boston-area disc jockey, set up WhosaRat.com after federal prosecutors charged him with selling marijuana in bulk from his house. Bucci is under house arrest awaiting trial and could not be reached, but a WhosaRat spokesman identifying himself as Anthony Capone said the site is a resource for criminal defendants and does not condone violence.

"If people got hurt or killed, it's kind of on them. They knew the dangers of becoming an informant," Capone said. "We'd feel bad, don't get me wrong, but things happen to people. If they decide to become an informant, with or without the website, that's a possibility."

The site offers biographical information about people whom users identify as witnesses or undercover agents. Users can post court documents, comments and pictures.

Some of those listed are well known, such as former Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland, who served 10 months in prison before testifying in a public corruption case. But many never made headlines and were identified as having helped investigators in drug cases.

For two years, anyone with an Internet connection could search the site. On Thursday, a day after it was discussed at a courthouse conference in Washington, the site became a subscription-only service. The site has also disabled the ability to post photos of undercover agents, Capone said, because administrators of the website do not want officers to be hurt.

Authorities disagree. In documents filed in Bucci's court case last month, federal prosecutors said they have information that Bucci set up the website to help intimidate and harm witnesses.

"Such information not only compromises pending or future government investigations, but places informants and undercover agents in potentially grave danger," Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter K. Levitt wrote.

While prosecutors haven't pointed to a case where a witness or officer was harmed because of the website, it has been used to shatter an undercover agent's anonymity. After Hawaiian doctor Kachun Yeung was charged with distributing narcotic painkillers this spring, a surveillance picture of an undercover Drug Enforcement Agent was posted on the site.

Federal prosecutors said they traced the posting to the University of Hawaii newspaper's photo department, where the doctor's son was a photo editor. The posting identified the names of three agents and described one as "a known liar and a dirty agent. He is an absolute disgrace to the American justice system."

Prosecutors in Boston have discussed whether WhosaRat is protected as free speech but have not moved to shut it down. In 2004, an Alabama federal judge ruled that a defendant had the right to run a website that included witness information in the form of "wanted" posters.

Earlier this month, federal judges from Minnesota and Utah urged their colleagues to be careful about how much information about witnesses is released in public files, noting that they could end up on WhosaRat.

Steve Bunnell, chief of the criminal division at the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, said the rules of evidence already require authorities to identity witnesses to the people most likely to harm them: the defendants. Most of the documents labeled "top secret" on the site are really public court records or information copied from other websites, he said.

His concern is that the site disparages the reputation of people who come forward to help solve crimes.

"We don't make those high-level gang and drug organization cases without somebody on the inside telling us what's going on," Bunnell said.

Web site exposes stoolies and undercover agents. Legal? Ethical?

Think somebody's a rat? That a partner in crime may be grabbing a get-out of-jail free card for diming you out to UncleSam? Well, life in the underworld just got a little bit easier for paranoid criminals everywhere.

A new Web site, www.whosarat.com., is taking the guesswork out of figuring out who the family's Ralph Natale or Phil Leonetti might be before it's too late. Rather than waiting for a shifty look, all a crook has to do now to investigate his fellow criminals — or dem damn gumshoes — is figure out how to use a Web browser. From there, they can click on the site's "informants" or "government agents" sections to see who may be investigating him, her or youse. Suffice it to say, the Web site has the local crime world in a tizzy.

"It's intimidation," complains a local organized-crime investigator. "If some low-life drug dealer or hot-head gangster finds me on that Internet site, sees my photo, it endangers my life. It makes me and my family unsafe. Makes it damn hard for me to do my job."

Understandably, the criminals feel quite differently.

"It's about time there was something like this for us to use," one longtime Philly mob associate tells City Paper. "Now we can figure who's ratting us out to the FBI. This Internet thing is crazy, ain't it? It evens out our odds!"

This Internet thing, which went online last week, is the creation of Sean Bucci, a 31-year-old wedding reception/nightclub disc jockey from suburban Boston who was busted last summer on the word of a longtime heroin addict turned paid informant. He says the addict was a Drug Enforcement Administration informant who allegedly admitted to lying to agents in another narcotics investigation. This same snitch once reportedly described his technique as "sitting in a bar, listening to other people talk about drugs" and then feeding second-hand information to eager narcotics agents.

Bucci went to high school with the snitch but lost touch until a chance encounter at a nightclub six years ago. According to Bucci, the informant bragged to the feds that he had sold grass to Bucci. Bucci had no arrest record; the snitch grabbed $7,000 for the info.

Based on the snitch's word, DEA agents set up a pole camera outside Bucci's house for nine months. They found nothing, but a source close to the investigation says that when they finally arrested Bucci, the DEA seized more than 100 kilos of marijuana from Bucci's house. Bucci did not make bail for 11 months and spent the time "listening to the horror stories of out-of-control informants making stuff up for money and putting people in jail who had no business being there," he says.

