Hoax Museum Blog: Law/Police/Crime

Clay iPads — At least 10 people in Vancouver who bought iPad 2s have reported opening up the packaging only to discover it contained a slab of modeling clay, not an iPad. It's an old strategy for thieves to conceal their crime by replacing the item in the box with something of lesser value. Reminds me of the case from 2006 of the Hawaiian boy who opened an iPod box on Christmas Day, only to discover it contained a package of meat. Link: Yahoo!
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012.   Comments (1)

Manhattan School Employees Behaving Badly — Two stories have been in the news recently about Manhattan school employees who were somewhat derelict in their commitment to the truth.

The first was Joan Barnett, a parent coordinator, who, in order to get two-and-a-half weeks of vacation, claimed her daughter "Xinia Daley Herman" had died. Her mistake: she submitted a death certificate with weird, misaligned fonts. When busted, she initially claimed her daughter really had "died of a heart condition." But eventually she broke down and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. It's not clear from the article if she really had a daughter with that name. Link: National Post

The second is teacher Mona Lisa Tello, who submitted a fake jury duty letter to get out of class for two weeks. Her mistake: the letter was full of misspellings ('trail' instead of 'trial,' 'manger' instead of 'manager'). Link: NY Daily News

Both Barnett and Tello lost their jobs. So now they have all the vacation time they could possibly want.
Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012.   Comments (0)

Parents of Balloon Boy receive their sentence — Richard Heene is going to have to serve 90 days -- 30 in jail and 60 in a work-release program. Mayumi Heene has 20 days in jail. Prosecutors have asked that they also pay $47,000 in restitution. They're also barred from making any money from the incident. So no money from book deals. Link: LA Times
Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2009.   Comments (6)

The Snail in the Ginger Beer — Two weeks ago I linked to a BBC article by Clive Coleman about the case of the carbolic smoke ball. He must be doing a series on interesting legal cases, because he's back with a great article about the legal case of the snail found in ginger beer. Quick summary — In 1928 May Donoghue claimed to find a snail in her bottle of ginger beer. Her complaint eventually helped bring about modern consumer protection laws in the UK. The catch: "to this day, no-one knows for sure if there ever really was a snail in May Donoghue's bottle of ginger beer."

I should add this case to my list of Gross Things Found in Food.
Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2009.   Comments (2)


Should privacy laws protect murderers? — From wired.com:

Wikipedia is under a censorship attack by a convicted murderer who is invoking Germany’s privacy laws in a bid to remove references to his killing of a Bavarian actor in 1990.
Lawyers for Wolfgang Werle, of Erding, Germany, sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding removal of Werle’s name from the Wikipedia entry on actor Walter Sedlmayr. The lawyers cite German court rulings that “have held that our client’s name and likeness cannot be used anymore in publication regarding Mr. Sedlmayr’s death.”

Occasionally I receive requests from people I've posted about, in regard to some hoax or fraud they committed in the past. They want me to remove or anonymize their name, because any google search for them immediately brings up MOH as the top link. They complain that it's become impossible for them to escape the stupid thing they did in their past. Depending on what they did (for instance, if it was a prank or petty crime), and how long ago they did it, I will consider anonymizing their last name by reducing it to a single letter. After all, I think people do deserve a second chance, and I don't want to be the one responsible for single-handedly casting a shadow over the rest of their life. But in the case of murder I think it's going too far to expect to have the slate wiped entirely clean.
Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2009.   Comments (11)

Rescue Dummy, Get Robbed — What you get for trying to be a hero nowadays:

A man was attacked and robbed after he jumped into a lake believing a boy was drowning, only to find it was a dummy.
The dog walker was approached by a "distressed" couple in Foxes Forest, Portsmouth, who said their son had been attacked by a swan in nearby water.
When the 48-year-old jumped into the lake and discovered the dummy he saw the man going through his coat pockets.

Link: BBC
Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009.   Comments (0)

Man Sues Over Lack of Axe Effect — A news story is circulating claiming that an Indian man, 26-year-old Vaibhav Bedi, has sued Axe deodorant (aka Lynx in Europe) because he failed to land a single girlfriend after using their product for seven years. It's in The Australian and the Daily Record, among other news sources.

This is an example of satire being mistaken as news. According to Asylum.com:

Axe spokesperson Heather Mitchell sent Asylum this statement:
"We've been following the news reports from India where a man was allegedly planning to take legal action for the Axe Effect not working for him personally. We can confirm this is a hoax. In fact the story originated from TheFakingNews.com. While the story is not true, we have to admit that it's pretty funny and the joke itself is very much in line with our brand tone -- playful, with a wink and a nudge. While Axe grooming products can help guys look, smell and feel great, there is only so much we can do; the rest is up to guys themselves."

Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009.   Comments (2)

Perverted Big Brother — Nine Turkish women thought they had signed up to participate in a reality show. Instead, they had fallen into the clutches of a pornographer, who kept them imprisoned for two months while selling naked photos of them on the internet. "The women were not abused or harassed sexually. They were told however, to fight each other, to wear bikinis and dance by villa's pool." Turkish police finally realized what was going on and freed them. [msnbc.com]
Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2009.   Comments (1)

Thieves steal fake phones — Not the brightest thieves in the world:

Employees at a Telefonica Movistar cell-phone store in Morelia, Mexico say they arrived Tuesday morning to find that the store had been broken into.
An examination of the shop revealed the only items missing were hollow replica phones for display that are completely useless for making calls.
Employees say the clueless thieves overlooked real cell phones and cash in another part of the shop.
[Associated Press]
Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2009.   Comments (2)

Hello Kitty Taser — The Hello Kitty Taser raised the ire of Justin Yu at CNET who wrote:

The existence of this Hello Kitty taser gun makes me want to open it up and point it at my head. You have to question the intentions of these designers...is the gun supposed to make little girls less fearful about attacking their in-store competition? Maybe it's meant to fool criminals into thinking their victims are unarmed, only to be met with 50,000 volts of adorable electricity.

Only subsequently did he realize that it was simply "a Photoshopped picture of Taser's "Metallic Pink" version of the C2 gun."

Hello Kitty guns seem to be a popular meme.
Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2009.   Comments (9)

Fake Chinese ‘Made in India’ Garments sold in Nigeria — The commerce department of India is considering filing a formal diplomatic complaint against China because of Chinese garments being sold in Nigeria with fake "Made in India" tags. I'm sure it's a serious diplomatic matter, but if you could just somehow add a Russian gangster and a Spanish prisoner into the mix, you'd have a perfect storm of scam artists. [Economic Times]
Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2009.   Comments (4)

The Jiffy Prank — Apparently there's a tradition of past employees of Jiffy Lube breaking into the store and stealing the bleeder valve on the compressor, thus rendering the machine useless. It's called the "Jiffy prank." At least, that's the excuse Paul Marvella is giving to explain why he took the valve. He later returned it, but nevertheless the store is charging him with felony commercial burglary. [Hernando Today]
Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2009.   Comments (3)

Honesty Cafes — As part of an ongoing effort to battle a culture of corruption, the Indonesian government is opening Honesty Cafes, designed to teach people the value of honesty. Snacks and drinks are available, and you pay on the honor system, putting your money into a clear plastic box. From the NY Times:

The attorney general’s office says the honesty cafes will nip in the bud corrupt tendencies among the young and straighten out those known for indulging in corrupt practices, starting with civil servants. By shifting the responsibility of paying correctly to the patrons themselves, the cafes are meant to force people to think constantly about whether they are being honest and, presumably, make them feel guilty if they are not.

It's a cute idea, but I think the reasoning behind it is flawed, because even if people behave honestly in the cafes, that doesn't mean the behavior is going to transfer to other contexts.
Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009.   Comments (5)

Barbecued Cats? — After receiving a complaint that some residents of a Houston apartment complex were barbecuing stray cats, the Bureau of Animal Regulation and Control investigated but determined the complaint was a hoax. But their conclusion isn't that reassuring, because after analyzing bone fragments from nearby dumpsters, the bureau did find that "There are animals that have been consumed that are similar to the size and structure of a cat."

So, if not cats, what were these animals that were consumed? Small dogs? Giant rats? Chupacabras?

Also, this is news to me. According to Texas Penal Code 49.02, it's legal to cook and eat cats "as long as it's a wild or stray cat and was not killed in a cruel manner." But you're not allowed to cook your pet cat.
Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009.   Comments (11)

Burglar chews through steel bars — A news story (credited to the Chongqing Business Daily) is circulating about a recently apprehended burglar whose method of operation was to gain access to homes by chewing through steel window bars. From Ananova:

Detectives in Nanjimen region, Chongqing, were puzzled by continuous reports of break-ins through caged windows.
"Through our investigations, we found the grids had been cut but with deep tooth prints," a local police spokesman told the Chongqing Business Daily.
Eventually, their inquiries led them to interview a man who revealed he was sharing a hotel room with a man who could crack walnuts with his teeth.
Police brought in the man, Xiong, 23, for questioning and he confessed that he was behind the burglaries.
He revealed that he had turned to crime after failing to find a job and could not even remember how many houses he had broken into over the last two years.
Xiong told police he had grown up in a mountain town and had developed strong, sharp teeth by using them to open the walnuts which grew there in abundance.
He had found that he could chew open any steel bars up to 1cm in thickness, by prising open welding spots with his teeth.
"I only failed once in the past two years. Once I bit on a 2cm thick steel grid, and the first bite nearly dislocated my jaw," he said.
"I never take other tools with me when breaking in. That's why I never got stopped by patrolling officers at night."

