HOPE Speaker Rombom Charged with Witness Tampering

An anonymous reader writes "Steven Rombom -- a.k.a. "Steven Rambam" -- the licensed private investigator who was arrested Saturday by FBI agents minutes before his talk on privacy at the Hope Number Six hacker convention in New York -- is being charged with witness tampering and obstruction of justice in a money laundering case the government is pursuing against Albert Santoro, a former Brooklyn assistant district attorney, according to Washingtonpost.com's Security Fix blog. The government alleges that Santoro hired Rombom to locate a government confidential informant whom Santoro accuses of entrapment, and that Rombom visited the informant's in-laws under the guise of an FBI agent and tried to convince them tha their son-in-law was a danger to their daughter and grandkids."

Comments

Oops

[dotslashdot]

Before the details came out, I was a little concerned with FBI heavyhanded tactics. Now that the details are out, sounds like this Rambam guy will be spending time in the Slamslam.

Re:Oops

[Ian Wolf]

Not me I was hoping for a big Waco-esque showdown with guns, tear gas, bullhorns, and dead bodies strewn all over the dais. What a bummer. I guess I can't spend all day bitchin' about the guv'ment all day on /.

Nothing to see here.

Re:Oops

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it have been entertaining if they had grabbed him in the middle of the talk

Rambam: "Look at how much dirt I can dig up one line, nobody is safe!"

FBI: "Sir, please come with us, you're under arrest."

Rambam: "Say what?"

Re:Probably Lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh... yes, it's always wise to assume that if you see it on HBO, it must be true.

Simpsons quote:

[Kenja]

"This reporter promises to be more trusting and less vigilant in the future."

Re:So we don't have to hate the FBI for this?

[kfg]

. . .the other side had a valid point you didn't know about.

Among the evidence accumulated against him so far; a bumper sticker on Steve's car that reads:

What would Jim Rockford do?

KFG

Depends what they were trying to achieve

[NickFortune]

Unless of course he was going to say something that someone else didn't want said

Silly? Yes. Paranoid? Possibly.

But if it wasn't connected to the content of his presentation, he could have taken five minutes after as easily as he could five minutes before.

Re:So much for all the love and sympathy

[whitehatlurker]

However the conspiracy theorist had theorised he is being prosecuted for his activities related to the conference [...] It turned out to be completely unrelated... Imagine that...

Sorry, but you'll never be a conspiracy theorist with thinking like that.

The fact that there is a cover story implies that there is a reason for a cover up and therefore the conspiracy can take a different direction. Of course, if there was nothing said that would be very damning and the original conspiracy theory would have been proven true.

(Mods: this is meant to be a joke - please mod down for offtopic, not flamebait.)

Re:So what did he actually do??

[kfg]

KFG is the only person who remotely looks like anyone with half a brain.

If I could only find my Missing Piece.

KFG

Re:The hills are alive...

[E 99]

It's not like he was an immediate threat, and they might've learned something from the presentation.

...and then by the time they call him back to the stage recieve first prize for his presentation, he'll have snuck off to a convent, and then across the mountains to Switzerland, and freedom! ...Dude! Snap out of it! You're having another one of your bad Sound of Music trips!