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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.
Frankly, arrest info shouldn't be published on the Internet at all, though it should be available to those who go in person to a courthouse. It's inexcusable that a cop's whim can ruin a person's reputation and career, even if all charges are later dismissed or judged as not guilty.
Going after the data pimps is a good first step. Next step should be arresting/suing sheriffs and police chiefs who post such info to the Internet so it can be sucked up by data miners.
Wouldn't it be funny if somebody hacked the site and put their mugshots up on it!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
That would make Google page rank to shoot so high, these guys will finally eclipse Rick Santorum.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm not against convictions being available, but tarnishing someone's reputation based on an arrest that may or may not be justified should be illegal. The records have to be available in a courthouse for the defendant to fight the case, but if the case is dropped or the defendant is found not-guilty, they should be destroyed entirely.
Making them available only in person is a barrier to casual searching -- if it's important enough to find out, it's important enough for you to take a trip to the courthouse.
As far as I know, someEU countries don't even publish defendants' names in trials in order to protect them since they're presumed innocent. Not to mention that convictions for more minor crimes typically drop off a person's record after 5-10 years. They're actually concerned about rehabilitation, not pure vengeance.
Good thing someone on Twitter already found them
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
These people are scum, and the charge of extortion is good and valid. If this doesn't stick, I hope a class action lawsuit against these people follows in the civil courts.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
As far as I know, someEU countries don't even publish defendants' names in trials in order to protect them since they're presumed innocent. Not to mention that convictions for more minor crimes typically drop off a person's record after 5-10 years. They're actually concerned about rehabilitation, not pure vengeance.
... and that's why the US has a much higher re-offense rate. EU rehabilitates, the US punishes and tries to ruin the life of anyone who ever committed a crime; regardless of whether it hurts us all as a result. Our criminal system is designed to cut off the nose to spite the face.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It's an important distinction, arrests mean nothing. Convictions mean you were found guilty, plead guilty or chose not to fight it (nolo contendere). The latter I think falls in the public right to know, and while I understand the intent behind forcing someone to a courthouse, I don't think that's reasonable.
But putting up arrest photos is just sleazy. Anyone can be arrested because some cop got a bug up his ass, it doesn't mean you were remotely guilty but posting it might have adverse effects on your life.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is a myth in the US.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I wasn't talking about conviction data (separate discussion), but only about arrest data prior to conviction.
There's a difference between arrest and guilt. Suppose I'm walking down the street and suddenly a police car pulls over and the officers arrest me. Suppose they're acting on a tip that a man fitting my description has been doing some unsavory things to kids in the area. Suddenly, my name is linked to those crimes and anyone searching for me would see that.
Now, let's say that - after a day - the police realize they have the wrong guy, apologize, and release me. I'm sure I'd still be rattled over the situation, but at least it would die down, right? Wrong. This site (and others like it) would still be proclaiming my arrest for this crime, still associating my name with the crime as if I were found guilty and not released with no charges pressed. Years later, people might see this link and judge me based on a case of mistaken identity. Even if it went to trial and I was acquitted, this site would still be blaring my link to the alleged crime as if it were a proven fact that I was guilty.
Arrests should be withheld until charges are pressed. Once charges are pressed, they should be available at a local courthouse. If a defendant is found guilty, then the evidence should be made public.
I won't agree with b0s0z0ku's statement that a not-guilty verdict or dropped case should result in the records being destroyed. There's value to holding onto them if only to tell how often this sort of thing occurs. However, these cases should be released only in aggregate (e.g. "there were 27 dropped cases in Precinct A over the past year") not in detail. Other than that, they should be locked away and regarded as not existing if any future charge is presented or when evaluating a person.
In any event, an arrest mugshot should definitely not be posted worldwide for everyone to see and then left up long after the charges were dropped.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is a myth in the US.
I guess it is a myth, but not the way you mean. People don't get what it means. No one would be arrested or prosecuted if police and prosecutors had to assume everyone was innocent. Innocent until proven guilty applies in very limited places. It also don't apply to the public. I can believe someone is guilty without proof. I can believe anything I want. You have the right to be presumed innocent during your criminal trial. That's it. The rest is all made up.
They allegedly committed extortion.
There is no "allegedly" about their ownership of the company.
