Undercover Agent

A Clementon, N.J., man was arrested yesterday by federal authorities for allegedly agreeing to pay $10,000 to an arsonist to have his house set on fire. John B. Early, who allegedly wanted to collect on his insurance policy, didn't know it, but the man he met near the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia last month was an undercover FBI agent posing as a torch-for-hire. Early, 59, who once operated a ski area in South Jersey known as Ski Mountain, allegedly wanted the fire set Jan. 2, when he would be vacationing in Florida.

A former Delran Township police officer, arrested after he sold cocaine to an undercover agent in 1984, was sentenced to 18 years in prison by a Burlington County Superior Court judge yesterday. James E. Stach, a 17-year veteran of the township force and a resident of Hunters Glen Apartments, Delran, received the sentence on the charge of distributing more than 1 ounce of cocaine. Testing conducted by the county forensic laboratory on the 10 ounces of cocaine sold by Stach showed the drug to be 88.9 percent pure.

Alan "Rudy" Cohen, the snitch who jumped out of his car and avoided a deadly shootout between an FBI agent and a drug dealer last spring, couldn't dodge a jail sentence yesterday. Cohen, looking older than his 54 years, stood before U.S. District Judge John Padova and found out he would spend the next 67 months in federal prison. Cohen's attorney had asked for a 24-month term, and federal prosecutors had recommended 127 months. Cohen set up a March 22 meeting between veteran FBI undercover agent Charles Reed and 24-year-old drug dealer Jonathan Cramer.

A Connecticut man has been arrested, prosecutors say, for trying to arrange a meeting with someone he believed was a 13-year-old girl he met on the Internet. The girl turned out to be an investigator with the Camden County Prosecutor's Office. Francis P. Fortin, 49, of East Hartford, was arrested Saturday morning and charged with criminal attempted sexual assault and attempted endangerment of a child. He was held at the Camden County jail after failing to post $200,000 bail. "In today's world of high-speed connections, parents need to reestablish their connection with their children," Camden County Prosecutor Lee A. Solomon said in a statement.

Federal authorities say a 44-year-old man drove more than 160 miles from his Levittown home to a Maryland shopping mall for what he expected to be a sexual encounter with a 13-year-old girl he had met over the Internet. But when Anthony H. Lezzo Jr. arrived for an arranged meeting at the Montgomery Mall in Bethesda on Aug. 6, only FBI agents were there to greet him, said Special Agent Peter Gulotta, a spokesman for the FBI's Baltimore office. Lezzo was arrested and charged with one count of interstate travel for the purpose of engaging in sex with a child.

Danny Malatesta Jr. didn't look like your ordinary mob thug in federal court yesterday. Dressed in a black sports jacket, tan pants and black-and-tan- striped tie and wearing black wire-rimmed glasses, the tall, black-haired 29-year-old looked more "like he stepped out of a Brooks Brothers catalog," according to a mob watcher. But looks can be deceiving. When the preppie extortionist - a few credits shy of a Drexel University bachelor's degree - opened his mouth, he sounded like an understudy for Joe Pesci in "Goodfellas.

On June 21, 2004, an undercover FBI agent wearing a wire entered the Family Medical Center in the Hunting Park section of Philadelphia and asked to see the doctor. The agent had little fear that the doctor might discover the hidden microphone during a physical exam. The Family Medical Center was a suspected "pill mill," where licensed doctors sold prescriptions under the table to almost anybody with cash. And indeed, according to an FBI affidavit, Dr. Aziz Chaudhry never examined the undercover agent or asked him about his medical history.

A convicted Philadelphia Mafia soldier serving time at a federal prison in Kansas was one of three prisoners who allegedly asked an inmate to find them a source of cocaine, prosecutors say. The inmate gave the local mobster, Salvatore "Wayne" Grande, and his two pals a phone number in Oklahoma City, and let them take it from there, never mentioning that he was an informant and that the phone number belonged to an undercover FBI agent. Grande's brother-in-law, Salvatore Dominic Piccolo, 40, an unemployed South Philadelphia bartender, was indicted by a federal grand jury here yesterday for trying to buy 44 pounds of cocaine from the undercover agent.

