Prison Inmate Emails His Own Release Instructions To the Prison

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.

Comments

Sounds like Prime Minister material

[smittyoneeach]

Amiright?

This Guy's Talents Should be Put to Good Use

[americanpossum]

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!

Re:This Guy's Talents Should be Put to Good Use

[dotancohen]

Perhaps MI5 should hire him for penetration testing instead of putting him in jail!

I think that having inmates penetration test each other is common only in American jails.

Re:This Guy's Talents Should be Put to Good Use

[pushing-robot]

Dotan, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?

Re:This Guy's Talents Should be Put to Good Use

[hey!]

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.

Re: This Guy's Talents Should be Put to Good Use

[Barny]

You ever seen a grown man naked?

Did he roll out of the prison?

[Anonymous Coward]

With balls like this, he is probably unable to walk...

He watched Idiocracy

[nitehawk214]

"Hey, guys, let this dumbass out!"

Every day it seems more like a documentary. At least this time it wasn't Americans being the complete idiots.

It happens...

[JonWan]

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.

Re:It happens...

[TWX]

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.

Re:He's good.

[Shimbo]

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

A for Effort

[JimSadler]

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.

Kicking themselves

[CanadianMacFan]

I bet those guys in Quebec are kicking themselves. Here they went to all of the trouble to get a helicopter to break them out of jail and all they had to do is send an email!

Re:You are wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Its the 99% of bad banks that give the other 1% a bad reputation.

Re:He's good.

[Sarten-X]

Having worked in finance, I can assure you that pretty much everyone* has access to investment vehicles with a larger return than 2%. The problem is that those investments are significantly more risky than a bank, and losing the investment is unlikely to be catastrophic to someone with a large supply of other diversified assets, but it could be catastrophic to someone with only a weekly paycheck to fall back on.

The solution to that problem is to properly diversify your investments for safety. An investment adviser can help with that, but they'll charge a fee for their work, and many people feel (accurately or not) they can't afford that service. There are books and other resources to assist someone in wisely choosing their own investments, but that requires ambition, effort, and the admission that one is not naturally a financial expert. That last part seems to be the most difficult to come by.

* American, not already in excessive debt, with a stable income... some disclaimers apply, but the vast majority of the American population qualifies, not just those who fall under the "rich" label.

Re:Remember 'Catch me if you can?'

[I'm New Around Here]

You don't think Charles will make a good Queen?