Daniel Goldstein in District Court yesterday.

The Providence Journal Bob Breidenbach

PROVIDENCE –– Jane Dillon knows all about how some great deals on the Web site craigslist.org can be true steals.

On Friday, she saw her bass guitar — stolen the day before from her East Side apartment — selling on the Internet classified site for $250, the police say.

Susanne Lowney learned as well some of the ins and outs of the newest in “e-fencing” when the police called her Monday with news about her stolen electronics, taken two weeks earlier.

Apparently the same thief responsible for breaking into her apartment, she says, had used her computer to help sell Dillon’s guitar.

The cases, the police say, shed light on the growing trend of thieves turning to e-commerce sites to sell their stolen goods.

“A lot of that stuff on craigslist is stolen,” said Providence Detective Lt. Paul Campbell. But in this case, “because of some good detective work, we managed to clear up five separate breaks and return a lot of property back to their owners.”

The man at the center of these two East Side breaks and, the police allege, three others in the last six weeks, appeared in District Court yesterday. The police charged Daniel Goldstein, 20, of 25 Pitman St., with five counts of breaking and entering in which thousands of dollars of electronics were stolen while their owners slept.

Goldstein didn’t travel far to find his victims, the police say: all five breaks occurred either on Pitman or on the adjacent streets of East George or East Manning. In one case, the backyard of the house on East Manning abuts the backyard of the apartment house Goldstein lives in.

The police noticed a pattern to the breaks — each happened early in the morning, before 5 a.m. — and they suspected the perpetrator was walking through the neighborhood checking for unlocked doors.

Michael O’Connell, of East Manning Street, said the police told him this week they had recovered, from Goldstein’s apartment, some of the jewelry and electronics taken from his apartment on Feb. 3.

“I never even thought of looking for it on craigslist,” said O’Connell, who is now considering getting a dog. “I did go to a local pawnshop but didn’t find anything.”

A BREAK in the cases came Friday, when Dillon notified the Providence police that she had seen her stolen bass guitar advertised on craigslist.

The day before, Dillon reported that her East Manning Street apartment had been broken into while she slept and that, besides the guitar, more than $7,000 worth of laptops, Wii game computers and software — and a backpack containing her driver’s license, credits cards and checkbook — had been taken.

Detective )Sgt. Vincent Mansolitto, posing as an interested buyer on the Web site, attempted to make contact with Goldstein through e-mail without success. Then, over the weekend, Detective Sgt. William Dwyer and Detective Angelo Avant joined in, e-mailing Goldstein that they were interested in buying the laptop he had advertised.

Dwyer says the laptop was the Apple iBook taken from Dillon’s apartment.

“He wanted $550 for it,” Dwyer said. “I told him I planned to be in the Providence area in the next day or two, and if it was in good condition, I’d give him $500 for it.”

Dwyer said Goldstein agreed and made arrangements for a meeting at Goldstein’s home on Pitman Street. Goldstein was waiting on the curb while the snow was still falling Monday morning when, Dwyer says, he and two other detectives pulled up in unmarked cars.

Dwyer said Goldstein — who entered no plea at his initial court appearance yesterday in light of the charges being felonies; bail was set at $2,500 — put up no struggle.

E-COMMERCE sites have in many cases replaced the pawnshops where thieves historically have traded their goods.

“E-fencing is a huge issue,” says Michael J. Healey, spokesman for Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch. “The reason people steal stuff is to sell it. Sites like craigslist, eBay, and Yahoo auctions, they really are just the newest markets … And thieves will always find markets to fence their goods.”

Healey said Congress, for a second year in a row, is considering legislation to clamp down on illicit activities on the Web, which run the gamut of selling stolen goods to prostitution. But the best efforts might come from the Web sites improving their own way of doing business.

“It’s really going to take … their changing their approach and trying to introduce more effective screening and verification practices to hold sellers accountable.”

In the meantime, Providence police detectives are still working to retrieve Jane Dillon’s bass guitar.

Some one bought it on craigslist over the weekend, says detective Dwyer, for $150.

tmooney@projo.com