Persistence, aggressiveness and even pigheadedness can be important skills in the dog-eat-dog world of business. But those traits backfired on Marshall E. Jay, 36, of Willingboro, who, police said, kept calling and calling his customer trying to clinch a $450 sale on Jan. 27. That's because the product Jay was allegedly trying to sell was 2 ounces of marijuana and the person he was repeatedly calling was an undercover agent from the...

A Bucks County man pleaded guilty Friday to soliciting an undercover FBI agent, who was posing as a white supremacist, to kidnap a New Jersey woman and her child, prosecutors said. Jayen I. Patel, 41, of Southampton, pleaded guilty to one count of soliciting an individual to aid in a kidnapping. Patel, who faces a maximum of 20 years in prison, entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Freda L. Wolfson in federal court in Trenton. In 2010, Patel contacted the undercover agent through a social-networking website.

The owner of a Chester County ambulance company was sentenced to 80 months in federal prison for trading child pornography on the Internet, authorities said Thursday. Jason Haldeman, 38, the owner of Stat Care Ambulance Service Inc. in West Grove, provided 74 files depicting child porn to an undercover agent in Delaware, authorities said. When federal agents raided his home and office on Jan. 20, 2011, they found 16,000 child-pornography files, including 3,000 movies. Haldeman, of Landenberg, was part of a trading network with 150 members.

It was far up the Kokolik River in the Alaskan wilderness that Robert Franz's trip started to go wrong. As the retired research chemist canoed through the icy water in 2007, he spotted what looked like a giant elephant tusk lying on the riverbank. It was actually a 20-pound, 10,000-year-old fossilized mammoth tusk. Franz picked up his find, posed for a photo, and took his trophy home to Plymouth Meeting. Problem was, fossil hunting in the area, a federal forest, is forbidden.

A Bucks County man pleaded guilty Friday to soliciting an undercover FBI agent, who was posing as a white supremacist, to kidnap a New Jersey woman and her child, prosecutors said. Jayen I. Patel, 41, of Southampton, pleaded guilty to one count of soliciting an individual to aid in a kidnapping. Patel, who faces a maximum of 20 years in prison, entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Freda L. Wolfson in federal court in Trenton. In 2010, Patel contacted the undercover agent through a social-networking website.

WASHINGTON - A 29-year-old Moroccan man, who believed he was working with al-Qaeda, was arrested Friday near the U.S. Capitol as he was planning to detonate what he thought was a suicide vest, given to him by undercover operatives, said police and government officials. Amine El Khalifi of Alexandria, Va., was taken into custody with an inoperable gun and inert explosives, according to a counterterrorism official. He arrived near the Capitol in a van with the two undercover officers, and walked toward the building, according to court papers.

CHICAGO - On Day 2 of the Sam Hurd saga, the Bears wideout was freed from custody after posting $100,000 bond, his lawyer said the charges are bogus, his team released him, and the NFL moved to protect its image. Appearing before a federal magistrate Friday in Chicago, Hurd, 26, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, let defense attorney Brett Greenfield do the talking. "Sam has asked me to address one point, with respect to the rumors that Sam has been supplying drugs to other members of the NFL: Out of respect to the NFL, out of respect to teammates, and out of respect to other players, he 100 percent denies that allegation," Greenfield said.

Here's something that will feed all those folks who say the NFL is filled with thugs: Bears wide receiver Sam Hurd was in federal custody Thursday after authorities accused him of trying to set up a drug distribution network in the Chicago area and arrested him after he allegedly agreed to buy a kilogram of cocaine from an undercover agent. According to the complaint, Hurd was arrested Wednesday night after meeting with the agent at a Chicago restaurant. The complaint contends Hurd told the agent that he was interested in buying five to 10 kilograms of cocaine and 1,000 pounds of marijuana per week to distribute.

WILMINGTON - The former director of a nonprofit group that runs a children's camp in southern Delaware is facing federal child-pornography charges. Harold Love Springer III, 73, of Wilmington, was indicted Tuesday on charges of transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography. Springer is a former executive director of the Children's Beach House in Lewes, which serves children with special needs. Authorities said that Springer was identified during an investigation into a computer network devoted to trading images of child pornography, and that an undercover agent observed about 2,000 files depicting child pornography that Springer had made available to network members.