Think they are talking about SDGM (or SDFM) - sounds like it may have been a tipster and not an "inside job" like some speculated?
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/sdcounty/article_764e2b10-b42f-5eaf-bf3a-faac5738f2bd.html
The tipster told San Diego Crime Stoppers: "It operates under the guise of a massage business but, oh, it's so much more."
Turns out that, yep, it was oh, so much more.
The tipster told police the massage business, based in a Carlsbad home, was the sort that offered happy endings for $100. And more intimate encounters were negotiable.
The mystery tipster, whoever it was, led Carlsbad police, in late 2009, to break up a prostitution ring operating out of homes ---- in quiet, middle-class residential neighborhoods, including one in Calavera Hills.
"Part of the success of this case was that it was assisted through the observations of people in their own neighborhood," Carlsbad police Lt. Kelly Cain said late last week.
At the end of many a crime story in the newspaper, readers might find a line inviting them to share tips anonymously with San Diego Crime Stoppers via phone, text or e-mail.
Over the tip service's 26 years in San Diego County, nearly 21,000 tips have been sent. Nearly 4,000 of those tips have led to an arrest, Sally Cox, the group's executive director, said last week.
In June, tipsters helped solve 11 crimes throughout the county, which is about average, she said. Tips are up 20 percent, Cox said, thanks to e-mail and text-messaging via cell phones.
"The biggest value of Crime Stoppers is the ability to close a case quicker than normal, through the anonymity and the reward payouts," said San Diego Police Officer Jim Johnson said. He and San Diego County Sheriff's Deputy Adriana Uribe are on loan from their agencies as full-time liaisons to Crime Stoppers.
Tipsters can get up to $1,000 from Crime Stoppers for information leading to an arrest, though most crimes will not warrant a big payday. Some of the payments are as small as $25. Still, the organization paid out $35,000 last year, Cox said.
Protecting the tipster
School kids also are encouraged to tip authorities to crime. Cox said about 40 percent of tips from students are drug-related, and 25 percent deal with threats of weapons on campus.
Authorities said it was a Crime Stoppers tip that led to the arrest of a 19-year-old woman last month for a string of bank robberies, including one in Oceanside, in which she wore a floppy sun hat.
On Wednesday, the cash payout for the tipster who broke the bank robbery case sat on Cox's desk in a plain white envelope. She was mum as to how much it contained.
OK, so the tip is good. But how is it possible for a tipster to stay anonymous, especially if sending a text or an e-mail? The sources of electronic tips are scrubbed twice, a technological process that happens before the information is channeled to the offices of San Diego Crime Stoppers. Phone numbers also are blocked.
All the phone calls are answered by a phone bank in Texas, a place that serves a number of Crime Stoppers groups around the country.
"People always question whether it is anonymous," Johnson said. "I don't even know who sends the information to me. Even under oath with the court, I cannot provide the IP address (of the computer) or the text message phone number to the court because I can't get it."
Each tipster is given a code number and told to check back later, Cox said. After a month or so passes, the tipster calls and provides the magic number. If an arrest has been made, the money will be made available. Sometimes the tipster calls back on his own, already aware the arrest went down, she said.
The payout
Then comes the payout. Cox and company have a deal with a franchise chain where the tipster is told to go and give the person at the counter the magic code number. The tipster will be handed a sealed white envelope with the reward money in cash.
Cox won't say which chain she works with ---- could be a retail shop, could be a fast food restaurant ---- for fear that bad guys will try to game a system designed to reward good guys.
In recent months, there also was a high-profile problem when a tipster's information led to the arrest of an East County woman who looked like ---- but apparently was not ---- a woman wanted for identity theft.
Cox said the tips are just that ---- tips. Anonymous tips alone are not enough for a judge to grant a search or arrest warrant. Each has to be vetted by investigators.
Take the tip that eventually helped Carlsbad police break the prostitution ring. The tip came sometime in late 2008, and the investigation was "labor intensive," Lt. Cain said, and included not only surveillance, but a ruse in which an undercover San Diego police vice officer applied for a job as a masseuse.
In December 2009, more than a year after the anonymous tip, police raided five homes ---- one in Carlsbad, one in Del Mar and three in San Diego ---- associated with the purported massage business.
The accused madam eventually pleaded guilty to six counts of pimping and pandering, and landed a three-year prison term this spring.
"We closed a very successful prostitution ring," Cain said, "with the help of a Crime Stoppers tip."
Cox won't say, though, how much money the tipster's little white envelope contained.
