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Prison Inmate Emails His Own Release Instructions To the Prison

Posted by Soulskill on from the just-crazy-enough-to-work dept.

Bruce66423 writes: A fraudster used a mobile phone while inside a UK prison to email the prison a notice for him to be released. The prison staff then released him. The domain was registered in the name of the police officer investigating him, and its address was the court building. The inmate was in prison for fraud — he was originally convicted after calling several banks and getting them to send him upwards of £1.8 million.

8 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. This Guy's Talents Should be Put to Good Use by americanpossum · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sounds like this guy is more clever than most of the constables and prison officials in the article. Perhaps MI5 should hire him for penetration testing instead of putting him in jail!

    1. Re:This Guy's Talents Should be Put to Good Use by hey! · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, in the end you have to ask "did he get away with it?". Or, given that he turned himself in later, "did he have some purpose in escaping that he fulfilled?"

      Intelligence is a multi-dimensional phenomenon. It includes things like thinking through unintended consequences before acting that quite clever people are sometimes bad at.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  2. He's good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    He won his freedoms and deserves them. Not to mention that defrauding banksters isn't the crime it is made out to be. Godspeed to the guy, let's hope he gets to spend his hard-stolen $1.8mil.

    1. Re:He's good. by Shimbo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This thread is all kind of moot, since the victims weren't banks anyway. He defrauded companies by claiming to from a bank.

    2. Re:He's good. by Grishnakh · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't think he's calling all banks everywhere evil, he's really talking about the big banks. They are evil: they wrecked the economy, then got paid for it with taxpayer dollars.

      There are other banks that aren't so bad, but they're usually much smaller, confined to one state or local area usually. Credit unions are also usually pretty good.

      But banks like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and worst of all HSBC are evil through-and-through.

      As for regulation, that'd be nice, wouldn't it? Too bad we can't have that.

  3. It happens... by JonWan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The place I worked as a guard had this happen. We held inmates from a bunch of counties in several states. One of the PDs fax machine broke and they would go across the street to Kinkos and fax release orders on their letterhead. After a while they would just use paper without the letterhead. An inmates wife simply faxed an improvised release form and we sent her husband home. He got cought when he arrived because the PD had no release on file. Everything changed after that, a phone call was required with proper ID.

    1. Re:It happens... by TWX · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I had to go through jury selection a few months back for a capital case, going through three or four rounds of appearances and interviews. Part of what struck me about the experience is how incredibly poor the paperwork was. They gave us number cards when there were 250+ people to go through in my group, they were all handwritten even though the numbers corresponded with the computer-generated numbers we were assigned when the original mailing for service was sent. Forms and questionnaires looked like they were generated in Clarisworks by first-time users in elementary school. Nothing had letterhead, nothing had any sort of official feel.

      Your story about no letterhead and using fax machines is totally believable to me, and I'm amazed that it isn't abused more often.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  4. A for Effort by JimSadler · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I know the actions were criminal but I sort of admire the guy. It makes me wonder about human nature and it did take a lot of talent to do what he did. Somebody will make a movie out of this and we will hear from this guy again. With his talents he just has to keep on doing this stuff.