Well, it worked for Captain Kirk. And Not Sure.
Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
191–200 of 336 posts
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#192Earlier 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.
They do get underage folks to try to do either "shoulder tap" operations or direct purchases from vendors. I was asked to do this once as a teenager. I refused, but not before asking a lot of questions about what I'd be doing. I can't say much about the shoulder tap operations, however, I believe there's still a couple of tells for the direct purchase attempts based on the conversations I had:
1. To ensure safety, there will be an adult (undercover cop) nearby. (This could be around the corner, or someplace sneaky, but usually they just pose as another customer.) They probably will maintain pretty close proximity to their underage undercover though.
2. They probably won't give you a fake ID, because it makes it harder to get any sort of definitive enforcement to stick. They aren't trying to catch people that are easily tricked by fake ID's so much as they are trying to catch people that are either knowingly selling booze to underage people or not making any attempt to verify.
So if someone presents a fake ID, even one that's sorta but not totally obvious, that's unlikely to be a sting operation.
3. I believe they typically will actually present ID when asked. Again this helps get charges to stick.
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
What city was this in? Is it in a place where other people have real guns? Is it in a place where the cops have guns? I both want to play and suspect that it would go really really badly.
For the most part, water pistols look nothing like firearms. I very much doubt that you'd be in danger of being treated as an armed threat when holding a transparent, green, plastic gun that's leaking water.
I dunno. Phones, canes, sunglasses, sandwiches, just hands have been mistaken for guns, with deadly consequences. Perhaps someone doesn't see the object itself, but the way it is being held, or even just reached for.
Especially if the "assassination" attempt involved in the game requires getting into environments you shouldn't be, getting close to someone in an unusual way, I could see this ending in tears even if the water pistol was never visible.
http://www.caralevine.com/this-is-not-a-gun-1 https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53d691ede4b0326a80e05...
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the most part, water pistols look nothing like firearms. I very much doubt that you'd be in danger of being treated as an armed threat when holding a transparent, green, plastic gun that's leaking water.
If someone already suspects you have a firearm they don't need evidence... they need an excuse. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin
You are reading into this too much. This is a case of Dead Men Can't Speak. Rather than leave evidence of a crime, opportunity cost of murder is getting off scot-free. The media turned it into primetime theater, but it was never about race. It is about stand your ground and ultimately how the dead can't defend themselves in court.
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen reports that it's somewhat common for the rich in China[1], so there might be some info on what it costs there, and maybe some extrapolation could be made. Either the "serve prison in lieu of me" or "say you were the one that committed the crime" version. There are weird perverse incentives at play in some of the laws of criminal justice system in China.[2] 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339051 2:…
This reminds me of the classic phrase, “the butler did it”. It took me ages to realise that butlers aren’t naturally villainous, but rather were expected to take the fall for any malfeasance committed by the family.
edit- after reading up on this, I'm not sure where you got your information from but everything I could find shows it to just be the common detective/mystery trope.
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#196One 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…
Here in Germany we had a few cases where persons worked as hospital doctors for a few years without a license or diploma or even any medical training. They usually submitted a fake license to the hospital. There was a spectacular case in the 1990s where a former postal employee named himself "Dr. med. Dr. phil. Clemens Bartholdy" and later worked as a senior physician in a psychiatric hospital, also giving lectures […
No one noticed until last year, at which time she had already accidentally killed 4 people.
It's really surprising that someone with basically no knowledge of the subject could work for that length of time and not be discovered sooner.
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#197One 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…
Part of my practice is financial fraud investigation. >One has to wonder what legal frauds, asset grabs, and impersonations have transpired that were never discovered. A lot. More than you'd expect. And by people and organizations you wouldn't expect. However, most people are objectively terrible at performing fraud. The things that ultimately lead to people being caught are so simple.
What are the types of mistakes that commonly lead to people being caught?
I'm asking, uh, for a friend. :-)
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here in Germany we had a few cases where persons worked as hospital doctors for a few years without a license or diploma or even any medical training. They usually submitted a fake license to the hospital. There was a spectacular case in the 1990s where a former postal employee named himself "Dr. med. Dr. phil. Clemens Bartholdy" and later worked as a senior physician in a psychiatric hospital, also giving lectures […
Failure to verify such documents is totally on hospitals. We've recently had a similar case here in Lithuania, where doctor claimed to studied something in US. When they've called the university, they've said they don't even have such programme.
As far as I understand it, in Germany you are required to hand in the original documents a few months after you have started your job. If you fail to do so, you are first being reminded, then you pay a fine, and than it increasingly escalates. But it will take several years until an actual investigation begins.
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#199I 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 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. I used to work as a criminal defense attorney, and the job regularly required that I obtain subpoenas from the court in order to mandate a witness's appearance at court. My state courts have a template that subpoenas must follow,…
A similar process exists in Australia. It is a bit strange that the burden is on the recipient to object to an unlawful subpoena. I understand that it’s pretty common for vexatious litigants to issue subpoenas requiring politicians, governors and other public figures to attend court for cross-examination about a perceived injustice, and there is a bit of work involved in arranging for these to be set aside so that nobody ends up formally in contempt of court.
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#200She should now sweep in to save herself as her own defense attorney, then become the court reporter to ensure the correct story is told, finally accepting the plea for all charges to be dropped while impersonating her judge.