Articles Posted in Cyber Crimes

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Earlier this week, when I said ” Tomorrow: Back To Bullying!” in the Boston Criminal Lawyer Blog I had intended to be writing myself about the South Hadley Bullying/Indictments issue. Unfortunately, this week’s schedule made it impossible for me to do so…for a few days (sorry about that). In the meantime, though, it would appear that just about everybody else was covering for me.

In an article today, the Boston Globe puts the cap on the week’s coverage by declaring that “Witch hunts won’t bring Phoebe Prince back“.

The article went on to discuss how the local world has spent the week condemning South Hadley school administrators for the girl’s tragic suicide. Apparently, the Globe indicates that said “witch hunters” are passing such judgment without benefit of all the facts, going further to explain that, under the law, school officials are constrained in what they can say about students or the school’s actions.

Since I have spent some time over the past couple of years condemning witch hunts, the article caught my attention. Let me review some of the history of this matter for you.
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This week, the Boston Criminal Lawyer Blog has focused on what so many in Massachusetts and beyond have been talking about. The topic is “bullying”. It is a somewhat vague term that schools and summer camps have endured since we decided to group kids together in one place.

For some reason, though, we do not care about summer camps for now, so we continue to simply focus on schools because that was the setting of the recent suicide.

Some other states are actually looking at us in wonder. They are wondering why it has taken us so long to “catch up”. You see, some other states already have laws banning bullying. By the way, some other states still have laws on the books banning “copulation” too.

I kind of like to look at Massachusetts as a Commonwealth that does not need to mindlessly follow the lead of other jurisdictions though. After all, we were the first state to legalize gay marriage. We have recently realized that having a small amount of marijuana for personal use is not necessarily a threat to humanity (although for someone to have given it to someone for their personal use is…but that is a different topic).

The point is that we, as an independent state, can think for ourselves. What I am trying to urge with this is topic is that we do actually think. Not simply act by knee-jerk and not make decisions based on publicity or political goals.

Nine kids are already indicted. Unless there is a dismissal, they are most likely already done. Once they are arraigned, their record is marked and will be for many years. I’ve kicked that dead pony enough this week. Let’s just make one last point on it before we move on to the legislature’s attempts to curtail bullying.
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People are furious in and out of Massachusetts. The people of Ireland are angry at South Hadley, Massachusetts. The people of South Hadley are “enraged” at South Hadley High School. District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel, daring da from Western Massachusetts, is angry at nine kids. Oh yeah, speaking of the 9 kids who get to have their lives ruined next Tuesday…I wonder who they are made at. Maybe their attorneys will tell us during the arraignment.

You see, something that I pointed out in the Boston Criminal Lawyer Blog yesterday has begun to dawn the local populace. The daring da’s annulment of criminal culpability and earlier admissions aside, it turns out that staff members at the school did know that the late Phoebe Prince was the target of harassment long before her death.

And so, not missing a beat, residents and public officials have been begun to angrily accuse the school system of neglecting vulnerable students and have called on top administrators to resign. “Now we find out they knew all along, and did nothing,” said Joe Marois, who runs a local construction company. “People are just bewildered they didn’t step in, and are wondering why they weren’t included with the students in the prosecution.”

Is the next step a superseding criminal indictment by the daring da? Perhaps the legislature will begin work on a new ANTI-TURNING-YOUR BACK WHEN PEOPLE IN YOUR CHARGE ARE BEING HARASSED bill.!
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After writing yesterday’s Boston Criminal Lawyer Blog, I went back to my daily business of practicing law. Then, I took a look at some of the latest news and commentaries regarding the indictments about which we “spoke” yesterday as well as the pending legislation regarding bullying.

I started with Boston.com, were I found the positive spin that, “So, finally, an adult in authority in South Hadley stepped up for Phoebe Prince.” This was, of course, applauding District Attorney Betsy Scheibel who has indicted nine youths who apparently bullied the late Phoebe Prince, 15. Ms. Prince tragically took her own life, presumably because of said bullying.

Part of the prosecutor’s stated rationale was that the bullying went far beyond typical bullying that we have seen amongst school peers since the invention of schools. Of course, yesterday, when we looked at the examples she listed…they did not seem to be very new at all.

Unspoken, of course, was any political ambitions the da might have, given that her office is a political one.

I remind you that this had already become a hot issue and one that is being kicked around by the legislature in the way of anti-bullying legislation.
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The death of Phoebe Prince, 15, the South Hadley teenager who allegedly took her own life in response to a barrage of bullying (hereinafter, the “Deceased”) is looming over Massachusetts criminal justice. It has inspired new lawmaking in the legislature and, yesterday, hit the criminal justice system hard.

Indicted felonies for 9 teenagers hard!

The charges include statutory rape, violation of civil rights, criminal harassment, and disturbing a school assembly. Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel announced the charges today.

“Their conduct far exceeded the limits of normal teenage relationship-related quarrels,” Scheibel said of the nine teens, the oldest of whom is 18 years old.

Really? Let’s look into that.

