Slashdot Mirror
Alleged Owners of Mugshots.com Have Been Arrested For Extortion (lawandcrime.com)
Reader schwit1 writes: The alleged owners of Mugshots.com have been charged and arrested. These four men Sahar Sarid, Kishore Vidya Bhavnanie, Thomas Keesee, and David Usdan only removed a person's mugshot from the site if this individual paid a "de-publishing" fee, according to the California Attorney General on Wednesday. That's apparently considered extortion. On top of that, they also face charges of money laundering, and identity theft.
If you read a lot of articles about crime, then you're probably already familiar with the site (which is still up as of Friday afternoon). They take mugshots, slap the url multiple times on the image, and post it on the site alongside an excerpt from a news outlet that covered the person's arrest. According to the AG's office, the owners would only remove the mugshots if the person paid a fee, even if the charges were dismissed. This happened even if the suspect was only arrested because of "mistaken identity or law enforcement error." You can read the affidavit here.
If you read a lot of articles about crime, then you're probably already familiar with the site (which is still up as of Friday afternoon). They take mugshots, slap the url multiple times on the image, and post it on the site alongside an excerpt from a news outlet that covered the person's arrest. According to the AG's office, the owners would only remove the mugshots if the person paid a fee, even if the charges were dismissed. This happened even if the suspect was only arrested because of "mistaken identity or law enforcement error." You can read the affidavit here.
I don't think officers should be open for libel for arresting a person. There should definitely be false arrest charges if it can be proven that the officers knowingly targeted an innocent person for some reason. However, if it's just a case of mistaken identity or not enough evidence, the officers were just doing their job. Police officers have the ability to do many things that normal citizens can't do because their job demands it.
Now the Mugshots website, on the other hand, could definitely be open to libel charges. They are insinuating that an individual is linked to a crime merely because that person was arrested. As I understand it, they didn't use terms like "allegedly" (which all decent news organizations will use to avoid slander/libel suits), but instead simply said "John Jackson/Robbery." By doing so, they are implying that John Jackson was found guilty of robbery when he wasn't. Even if charges were dropped, the site kept that link up and - even worse - charged people for the "privilege" of having this link to a crime they didn't commit removed.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.