I think there's value in the arrest record after the case is dropped or the defendant is found not guilty - but only as an aggregate statistic. If a precinct normally has 30 dropped cases a month and suddenly they spike to 50, something's up and procedures need to be examined. This can be useful but it shouldn't be able to be traced back to the specific person.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
We should create a public service company funded by donations and link every real identity, name and address with every other piece of random information.
There is no way to erase the signal. Only recourse left is to add noise and reduce the signal to noise ratio. In fact it would be a great business idea. For a fee I will link the subscriber's name and address to all kinds of information, some good, some bad, some ugly, some not. In the end anyone looking up the name will get so many links it would be impossible to sort out and find the dirt.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
True. And the defendant themselves should be able to request it by kept, or be given a notarized copy. It's nice to have evidence to sue the pants off a police department or individual cop if an arrest was unjustified.
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.
If you have a right to be presumed innocent during the arrest too - as in, maybe police shouldn't ever draw their guns unless there's a very real threat.
An accusation is neither libel nor slander.
But no, an arrest is not an accusation. No charges are even filed until after you are brought in. The barrier to arrest is simply probably cause.
So you're saying /. is wrong for posting this story on their arrest? I'm confused...
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
What is with the editorializing "That's apparently considered extortion." in the summary?
Yeah, that actually is extortion.
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This wouldn't be a problem if people didn't make judgements based off of arrest records. I'm not saying this wasn't a sleazy business, but it's only a problem because people put value on it.
Yet, if this happened today, your mugshot may have ended up on some shady website like the one mentioned -- thus, you could say "no" to the "have you been convicted?" question, yet still have prospective employers finding out out the arrest.
Yes. It's technically wrong, though sweet, sweet karma. Though I have no problem with the arrest itself, and (hopefully) subsequent steep fines, jail time, and maybe permanent shutdown of the web site and similar dodgy sites.
In some US states, minors' records also get erased at age 18 or 21, so same thing applies.
They should follow up and start charging domain squatters with extortion.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Does this mean Yelp owners will get arrested for their policies that solicit payment to hide bad reviews?
https://www.eastbayexpress.com...
I agree with this, but I'm not sure making information harder to get is the right approach here. The government, especially the police and the criminal justice system, LOVES to make information hard to get. Even when you have the right to the information and there's even an office/process to get it, they have all kinds of gimmicks to essentially deny access.
I think a better approach might be:
1) Make it illegal to sell arrest information -- it can only be obtained from the government, and the government logs all access to the data
2) Make it a civil violation to use arrest information alone to deny employment, housing or any other public accommodation -- $25,000 per violation ought to be enough of a penalty to both scare HR and other managers away, and enough to motivate lawyers to take these cases. Access of arrest data logged to a company or employees IP addresses is prima facie evidence of a violation, which will motivate IT to just block access outright.
Or at least some karma at work.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Frankly, arrest info shouldn't be published on the Internet at all, though it should be available to those who go in person to a courthouse.
Are you saying it ought to be legal for me to go to the courtroom and look up arrest info, but, having done so, it should be illegal for me to discuss it over the internet? I mean, you used the passive voice about 'shouldn't be published' but you haven't explained operationally what you intend.
What's more, this kind of blanket statement is way overbroad for dealing with creeps like these. Extortion/blackmail is a well defined crime that properly suits these jackasses without making huge policy changes.
If they maliciously arrest someone, there's plenty of more serious things to get the officer with.
If it's an honest accident, or done without malice, it's not libel/slander.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
If you're willing to wait 20 minutes for the clerk to sloooowly pull up each (paper) record, you could discuss it. The point is to make it onerous and expensive to pick up such info.
also some people use jail as there doctor for stuff that the ER does not do.
You have the right to be presumed innocent during your criminal trial. That's it.
If the public has been convinced of your guilt, how is a jury, made up of members of the public, to presume you innocent during a criminal trial?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I won't agree with b0s0z0ku's statement that a not-guilty verdict or dropped case should result in the records being destroyed. There's value to holding onto them if only to tell how often this sort of thing occurs. However, these cases should be released only in aggregate (e.g. "there were 27 dropped cases in Precinct A over the past year") not in detail. Other than that, they should be locked away and regarded as not existing if any future charge is presented or when evaluating a person.
The records of acquittal need to be retained to avoid double jeopardy.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
As far as I know, someEU countries don't even publish defendants' names in trials in order to protect them since they're presumed innocent. Not to mention that convictions for more minor crimes typically drop off a person's record after 5-10 years. They're actually concerned about rehabilitation, not pure vengeance.