You have probably heard about this story with a different allegation involved…bullying.
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Joseph L., 43, of Derry, New Hampshire, (hereinafter, the “Defendant”) was once a happy and successful man. A father of five, he built himself up from obscurity in Brockton to the purchasing director for North Andover, Massachusetts. Now, divorced and placed on leave, he is in need of a criminal defense attorney. A court-appointed defense attorney, in fact.

The week began with his turning himself in to North Andover police upon learning that there were warrants out for his arrest.

According to the Commonwealth, the Defendant is guilty of embezzlement. Specifically, the prosecution says that, during his two years as the town’s purchasing agent, he only performed one half of his job correctly. They say he sold surplus town vehicles and snow plows on eBay (the half he was supposed to do) but that he pocketed the money himself (the half he was not supposed to do).

One must wonder how much such augmentation to his salary helped given that the court determined that he qualified for a court appointed attorney, meaning that he was without the funds to afford his own.
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Yesterday, we dealt with the latest celebrity crime matter, the David Letterman extortion case. Today, another white collar case is the topic, this time right from the Boston area. The crime is Larceny. That’s right, that is what Letterman’s blackmailer was charged with as well. This, however, seems to simply be about plain old-fashioned theft.

The alleged crime involves the theft of hundreds of Verizon Blackberrys and the sale of them on the internet. To date, the suspects’ rewards include hundreds of thousands of dollars collectively and one criminal defense attorney each.

“This was an extensive scheme,” the Middlesex District Attorney said in the statement announcing the indictments. “We thank Verizon for first discovering this scheme and then contacting authorities immediately…”

He estimated the alleged scam had a value in excess of $600,000.
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Albert G., the 28-year-old gentleman from Miami (hereinafter, the “Defendant”) who had been charged with being a computer hacker agreed to plead guilty in Boston’s federal court last week. His attorney, however, still disagrees with prosecutors about his role in the hacking.

Yesterday, his attorney still insisted that he was not the “ringleader” in the, now nationally
known, scheme which has been described as one of the largest payment-card thefts in recent history.

The Defendant has agreed to plead guilty to charges that he helped engineer the theft of more than 40 million card numbers from retailers like TJX Cos Inc and BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc. Of course, that’s just in Boston. Last month, in New Jersey, the U.S. Justice Department charged him and two others with conspiring to steal another 130 million payment card numbers, the most ever.

Both cases put the Defendant at the center of the action — especially bold conduct since authorities say he was a Secret Service informant earlier this decade.
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A federal judge overturned the jury conviction of Lori Drew on three misdemeanor counts of accessing protected computers without authorization. The 49-year-old woman is accused of using MySpace to send Megan Meier, a teenage girl, derogatory messages. The 13-year-old would later commit suicide.

Drew was supposed to receive her sentencing for the cyber crime this week, but California U.S. District Judge George Wu said he was not upholding the jury’s decision. He is challenging the federal computer crime statute that the prosecutors used when making their case against Drew. They contended that she violated MySpace’s terms of service that prohibited 1) the creation of bogus registration information, 2) the use of accounts to get personal information about juvenile members, and 3) the abuse, harassment, or harm of other members.

A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Los Angeles said that the judge is concerned that Drew’s guilty verdict would allow for anyone that violated the social networking site’s terms of service to be found guilty of a misdemeanor cyber crime.

Experts had called the jury’s 2008 verdict against Drew the first cyber-bully verdict. Testimony during her criminal trial revealed that Drew, her daughter Sarah, and family friend Ashley Grills created a bogus MySpace account to send messages to Meier. The “sender” was a fictitious boy named “Josh Evans.” Josh flirted with Meier, made friends with her, and then abandoned her, telling her that the world would be better if she wasn’t in it. Meier, who had a history suicidal impulses and depression, hanged herself in October 2006.

Drew was never charged with Meier’s murder. She was also acquitted of felony charges related to the cyberbullying case. Her criminal defense lawyers contend that although Drew new about the bogus account, she did not know about the mean messages that were sent to Meier.

As our cyber world continues to expand, people are being charged with crimes related to this high tech arena. You need the help of an experienced Boston cyber crimes law firm that knows how to provide you with the best defense.

Lori Drew MySpace Suicide Hoax Conviction Thrown Out, ABC News, July 2, 2009
U.S. woman convicted in MySpace suicide case, NY Times, October 27, 2008
Related Web Resources:
MySpace

Cyber Crimes, US Doj.gov
Cyberbullying
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In days of old, if there was a financial dispute, one might expect to be sued by whoever claimed you took, or owed, money. Well, that can still happen. However, one should also be wary of being criminally charged with the crime of larceny… in one way or another.

“Larceny” is basically another word for “theft” under the Massachusetts General Laws. According to Chapter 266of such laws, anyone ” Who steals, or with intent to defraud obtains by a false pretence, or whoever unlawfully, and with intent to steal or embezzle, converts, or secretes with intent to convert, the property of another… whether such property is or is not in his possession at the time of such conversion or secreting, shall be guilty of larceny”.

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?

Well, not so much.

Actually, there are varying degrees of larceny. While larceny seems to simply be what we call in the outside world, “stealing”, how it was done and how much was stolen come under different sub-headings in the law and are treated differently.
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