ANATOMY OF A VICE CASE:

A woman advertises sex on the online classifieds site craigslist.com: Call a number, and set up an appointment. When the client shows up at her hotel room on Beach Boulevard, it’s not a John — it’s an officer.

But instead of ending in a simple arrest, the sting triggers a series of downloaded cellphone records, subpoenaed Internet activity and Web searches based on new information that leads to more arrests, a man charged as her alleged pimp and a 15-year-old runaway girl taken away from a life of exploitation and into the hands of Orange County Social Services.

What used to transpire on street corners and in newspaper classified ads has moved to the realm of anonymous cellphone calls and online personal ads, and police have been catching up fast. As one of the only departments in the region with dedicated vice officers, Huntington Beach police are using the newest technology to fight the oldest profession.

The department is carefully watching online vice crimes, from prostitution to child predators, said Huntington Beach police Lt. Dave Bunetta.

“We want to let the public know this is still out there happening in our community,” he said. “And for people trying to solicit this, we are actively investigating it, and we want to let them know. If it ends up in Huntington Beach, then you’re going to be arrested.”

The department has had a small vice squad since the ’90s and has integrated online crime watching in the past few years. Since October, it has made at least 14 digitally related arrests.

As for the sting in question, it all began with a Craigslist ad, said Sgt. Jim McLean, who heads the vice unit. Police responded to an ad March 14 and caught Jessica Lee Kauffman, 22, of Vancouver, Wash., who pleaded guilty to prostitution and got a couple of weeks in jail, he said.

But a search of the hotel room at the Comfort Suites found a bail certificate from Las Vegas for a Richard Dee Robinson, 22, of Portland, Ore., whom they later arrested and charged with pimping and pandering — much like the charges he was out on bail from in Nevada.

In the meantime, police also found several prepaid cellphones, downloaded their calls and text messages, and subpoenaed their records from the phone company, according to authorities. Some of that information led them to Robinson’s hotel room in Stanton, which they searched.

But those cellphone numbers also led them back to Craigslist, where they found yet another advertisement inviting calls to one of those phones, he said.

When police showed up at a motel this time, they found someone slightly more unexpected — a 15-year-old girl who had run away from her parents.

“She turned out to be a minor,” McLean said. “We were talking to her, interviewing her. She hadn’t been doing this very long and was brought down here from Oregon. We found her and gave her to Social Services.”

Don’t blame Craigslist, McLean said. In fact, the site’s owners are extremely helpful to police and take down ads for underage women right away, he said.

“Craigslist was actually very cooperative,” he said. “We said, ‘Hey, you’ve got these pictures of a minor up there.’ They searched their system and took it all down. They don’t want stuff like that on their website, period.”

High-tech vice work doesn’t just involve sex crimes, McLean said. Police will also, for example, do an online stakeout for references to a bar with an underage drinking problem, he said. In one case, a teenager posted an invitation on MySpace to a party at the bar, promising underage drinking, only to find the police saw the ad as well.

“Sometimes they make it easy for us,” McLean said.

The people who make it easiest tend to be predators and those would-be patrons of prostitutes, he said.

“A lot of these guys, they’re using their work e-mail,” he said.

“Sometimes we even get their name… One guy sent us a picture of him. We were posing as a 15-year-old girl. It was a picture of him standing next to his car with his license plate in it.”

As for Robinson, he still awaits trial on pimping and pandering charges.

MICHAEL ALEXANDER may be reached at (714) 966-4618 or at michael.alexander@latimes. com.