I work in one of the wealthy suburbs in the North Shore of Chicago, and once in a while I leaf through one of the incredibly boring suburban newspapers from places like Northbrook or Glencoe. There is *always* a "police blotter" type column, where they seem to report every last arrest that took place in their suburb, and they make a point of identifying the arrestee as specifically as possible ("Robert Eric Smith, aged 37, of Waukegan, IL"). None of the arrests are remotely newsworthy-- they are mostly someone who was caught shoplifting, or caught with a joint, or caught driving with a suspended license, or something similar. (I also have noticed that the ones who were driving were invariably pulled over for something very minor or nebulous, like "improper lane usage"-- probably they were pulled over for driving a beater car in a town full of one-percenters). Of course, these papers absolutely never publish a followup story to tell us whether the person was convicted or not.
In other words, I agree with the policy of these EU countries, and indeed this is the standard I was taught to follow when I took journalism classes in high school. It's just unfortunate that so many newspapers follow the exact opposite of this policy.
"YO DAWG I heard you like extorting people over mugshots so we took your mugshot and put it on mugshot.com so you can extort yourself for putting your mugshot up on mugshot.com while you put your mughshot up on mugshot.com so you can extort yourself for
STACK OVERFLOW
CORE DUMPED
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Arrests do mean something though, because they influence the public's opinion. Lots of arrests means a better chance of the sheriff being re-elected, whether or not there is a conviction in court. They post these records and photos precisely so that the general public thinks that law enforcement is being effective.
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.
They don't need to use "allegedly" about the arrest, they could just say "name/cause of arrest" or whatever that field is called on the arrest form and let people do all the implying and insinuating themselves. If they stuck strictly to doing that it'd be very hard to convict them of libel/slander as truth is a valid defense, even when you tell only a tiny bit of it that puts the person in a very bad light.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That's not how suspicion works.
you'll be sending formal letters every 2 weeks to tell some creditor or another that you didn't borrow money from them. And you better stay on top of it or they'll kill your credit unless you pay them.
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This is actually much more complex that it seems at first glance. Why are arrests public because nothing is more dangerous than secret arrests, disappearing people, so they have to be public, very public, to protect the individual being arrested. News service report the arrest and they no longer delete the stories as they did in days of yore by virtue of the fact looking up old newspapers was a laborious task and of course nobody really recorded TV news.
Now this stuff stays published for life. The biggest onus for false arrest should be on the police and they should be required to publish an apology and pay restitution. The state should not be allowed to get away with false arresting anyone, they should be required to undo all harm caused and penalties should be applied, dependent upon how egregious the false arrest is.
Where the individuals went wrong was being selective about removing data, that selectiveness was based around the harm they knew they were causing and greed. They set out to cause harm and extort money in order to minimise that harm, they set out to harass people to extort them into paying them to stop that harassment. They would have been safe if they had not filtered, if they had not been aware of the harm they were purposefully causing and if they had to demonstrated intent to cause harm and charge fees to stop causing harm. Somewhat similar to a protection racket and probably subject to similar Rico style charges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... the charges could mount quite alarmingly for them due to the organised nature of their activity.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Not a good idea. Sometimes the arrest record is important for specific jobs.
Check this example - on page 34, non-conviction is presented in a Vulaerable Sector records check, which is meant for those taking care of those who are vulnerable due to special circumstances (disability, age, etc.) In this case, the arrest record gets disclosed if there's more than one offence, where said offence matches the schedule of relevant offenses (e.g. sexual offences for all vulnerable persons, theft/fraud for adult vulnerable persons), and the victims meet the definition of a vulnerable person.
Of course, this arrest record is only important to a small pool of job types. Everything else should be happy enough with just the criminal record rather than the arrest record.
That's bullshit. A CONVICTION should be an issue for certain job types. Being arrested should mean precisely dick. Otherwise, we don't have a society where one is innocent until proven guilty, and that's not a society I'd like to live in.
A HR manager will just rule out anyone applying for work that has any police history. Why not, there are plenty of other applicants. And the cops would not be arresting people for no reason, even if they could not get enough evidence to convict.
Welcome to the real world.
That would be other Western countries (or at least the one I reside in). Arrests/complaints are logged, but are not "public" in that there's a livestream or where random businesses can collect that information without consent of the indiviudal.