While reading the DEA debriefing reports in his case, Bucci says he discovered that the snitch offered up the name of a Bucci drug customer to DEA agents only to admit, a month later, that the very same customer really was a customer of the snitch and had nothing to do with Bucci. But even after the snitch admitted he lied, Bucci says, the DEA continued its investigation.

Bucci was furious to discover that law enforcement investigators routinely "recruit junkies and other criminals as informants. These people have long criminal records, but the police just make their charges go away."

Bucci tells City Paper he established the site to "snitch on the snitches." And when it comes to legality, he says he's in the clear because a federal judge in Alabama allowed a drug defendant to post online "wanted" posters seeking information about witnesses.

Whosarat.com is "a Web site for attorneys and defendants with few resources to post and share information on snitches and investigators," he adds. "It's about free speech and fair trials. It doesn't matter how bad these people are, the government takes them seriously."

The site also carries snitch-related news, including the case of a drug dealer turned paid informant who allegedly murdered five people while U.S. Customs agents listened over a telephone.

In its first week of existence, whosarat.com culled information about more than 50 snitches and law-enforcement agents, some of whom get "rat of the week" billing. As for assertions that he's endangering investigators, Bucci says, "It's not about intimidation or putting people in harm's way. It's about exposing law enforcement's dirty little secret. It's about the police giving criminals a badge and telling them, "Go around, find something on somebody.'"

[Brett]

Who the fuck would support that site, run by a boastful felon? How nice.

[willy4pres]

Im sure some cops and district attorneys will fix his wagon before to long.

Also, how accurate is this database? He must get his information from regular street thugs, it would be a great way to take out their competition (get them on the list by saying their police informants).

It's all bullshit anyway, EVERYONE knows where the majority of crime takes place, why do we need so many informants. If you hang out in a crack house and your friends are all gang bangers and drug dealers your just as guilty as they are. Throw all their ass's in jail. It is a crime to be aware of a criminal offense and not report it.

[Axxman300]

Uh, there are a bunch of people alive at Fort Dix and a bunch of New York subway riders who are alive today because of informants.

Almost all of the major busts in this country come from under-cover agents and turncoat criminal insiders.

The Liberal in me says that this crap stems from the inflated prison population we've generated since 1980. This idea that you don't inform is something that only criminals believe. The problem is that this has become so infused in our popular culture that voivod used the term "Rat" in the thread title and I don't think voivod is pro-crime. That's because there are so many ex-cons in the Hip-Hop world, and in the White Supremicy world that their prison mentality has contaminated our society.

The hard-liner in me says that the police should block this guy's number, as should 911. That way, when someone busts into his house to beat him to death with a claw hammer he won't have to trouble the police by "Ratting Out" the guy who's trying to kill him.

Everybody bitches about their fucking civil rights being violated and erroded, but nobody says shit when other Americans live up to their OBLIGATIONS as citizens to report criminal activity. Worse, they make fun or threaten them.
Honestly, this country has it's head up it's ass when a guy can have a website like this.

He needs to die in a fire.

[willy4pres]

Uh, there are a bunch of people alive at Fort Dix and a bunch of New York subway riders who are alive today because of informants.

Almost all of the major busts in this country come from under-cover agents and turncoat criminal insiders.

The Liberal in me says that this crap stems from the inflated prison population we've generated since 1980. This idea that you don't inform is something that only criminals believe. The problem is that this has become so infused in our popular culture that voivod used the term "Rat" in the thread title and I don't think voivod is pro-crime. That's because there are so many ex-cons in the Hip-Hop world, and in the White Supremicy world that their prison mentality has contaminated our society.

The hard-liner in me says that the police should block this guy's number, as should 911. That way, when someone busts into his house to beat him to death with a claw hammer he won't have to trouble the police by "Ratting Out" the guy who's trying to kill him.

Everybody bitches about their fucking civil rights being violated and erroded, but nobody says shit when other Americans live up to their OBLIGATIONS as citizens to report criminal activity. Worse, they make fun or threaten them.
Honestly, this country has it's head up it's ass when a guy can have a website like this.

He needs to die in a fire.

I DIDN'T SAY ALL FUCKING INFORMANTS!!!

Listen people, when you read something there is a certain amount that is implied, it's a message board were not writing novels. In case you haven't noticed most of us have much in common, our views differ slightly but in reality when compared to the rest of the country were all pretty much in line with each other. Many of you are just sitting around waiting to find portions of posts you can disagree with (not that you actually disagree) so that you can go off on a rant.

[billy007]

I don't know what's scarier - terrorism, or this subculture that exists that seemed to used to only happen in the mob underworld or certain ethnic communities but now seems to be more widespread that hammers home that it's wrong to assist the police in an investigation.

[janthraxx]

Think COINTELPRO.