Rat Link

A new Web site exposes stoolies and undercover agents. Legal? Apparently. Ethical? In the eye of the beholder.

by Brendan McGarvey

Illustration By: Hyacinth Hughes

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.'"