Even with the "secret" arrest record, that is also disallowed. Arresting/detaining people without charging them is unconstitutional, as is holding them until their "eventual" release. Doing so in a discriminatory manner is also unconstitutional as well. Such behavior is also unlikely to reach one of the permitted exceptions as well. Such violations are rare, and appear to be more of a casual mistake that gets contained easily.
Compare this to the US, which still required a supreme court case to confirm that there was already a constitutional right to retain legal council (Gideon v. Wainwright, a.k.a. states still disagree with amendments they ratified), and currently has a wave of civil forfeiture where police simply seize property from random people without charging them with crimes (plus their recourse is "expensive" and not guaranteed.) It's almost like the USA doesn't have a constitution.
Do they have to pay themselves to remove their own mugshots?
- Sig
I'm glad that Slashdot is slowly coming around to the idea that the right to be forgotten is a good one.
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If the public has been convinced of your guilt, how is a jury, made up of members of the public, to presume you innocent during a criminal trial?
The jury must judge on the evidence. At the moment the trial starts, they have heard zero evidence against you, so according to the evidence they heard, you are innocent. As the trial proceeds and evidence is heard, both against you and for you, that will change.
What they are not allowed to do is to judge you based on anything that isn't presented as evidence in court.
I recall a case of a privately-run prison in the US that was paid a certain amount from the government for each prisoner it held. To increase profits, the prison paid a kickback to a local judge every time he sentenced somebody to serve prison time. I can imagine something similar happening with this kind of website, but with kickbacks being paid to police officers.
For example, officer 1 arrests 100 people, but only 3 pay to get their details removed from the website, so he gets a small kickback. In contrast, officer 2 arrests only 20 people but 15 of them pay to get their details removed from the website, so he gets a larger kickback. The higher extortion rate of officer 2 might be due to demographic profiling, perhaps assisted by AI.
The successful use of demographic profiling and AI suggests that there may not necessarily be a noticeable spike in arrest rates to warn about such corruption.
In Louisville Kentucky they have
free monthly newspapers (that they have literally EVERYWHERE) featuring the mugshots of everyone, with stats!
I was working down there for 3 months, and we used to take them around, and get them autographed:)
You'd hear people bragging about making the paper!
http://www.wave3.com/story/317...
MUGSHOTS: APRIL 2018 ROUNDUP
Apr 4, 2018 10:22 AM
See who's been arrested this month in WAVE Country and read about the crimes they're accused of committing. An arrest is not a presumption of guilt. (Click each mugshot for more.)
Given the prevalence of false accusations in divorce cases and 'arrest the man' policies in domestic violence situations (even where he's the victim) even that use of the arrest record is flawed, wrong and should not be happening.
This is actually much more complex that it seems at first glance. Why are arrests public because nothing is more dangerous than secret arrests, disappearing people, so they have to be public, very public, to protect the individual being arrested.
I think paying a small fee for a record check at a local courthouse or being able to call a precinct and ask was 'so and so' arrested is public enough. We don't need Slammer magazines at the gas station shaming people for tabloid entertainment or the local news site pushing them all online so thousands of locals can browse looking for coworkers. The arrest itself, being made excessively public, is enough to ruin someone regardless if it is BS or not. I've gotten arrested for absoultely stupid shit before and the cop just threw whatever he could at me to see what would stick (which subsequently got thrown out at court). Thankfully that was before this crap went online.
If only false accusations were illegal enough to encourage arresting people that make them.
They are. It's just that the law is exceedingly selectively enforced.
I think we could easily crowdfund the money to pay a clerk $20 an hour wait in line for records and scan/OCR them to a central location.
So long as you aren't extorting people to remove it, I don't see a problem.
A conviction is already an issue for certain job types. For even more certain job types, whether it's working with vulnerable people or to get some Top Secret clearance, it's also of interest to have the arrest record.
The arrest record is also disclosed when there's a pattern of arrests where the victim is a vulnerable person, and patterns tend to be a good indicator of potential problems. Also, the reason why the arrests haven't lead to a conviction is also documented, thus false accusations will also be detailed as well. Even if the vulnerable sector check finds an issue, the person should still be able to find employment in related positions that don't require high-end checks.
Speaking of "innocent until proven guilty", why not challenge the concept behind the Vulnerable Sector check? If it is an actual infringement on people's rights, then it shouldn't be too hard to have it struck down.