10-26-2012, 05:25 PM
The Dateline report 'Wild, Wild Web' airs Friday, October 26th, at 10pm/9c. Chris Hansen reports.
It’s a crisp autumn day in the park, and there’s Chris Hansen, sitting across a table from a stranger he just met. The man’s munching on lunch while Chris begins the conversation. Chris is suggesting there’s someone who’s been causing him problems; a thorn in his side. The man has agreed to meet Chris because he says he can make Chris’s problem, “disappear.”
But what’s most interesting is where Chris found the stranger. Of all places… on Craigslist....
When Producer Dan Slepian and his team of nimble video shooters began sifting through the main venues for online classifieds (backpage.com, and the most popular, Craigslist), it didn’t take long to find some very intriguing posts. But we didn’t want to merely exchange emails. We wanted to actually meet the people behind these posts out in the open. So we adopted online aliases and began arranging meetings.
We found a post offering to sell narcotic painkillers with no prescription. We know that’s illegal. Another listing seemed to be offering entire list of marijuana “clients” - for a price. In other words, someone was apparently selling his pot business....
It’s a crisp autumn day in the park, and there’s Chris Hansen, sitting across a table from a stranger he just met. The man’s munching on lunch while Chris begins the conversation. Chris is suggesting there’s someone who’s been causing him problems; a thorn in his side. The man has agreed to meet Chris because he says he can make Chris’s problem, “disappear.”
But what’s most interesting is where Chris found the stranger. Of all places… on Craigslist....
When Producer Dan Slepian and his team of nimble video shooters began sifting through the main venues for online classifieds (backpage.com, and the most popular, Craigslist), it didn’t take long to find some very intriguing posts. But we didn’t want to merely exchange emails. We wanted to actually meet the people behind these posts out in the open. So we adopted online aliases and began arranging meetings.
We found a post offering to sell narcotic painkillers with no prescription. We know that’s illegal. Another listing seemed to be offering entire list of marijuana “clients” - for a price. In other words, someone was apparently selling his pot business....