Infoseek Exec Held In Sex Sting -- Online Encounter Ends In L.A. Arrest

The Bellevue-based Internet official charged with planning a sexual encounter with a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles is a Seattle multimillionaire and member of the team that created Java, the breakthrough programming language for the Internet.

Using the online alias, "hotseattle," Patrick J. Naughton, an executive vice president of the Web portal Infoseek and a widely known computer-industry leader, had repeated encounters on-line with an FBI agent who was pretending to be a 13-year-old girl, officials say.

Naughton, who is married and lives in Seattle, was arrested Thursday at the Santa Monica Pier after allegedly arranging to meet the girl there.

He has been charged with interstate travel with the intent of having sex with a minor and is scheduled to be arraigned Oct. 12, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. He was released after posting $100,000 bond Friday.

Naughton, at 34, is known throughout the world of cyberspace as one of its original Wunderkinds, an innovator and a genius, said Rachel Platt, a former employee of Seattle-based Starwave who now works on the Web site for the Arizona Republic newspaper in Phoenix.

Like many Internet company executives, Naughton's fortunes have grown with lucrative stock options. The stock and options he held in Infoseek as of last April were worth about $13.3 million based on today's share price. The online news service ZDNet reported that Naughton was paid a salary of $183,167.

Following Naughton's arrest, Infoseek Chief Executive Officer Harry Motro sent an e-mail to all employees, saying, "I am shocked and saddened by his arrest. Patrick is no longer an employee of Infoseek."

Court documents describe repeated online encounters between Naughton and FBI agent Bruce Applin in which Applin pretended to be a teenage girl.

The documents give this account of the case:

On March 8, Applin, who investigates computer-related sex crimes against children, logged into an Internet chat room, which is believed to be used by adult men to contact girls.

Applin described himself as a 13-year-old girl from Los Angeles.

About 3:40 p.m. that day, Applin "received a private message from an individual using the screen name `hotseattle.' "

In that chat, which lasted four hours, "hotseattle" said he would like to meet the girl in the Los Angeles area to "kiss, make out and play and stuff . . ."

"Hotseattle" wanted to "get naked and explore," but noted "he was going to be very careful since he could go to jail."

In a May 21 chat, "hotseattle" said he was anxious to meet his online correspondent, and "told me he wanted to get me alone in his hotel room and have me strip naked for him."

In another chat, according to the documents, he gave Applin a World Wide Web page address, which, he said, included a nude photo of his genitals.

After other chats - some of which included explicit sexual conversation - Naughton suggested a meeting with the girl at the Santa Monica Pier Sept. 16. He said he could take her to his hotel room and show her pictures on his laptop computer of himself "and another girl," the documents allege.

It was agreed that Naughton's online partner would wait for him near the pier's roller coaster and would be carrying a green backpack.

Investigators instead sent a female Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, who carried a green backpack, and arrested Naughton after he approached her. After the arrest, Naughton turned over his laptop computer to authorities.

At the time of his arrest, Naughton was employed by Infoseek to oversee Walt Disney Co.'s Go Network of Internet sites. Disney is in the process of acquiring Infoseek.

He first gained notoriety at Sun Microsystems when he told Chief Executive Officer Scott McNealy he was going to leave for Steve Jobs' NeXT Computer because Sun had lost its vision. McNealy told him to give him a memo on what he would do "if you were God."

Out of that memo sprang a secret project at Sun that later metamorphosed into Java, a computer language that can be read by more than one computer operating system. Naughton was intensely involved in the early phases of Java and is considered one of its founding fathers.

"If it wasn't for him., there would be no Java," Platt said. "That was a big thing for Starwave, and that's why they hired him."

Naughton left Sun in late 1994 to go to work for Starwave. Colleagues described him as extremely likable, intense, witty and a high-energy person who was seen regularly at Pioneer Square First Thursday gallery walks.

Walt Disney acquired a stake in Infoseek last year and worked with it to create the Go Network, which competes with other portal sites to offer Web searches, entertainment and personalized news. In July, Disney said it was acquiring all of Infoseek.

Naughton could not be reached for comment this morning. His wife, Kenna Moser, 34, was not accepting calls at their Perkins Lane home in Magnolia.

In 1982, Naughton began consulting as a software engineer, "paying his way through school and gaining a trial-by-fire perspective of the PC industry," according to a Starwave biography Web page.

Naughton then graduated from Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., with a degree in management and marketing.

Officials at Infoseek in Sunnyvale, Calif., where Infoseek is based, would only make this comment: "We are shocked and disturbed by the arrest of Patrick Naughton. We want to be clear that behavior of this nature is inappropriate and unacceptable by Infoseek and Go Network."

Seattle Times business reporter Helen Jung and The Associated Press contributed to this report.