Bill Bickel’s Crimeweek

From this week’s Time magazine:

As Election Day nears, dirty tricks surface. Fliers are left on cars telling Democrats that they should vote on Wednesday, not Tuesday. Anonymous automated phone calls warn people that they will be arrested at the polls or that their poling places have moved… In an increasing number of states, such tricks are punishable by law.

Okay maybe I’m missing something here… but why is this being classified as mischief, rather than as voter fraud and interfering with people’s right to vote, and prosecuted as a federal crime?

An Iowa City man is in prison, mostly because he didn’t quite understand the concept of credit card fraud: First, he made purchases using a stolen card (he claims he simply found it), and signed his own name on the receipt. Then, when he attempted to use the card in another store, and it was turned down as having been stolen, he tried to prove it wasn’t by… showing the clerk his own identification.

A federal judge is scheduled to decide on September 4 whether Lori Drew will stand trial on charges of conspiracy and “accessing protected computers without authorization.” Drew, the Missouri woman accused of using a fake MySpace account to harass Megan Meier — a 13-year-old friend of her daughter’s — who eventually took her own life, was indicted in May of this year.

Meier’s death is not officially a factor in the charges, but of course it’s the reason federal charges were filed at all after Missouri prosecutors determined that she’d broken no state law (though state legislators have, since Meier’s death, proposed various new laws aimed at online harassment).

The defense contends that the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse act, intended to punish computer hacking, doesn’t apply to cyber-bullying or Drew’s having set up a fake MySpace identity (a teenage boy who “befriended” and then “dumped” Meier, allegedly part of a scheme to find out what Meier had been telling friends about Drew’s daughter). Indeed, if falsifying information when setting up a MySpace account is a prosecutable offense (and the government is, in fact, contending that MySpace is a victim here), a large percentage of MySpace users should face charges – including Megan Meier’s parents for allowing her to claim to be over thirteen (MySpace’s legal minimum age) when she was only twelve. Prosecuting Drew, they say, would “criminalize everyday, ordinary conduct.”

Defense motions filed in July also argue that the charges violate constitutional due process and are too vague, failing to state a specific offense.

Federal prosecutors, in their own documents filed with the court in mid-August, argue that Drew’s actions contain specific criminal elements that separate them from mere misrepresentation: Drew sought to obtain personal information from Meier, and to inflict emotional distress.

• Background and earlier updates

Press release from the National Crime Prevention Council:

In view of the breakup of a global identity theft ring and the arrest of its members, the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) is advising consumers to take extra precautions to protect their personal information.

From data breaches to phishing scams, thieves are targeting your money and you need to be prepared. NCPC, the nonprofit home of McGruff the Crime Dog, says you can fight back with eight simple steps.

• Lock up your personal information—tax information, previous tax returns, bank statements, and unpaid bills—even at home.
• Don’t fall for scams—A legitimate business will not ask you to verify personal information via email. If you receive an email from a business or institution with whom you do business, call their customer service line—don’t use the phone number included in the suspect email.
• Don’t respond to requests to verify personal information unless you initiated the contact with a legitimate business or financial institution.
• Destroy or shred documents that you don’t need to keep for long periods. Documents such as phone bills, credit card receipts, and mail-order catalogs all hold valuable information tied to your identity.
• Carefully review your mail. Check monthly credit card and bank statements for unfamiliar transactions.
• Check your credit report—The law entitles you to at least one free report a year from each of the three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experion, and Trans Union).
• Report suspicious activity right away—Alert any one of the three major credit bureaus to the possible fraud, close the account you think has been compromised, file a police report in case you need to provide proof of the crime, and file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.
• Retrieve your mail from your mailbox promptly. Consider using direct deposit as an alternative to receiving a mailed check. Ask the post office to hold your mail if you are going away on travel.

For more information about how to protect what matters to you, visit the National Crime Prevention Council’s website at www.ncpc.org.

Last May, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned the rape conviction of a man who had sex with his brother’s girlfriend after convincing her, at night in a dark room, that he was in fact his brother. The Court ruled that Massachusetts law defined rape as sexual intercourse compelled “by force”, citing the precedent that in 1959, the Judicial Court specifically ruled that fraud can’t replace force as an element of the crime.

The state Legislature is now considering a law under which the crime of rape includes using “fraud, concealment or artifice” to trick somebody into having sex.

Obviously the existing law is inadequate – but under the proposed law, it would be possible to convict somebody of rape if he lied about being married or about how rich he is.

A reasonable middle ground shouldn’t be too difficult to find: Just off the top of my head, how about calling it rape if the deceit contains an element of another crime: identity theft in the case overturned last year, or impersonating a doctor (as in another recent case, where a pharmacist claiming to be a doctor performed a full-body exam on a woman) or a police officer?

The legislators can certainly come up with something at least as sensible as this idea. I don’t think anybody really wants a man to face decades in jail because he lied when he said “I’ll still respect you in the morning.”

Nineteen-year-old Ashley Grills told ABC’s Good Morning America today that she’s been granted immunity in exchange for her testimony against Lori Drew. Ashley, Drew and Drew’s teenage daughter allegedly set up a MySpace account in 2006, purportedly owned by a teenage boy, and used it to strike up a friendship — and then torment and reject — a 13-year-old neighbor, Megan Meier. Megan committed suicide soon after “Josh Evans” “broke up with her.” (more…)

In 2006 Megan Meier, a 13-year-old Missouri girl, began an online friendship with 16-year-old Josh Evans, a boy who’d recently moved into the area and who’d found Megan through their respective MySpace pages. Though they never met or even spoke on the phone — Josh said his family didn’t have a phone yet – Megan and Josh grew very close. Soon Josh’s attitude toward Megan changed, though, and on October 15 he told her, “I don’t know if I want to be friends with you anymore because I’ve heard that you are not very nice to your friends.” (more…)

Last week, an appeals court rejected Asant Kahari’s argument that prosecutors shouldn’t have been allowed to use his autobiography as evidence against him in court: Kahari, see, was convicted of romancing a woman online and then convincing the woman and her mother to cash several checks worth about $39,000 for him (because he claimed not to have a bank account of his own). This was in 2001. In 2002 he published his autobiography, Birth of a Swindler, in which he describes one of his favorite cons: “I would get online, meet a broad and be mailing her the check the next day…”