Biting through steel bars was a stunt performed by strongmen back in the 1920s. Shorpy.com has a picture of Siegmund Breitbart, who claimed he could bite through steel chains. And steelworker Gust Lessis (pictured) claimed to be able to break a railroad spike with his teeth.

Still, Xiong's claim sounds pretty farfetched. I'm going to list it as undetermined.

Thanks, Ferret!
Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009.   Comments (1)

Frivolous (fake) lawsuits — The Lebanon Daily News confesses to coming down with a bad case of the Gullibility Virus. In a recent article they whipped themselves into a state of righteous indignation about a series of frivolous lawsuits. They had read about the lawsuits in an email. (Best part: they titled the article "Sad but true"). A reader later wrote to them:

Austin woman awarded $80,000 for tripping over her own son in store? Fabricated. Los Angeles man trying to steal hubcap gets $74,000 when target vehicle runs over his hand. Never happened. Pennsylvania man gets half a million for being trapped in garage he was trying to burglarize? Bogus. Little Rock man gets $14,500 for being bit by a dog he was shooting with a pellet gun? Hoax. Lancaster woman gets $113,500 for slipping on a soda she threw at her boyfriend? Tell us her name and the lawsuit’s case number. Delaware woman gets $12,500 for injuries while trying to sneak into nightclub? Fiction. Oklahoma lady gets $1.75 million for leaving RV on cruise control while she makes sandwich in back? Balderdash.

The LDN admits to sloppy research, but points out that one of the cases in the email was true, the infamous McDonalds coffee-burn case brought by Stella Liebeck. I'm probably one of the few people who thinks Stella Liebeck had a decent case, because, in my opinion, McDonalds was keeping their coffee too hot. I've had this argument with plenty of people, and no one has ever agreed with me.
Thanks, Joe!
Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2009.   Comments (14)

Fooled by Crunchberries — This case sounded so stupid to me that at first I thought it had to be a joke, but here's the actual ruling, Sugawara v. PepsiCo, Inc., so apparently it's true.

Janine Sugawara filed suit against PepsiCo, maker of Cap'n Crunch's CrunchBerries, alleging she had been deceived by their marketing into believing that crunchberries were real fruit, only to learn, to her dismay, that the product contained "no berries of any kind."

The judge threw the case out, noting, "The survival of the instant claim would require this Court to ignore all concepts of personal responsibility and common sense."

Sugawara is a serial litigant (pun intended). She had previously filed suit against the maker of Froot Loops for similar reasons. Link: Lowering the Bar
Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009.   Comments (10)

The Bonnie Sweeten Abduction Hoax — Philadelphia Mom Bonnie Sweeten had apparently been embezzling money from a charity where she worked for years. Fearing that she was about to be found out, she fled to Orlando with her daughter, but not before concocting a hoax about being abducted by two black men who rear-ended her SUV. (She placed a call to 911, pretending she was locked in the trunk of the black men's car.)

I guess the hoax was intended to cover her tracks, but I'm not sure if it didn't simply increase police scrutiny, making them search more closely for her than they otherwise would have. Obvious signs that her call was a hoax: a) the call was placed miles from the scene where she said the abduction occurred; b) police soon found her car, unharmed; c) police then identified Sweeten on airport video, boarding a flight to Orlando with her daughter. The police tracked Sweeten down in Orlando and arrested her.

If someone wanted to disappear effectively, I would think they should slip away quietly, to give themselves as much of a head start as possible. And also avoid airports and other places with lots of security cameras.

Links: Yahoo! News, Philly.com.
Posted: Fri May 29, 2009.   Comments (2)

Moms Behaving Badly — A dispute between two young girls escalated into an online fight between the mothers. The mother of one of the girls posted an ad on Craigslist offering sex with men, and listed the phone number of the other girl's mother as the contact. Twenty-two people called the number. The woman has now been charged with aggravated harrassment. [Newsday]
Posted: Mon May 11, 2009.   Comments (2)

Pigeon Drop Scam Becomes Robbery — There's a report of a pigeon drop scam in which the scammers approached a woman at an ATM and tried to convince her to buy a diamond (that was supposedly such a bargain that she'd easily make a profit if she resold it). But in this case the scammers got tired of haggling with her and eventually just grabbed her money and ran. Which means that the scammers are now guilty of grand theft. [Mercury News]
Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009.   Comments (6)

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