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ID Thief Tries To Get Witnesses Whacked
adeelarshad82 writes "Pavel Valkovich of Sherman Oaks, CA has pleaded guilty to solicitation of murder, admitting that he attempted to hire hit-men to kill witnesses working with Federal authorities in their investigation of Valkovich's ID theft activities and subsequent crimes. According to the Justice Department: '...Valkovich and others had stolen personal identifying information and used that information to transfer funds from victims' bank accounts to PayPal accounts.'"
Two things amaze me:
One, that you can get more jail time for moving 440,000 from one DB column to another than for trying to have someone killed.
Two, that actual bankers that committed fraud to the tune of trillions were punished by (at most) being handsomely paid off and sentenced to go golfing for the rest of their lives.
What a strange "justice" system we've created for ourselves.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
...his identity must have been stolen!
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Sure, requiring you to go to a licensed notary and have a credit card application notarized might not make it so easy to get credit, but it would also make it harder to get credit in your name.
The banks and credit card companies could do this, but it's more profitable to let people steal your identity and then just jack up fees and interest rates to cover the losses.
Those two terms have something in common -- both were trumped up by people with something to hide and would rather misdirect the public about what is going on.
There is no theft of copyright unless someone somehow convinces the registry office that he is the author and owner of the material. It is "infringement" but that word doesn't sound bad or terrible enough to get people excited.
And there is no "Identity theft" either... well, there is when someone is actively out there claiming to be someone else while that someone else is thereafter doubted as to who he is. Not sure that actually happens though. What identity theft really is is fraud perpetrated against banks and other institutions who created a system by which a person is identified by numbers that are shared frequently and openly. I hesitate to call them secret numbers since every time you participate in the system, you surrender nearly all of your personal identification numbers. The system that has been created is EXTREMELY weak and easy to game. It is also extremely easy and inexpensive for banks, financial institutions and shops to use in doing business. And just like the "credit score" system created by the same people, it puts the burden on the individuals rather than on the people who created and use the systems to their advantage every day.
Seriously, what a great system? They collect all of the advantages, and all disadvantages are shifted to individuals!
Banker says, "no, I was not harmed by this guy who fraudulently stole money from my bank...it was the poor schmuck whose bank account information was used! And I'll tell you something else! I'm holding that poor schmuck responsible for my incompetent system!"
Shop keeper says, "no, I was not harmed by this guy who fraudulently stole property from my store... it was the poor schmuck whose credit card numbers or credit information was used in making the purchase... and I'll tell you something else, I'm holding the poor schmuck responsible for paying the bill! And if he doesn't, I'll file bad credit reports and in some states, file in court to have a judgement against him too!"
The weaknesses of the system are clear and obvious. It is also clear and obvious who is being stolen from. By changing the name from fraud to identity theft, they are attempting to make it less clear and obvious who the victim is.
and the case was a triple murder, drug related, in upper manhattan. this was being tried at the downtown manhattan courthouse
i was winnowed down to the final 20, almost an alternate juror. what surprised me was all of this personal identifying information was being disclosed, about me and a whole bunch of other people, while the defendant, ostensibly a triple murdering drug dealer, with obvious possible ties to organized crime, was sitting there hearing all of this personally identifying info about people who were going to judge him, and he was even taking notes. they were even asking me and others questions about our siblings and what they did (maybe they were asking that because the defendant killed a sibling? i never heard any further details of the crime after i was weaned out and put back in the snooze room)
so why is it, in the us court system at least, that the identity of witnesses and jurors is given so much free play with sleaze bag defendants who usually have no problem ordering hits for all sorts of reasons, not least of which the desire to avoid jail time. surely there can be more anonymity, no? i don't understand the status quo
ps:
notice to anyone who wants to get off jury duty:
when they ask you if you would consider other people's opinion when making up your mind, or if you would make up your mind on your own, answer (in my case honestly), that you wouldn't care what other people on the jury thought, that you would make up your mind on your own... booted
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
An important part of the US court system is to be very open in general. That's why there are specific things in the law like the right to confront your accuser. Well another important part is for your defense team, of which you as the defendant are part, to make sure the jury is truly an unbiased group of your peers. It would invite abuse to have a system where the jurors were a secret group that the defense never got to see.
Yes, it does pose the risk of a defendant attempting to retaliate against jurors, however that is actually extremely rare. It also rarely works out, you'll note that this asshat is now doing more time because of it. There are always tradeoffs, there is no perfect way of doing things and in the US system, transparency of the jury is more important than protecting their identities.
Also, in general you can speak to the judge privately if an answer is something you aren't willing to make in open court. You can request to approach the bench and talk to them about your concern.
A minor setback, really--- clearly he's now just in need of a fourth person willing to commit three murders for hire...
That's an example of the classic "putting fires off" mentality.
A good manager would have sent two assassins for the first target and two more for the assassins themselves. He'd then hire a fifth assassin, of greater skill, to kill whoever was alive at the end of the deals.
To hire such number of assassins, he'd have probaly created a small HR department. And to recoup from this initial investment, he'd capitalize the already prepared team by subcontracting it to other businesses.
I agree there is plenty of blame to go around
However, you seem to think that all people fit into one of those categories.
What you've missed is that there are 'little guys' who didn't take out a loan they couldn't afford, and didn't make a loan to some high risk person.
But these 'little guys' are getting screwed because of each of the parties you mentioned. Some of them have been laid off, some have seen their investments brutalized, some are now stuck in their house because their once 80 LTV is now 105 LTV.
These are a larger percentage of those complaining
Not to mention the same 'evil bankers' that made the loans also pushed to get regulations relaxed, which makes them somewhat more responsible as without their reckless behavior this mess
Now these 'little guys' find out their tax dollars are going to the same companies that got us into the mess while these companies also are basically getting free money to make new loans and start back with business as usual.
At least that's what I complain about and I'm one of those 'little guys'