Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself • Hacker News Board

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#131

Post by doublekill » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

mshumi wrote: post #84

One has to wonder what legal frauds, asset grabs, and impersonations have transpired that were never discovered. Some perspective on this is the story of Alves dos Reis ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alves_dos_Reis ) who in 1924 stole ~1% of Portugal's GDP in bank notes printed under forged orders. The scheme may have never been uncovered had Reis succeeded in maintaining a controlling interest in the Bank of Portug…

Having someone else do your prison time was fairly common. Now with more cooperation between organizations and improved biometrics it has dropped.

Different people would be arrested, show up to court, or enter the prison. Impossible for organizations downstream to detect or assume a switch had happened.

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#132

Post by pugworthy » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #110

pugworthy wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point, but the parent.parent says this was to "approve some minor thing" The risk is that the "minor thing" isn't so minor, especially when the bypassing of the review process becomes routine. I suppose put it this way. Imagine a software developer slipped in smaller code changes and circumvented procedures like QA or code review because they though it was "just some minor thing" Would you find that OK?

Somehow I don't think a bunch of retail employees processing returns without the manager's approval is gonna be a big deal. The manager will see the returns regardless of whether they approve them on an individual basis.

Unfortunately the parent up there never mentioned the type of job or any other context to help us understand if dishonesty could be an issue in their actions. In my code example, definitely an issue. In DanBC's comment below RE: regulated professionals? Definitely an issue.

We all know there are bad or stupid rules out there. But honesty's not a rule, it's more of a moral principle. Gray areas for sure, but when dishonesty becomes a habit, or makes one lose trust, or actually breaks a rule meant to prevent an issue, it's a problem.

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#133

Post by reitzensteinm » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 9:24 PM UTC

"Please tell us about the time you (...) most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage"

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#134

Post by pseingatl » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 9:25 PM UTC

aksss wrote: post #85

Good effort. I wonder if she would have been able to ascertain whether the evaluation was scheduled and in doing it over could have covered that base proactively, or if there was no way of her knowing about that angle (even in doing it over again, no way she could have known about that in order to address it). In other words, was this defeated because of an oversight on her part, or was this an unknown unknown for he…

She could forge a letter from the prosecutor saying that there was no need for an exam because the case was nolle prossed. The problem is when the forensic examiner sends in a bill, unless they are on a retainer and don't have to submit timesheets.

One issue not addressed is scale. Law doesn't scale. A prosecutor with more than 500 cases will have difficulty staying on top of them all; if you had to deal with Google or Twitter numbers (tens or hundreds of thousands) you wouldn't notice if a case disappeared off your docket.

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#135

Post by pseingatl » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 9:27 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #41

mrlonglong wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With smarts like that she could make something of herself, rather than go down the path of criminality. Edited for typos.

Not necessarily. For one, it probably doesn't take much smarts to fill out the paperwork or trick the system. The system is full of people who don't know their job and have no real incentive to (can be difficult to fire government employees). For example, I am involved with a case in which a state trooper made 4 or 5 mistakes, including mis-citing a statute so badly that the court system shows it as invalid and he la…

A traffic case? De minimus non curat lex. If it was a murder case, they would correct the trooper's errors. It's easy to fix typographic errors in indictments.

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#136

Post by ALittleLight » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 9:27 PM UTC

autarch wrote: post #86

asdff wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In college there was a beer delivery service that would even deliver directly to the dorm if you gave that as your address. If you paid with your debit card over the phone, they wouldn't even card you since the beer was already bought and paid for. One time they did check, and my friend lied and said he didn't have his ID with him. Then the delivery guy who was probably only a couple years older than us just asked to…

> Then the delivery guy who was probably only a couple years older than us just asked to see his actual underage ID to prove he wasn't a cop and handed us the beer anyway. The liquor enforcement folks (usually not cops, AFAIK) could easily hire someone under 21 to attempt to purchase alcohol. In fact, I'm pretty sure that in some places they do exactly this.

Yeah, that seems like ensuring you get convicted if the guy was a cop. At least without checking his underage id you could claim you believed him.

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#137

Post by ada1981 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 9:28 PM UTC

totalZero wrote: post #125

ada1981 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A competent hacker could deep fake zoom hearings and communications and have the actual prosecution dismissing the case on video.

This depends on the actual prosecutor never attempting to participate in the case. Plus, I imagine that the penalty for getting caught defrauding a court is pretty steep.

So maybe you submit motion to dismiss request for a number of random cases. You become hidden among the others.

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#138

Post by ilamont » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #23

I guess this brings up and interesting issue -- once someone knows the ins and outs of a system, sometimes there are very few barriers internally to check that an order/paperwork is legit. There was a story in WSJ like last week about how the Japanese red stamp / seal still survives and is a barrier to them adopting new technology for practical every day speeding up of tasks. And keeps things like faxes around unnece…

I lived in Taiwan in the 1990s when the "chop" (印章) was still alive and well for individuals and institutions. I remember a bank fraud that revolved around a bank employee using a bar of soap to make a copy of the bank's seal to authorize transactions or transfers and used the money for stock market investments which he or she then intended to pay back. IIRC it came to light when the 1997 Asian financial crisis hit.

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#139

Post by viraptor » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

OwlsParlay wrote: post #98

noir_lord wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, so far "We can't serve you for legal reasons AKA we won't comply with the reasonable provisions of data protection" has been met with a broad shrug .

For US-based news sites they might well only get a few European visitors. I only ever get this problem for trending stories like this.

If a US site does not have any presence in the EU and is not selling anything to the EU visitors, why would they even bother adding the blocking? They can... do nothing instead. (Or disable buying subscription to the EU)

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#140

Post by ben_w » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #92

ben_w wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a Carol business decision that letting Alices & Bobs view content for free isn’t cost effective if Carol isn’t allowed to track Alice and Bob without their permission and make money by letting Eve, who is unknown Alice and Bob, to build up a detailed profile of Alice and Bob. Project Guttenberg in Germany (and The Pirate Bay in the USA, I think) would be 451.

Why is Project Gutenberg illegal in Germany?

Court order regarding blocking specific books, the project itself isn’t a problem: https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html