BEDFORD -- A Bedford County-based task force will double its investigative power to find online sexual predators using $750,000 it is receiving as part of the so-called "Alicia's Law."

Bedford County Sheriff Mike Brown, Del. Brian Moran, D-Alexandria, and Alicia Kozakiewicz, the teenager for whom the legislation was named, made the announcement at a news conference Tuesday at the sheriff's office.

Television actor Erik Estrada, a spokesman for the Safe Surfin' Foundation created by the Bedford County Sheriff's Office, was also present.

The money is part of $1.5 million in state funding for Virginia's two Internet task forces. Brown created the Southern Virginia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, also known as Operation Blue Ridge Thunder, in 1998, and has received national attention for its work.

Moran, a potential candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2009, sponsored a version of "Alicia's Law" in last winter's session. The bill stalled in committee but later re-emerged as a successful budget amendment with the goal of creating a stronger network of officers trained specifically to track down sexual predators on the Internet.

"You can pass tough penalties all you want," Moran said after the news conference. "But tough penalties alone don't make our kids safer."

The Southern Virginia task force will use the money to increase the number of investigators from three to six.

It will also use the money to provide equipment and training to its 58 affiliate agencies, Brown said.

He hopes the money will help the task force increase the number of affiliate agencies to 70 by the end of the year.

"While we know we'll never catch all of the predators, with this new funding, we should be able to substantially increase the number of cases," he said.

A portion of the money will also be used to fund a prosecutor's position, said Bedford County Commonwealth's Attorney Randy Krantz.

The office has prosecutors assigned to a victims unit, but is anticipating an increase in cases because of the funding to the task force, Krantz said.

The effort by Moran and other legislators was named after Kozakiewicz, who at 13 left her home in Pennsylvania to meet a 38-year-old Herndon, Va., man whom she meet online. That man, Scott Tyree, chained her to his basement floor, beat and raped Kozakiewicz for four days until the FBI found her.

Tyree was sentenced to 19 years in federal prison.

Kozakiewicz is now 19 and studying to be an investigator with an Internet crimes against children task force.