Wanted on the World Wide Web

Forget about the wanted posters in your local post office.

The FBI is now using pop-up banner ads on the myriad Web sites owned and operated by the Terra Lycos network to go after the criminals on its "Ten Most Wanted" list.

In an announcement Wednesday, the U.S. attorney's office in Boston and the Boston office of the FBI announced that the first-ever FBI Most Wanted banner ad has been placed on the Lycos home page; it's a wanted poster seeking Boston organized crime figure James "Whitey" Bulger.

Previously, Web users could see the Top Ten list only by going directly to the FBI's home page. The list has been posted online since 1995.

First Cyber-Fugitive

Bulger, who is being sought on charges ranging from murder to racketeering to extortion to money laundering, is a native of Boston and has been on the list since August 1999. The government is offering a $1 million reward for information that leads to his capture.

Starting Wednesday, visitors to the Lycos home page can see a ad banner that changes periodically to the Bulger wanted ad; by clicking it, they can go directly to the FBI's Web site for more information on Bulger and the other criminals on the Most Wanted list.

Gail Marcinkiewicz, a special agent and spokesperson for the FBI in Boston, said that the members of the FBI Bulger Fugitive Task Force "are always brainstorming about what to do to find" the criminals on the list. "The more we put things out there in the media, the more likelihood [we have] of success."

The FBI is not paying for the ads: Terra Lycos is displaying them as a public service.

Bulger has been a fugitive since 1995 and was the 458th person to be identified on the FBI list, Marcinkiewicz said. Of the 475 fugitives whose names have been posted on the list since the program's inception in 1950, 446 have been apprehended, including 145 who were caught as a result of tips from citizens, she said. The first person ever reported on the list was Thomas James Holden, who was wanted for a triple murder in Chicago in 1949.

Handy Timeliness

Similar listings could follow on other Web sites, she said. "It could be the first of many," she said. "It's really kind of an experiment to see what happens."

Mark Stoever, vice president of operations for Terra Lycos in the United States, said the online pop-up ads can be more effective because they can be updated on the fly, unlike old-fashioned wanted posters in post offices. "The Internet completely blows [post offices] away in the amount of people you can reach."

The Bulger wanted ads will be distributed in English across the Lycos Network around the world and will be distributed in Spanish on Terra.com, which draws heavy Internet traffic from Latin America.

The Terra Lycos network of sites consists of Terra in 17 countries and Lycos in 25 countries. It includes Angelfire.com, Maptel.com, Matchmaker.com, Quote.com, RagingBull.com, Rumbo.com, Tripod.com, and Wired.com.