Prison Inmate Emails His Own Release Instructions To the Prison 198
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.
Sounds like Prime Minister material (Score:5, Funny)
This Guy's Talents Should be Put to Good Use (Score:5, Interesting)
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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!
That's the rest of the population then. Disclaimer, I am a Brit.
Re:This Guy's Talents Should be Put to Good Use (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
Dotan, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?
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I've been to a Turkish spa. I think you're right, I've seen all I needed to see in the spa.
Re: This Guy's Talents Should be Put to Good Use (Score:5, Funny)
You ever seen a grown man naked?
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At least a few of us caught the quote.
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On a side note: security was a lot more relaxed those days...
Re:This Guy's Talents Should be Put to Good Use (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.
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You don't hear about the ones that get away with it, they tend to report crimes they solve.
That's crimes you know about, some just aren't reported - ask any cop about babies in dumpsters and why these never show up in newspapers.
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That's easy, because the media doesn't report it. If however, you head down to your local police department/service, you can request a crime log for the week, some places even have daily reports you can pick up. Which lists all arrested offenses, and minor calls(vandalism, theft under, non-violent domestics, etc) out. In many cases these are published to the media every day, and they decide what they're going to tell the public.
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We have a local paper that's free and has a list of reported crimes in the last 24 hours for the neighborhoods the paper covers. Pretty scary sometimes when you realize how many of your neighbors are victims/criminals on a daily basis.
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Ive heard of this before...
http://www.bing.com/videos/wat... [bing.com]
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Remember 'Catch me if you can?' (Score:2)
Re:Remember 'Catch me if you can?' (Score:5, Funny)
You don't think Charles will make a good Queen?
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You don't think Charles will make a good Queen?
For about the 3 years he'll be in the job before popping his own clogs. Then we get Billiam as queen and he will be a shit queen..
He's good. (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.
Re:He's good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention that defrauding banksters isn't the crime it is made out to be
Actually, even if you've managed to delude yourself into thinking that it's OK to steal from people you don't like, defrauding bankers hurts us all here. Here's why: 1) It costs the bank's customers through higher credit interest and lower debit interested 2) If the bank fails customers are likely to lose out (although most individual customers will have their deposits guaranteed by the state) 3) The state guarantees deposits of individual customers (up to a certain limit) so, if the state has to bail out those customers, we all pay.
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You are wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people who run banks have committed crimes and gotten away with them. That does not make banks "criminal organizations," equivalent to drug mafias. Also, stealing from a bank has harmful consequences to plenty of innocent people which stealing from a drug cartel does not.
Your rationalization of "well if you get hurt when I steal from them that is your fault and I am innocent" only applies to actual criminal organizations, not to ones that you have personally decided to label "criminal" even though th
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Why is a mobster a mobster? Because she believes she is above and beyond the law, by using either violence or criminally obtained money as a lever of influence. How is a bankster like a mobster? Well, she uses other people's money as a lever of influence.
How is a bankster worse than a mobster? Well, she has managed to manipulate the system on such a broad scale, that her usage of other people's money
No (Score:3, Insightful)
A mobster is not a mobster for believing she is above the law. A mobster is a mobster for running a mob, which is an organization that breaks the law (and uses violence) as a routine part of their business. Banks do not do this...their routine business is perfectly legal. Therefore banks are not mobs, and those who run banks are not mobsters.
One who believes one's self to be above the law, but still acts within the law's boundaries, is neither a mobster nor a criminal.
One who does break the law is a crim
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The poor banksters. Everyone abuses them. Politicians step on them to get elected.
I don't know what to do to help them! Here, take my money. And don't cry, a better day will come, for sure...
I know what I'll do. I'll enter Politics and help the poor banksters with special laws. But how? It's expensive to get elected. What, banksters? You have money? Lots of it? Yay, I'm gonna be elected!
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Keep telling me how this is highly moral and peachy ;)
Well, moral I don't know about, but it seems just peachy for the bankers, doesn't it?
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Why is a mobster a mobster? Because she believes she is above and beyond the law...
Dude, not all mobsters are female. Use "he" or (cringe) "they".
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I'm sure most women wouldn't object to not being called mobsters, but if you're really concerned about it, use they and get the number agreement wrong. Using "she" is just distracting.
Also, it's not sexist. Defaulting to one gender, usually male, is how most languages deal with the issue. It's just understood that the gender is indeterminate. For instance, Spanish uses "ellos" for a group of mixed gender people, while "ellas" is referred to a group of only women. No one gets confused by this.
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lol. Why bother avoiding accusations of sexism? You're an anonymous coward on Slashdot. What are you afraid they're going to do to you?
Anyway, the right way to treat people who are too easily offended is to brush them off, not acquiesce to their neurosis. If enough people call them on their bullshit, they'll grow a thicker skin and stop being so easily offended, and that's better for everyone in the long run.
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I'm not calling women mobsters, I'm leveling the pronoun usage playing field, while working hard to avoid any accusations of sexism.
Well then you shouldn't have picked a sex and just gone with they.
Re:You are wrong (Score:5, Funny)
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That does not make banks "criminal organizations," equivalent to drug mafias.
Complete bullshit; this is a lie.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
HSBC has been laundering money for drug cartels for quite a while now, and nothing's been done about it, and no one is prosecuting them. Money laundering IS a crime, so this by definition makes this bank a criminal organization.
You are a liar.
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There may exist a theoretical construct that is necessary and isn't itself criminal but I am not convinced that we have an actual example of such at this time.
Bank fraud is not a desirable thing but at the end of the day it's just crooks stealing from crooks currently.
Re:He's good. (Score:4, 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.
HSBC (Score:2)
http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]
Heck they don't even follow what little regulation that does exist. The fines look large, but when compared to profits, the term "cost of doing business" comes to mind...
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Not to mention that defrauding banksters isn't the crime it is made out to be
Actually, even if you've managed to delude yourself into thinking that it's OK to steal from people you don't like, defrauding bankers hurts us all here. Here's why: 1) It costs the bank's customers through higher credit interest and lower debit interested 2) If the bank fails customers are likely to lose out (although most individual customers will have their deposits guaranteed by the state) 3) The state guarantees deposits of individual customers (up to a certain limit) so, if the state has to bail out those customers, we all pay.
banks don't fail over $1.8m if they weren't going to fail already.
The banks can't just raise rates to make up for it, either, then customers will go elsewhere. If anything this just encourages banks to operate with more efficiency.
Re:He's good. (Score:5, Interesting)
This thread is all kind of moot, since the victims weren't banks anyway. He defrauded companies by claiming to from a bank.
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Well, that's what happens when you trust banksters. The bad karma gets you even if they don't.
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Incidentally, banks are for poor people.
Of course, that must be why they pay me under 2% on my savings but expect over 10% on loans.
Re:He's good. (Score:4, Informative)
That's precisely his point. If you were a rich person, you would have access to investment vehicles with a larger return than 2%, and access to credit lines at lower rates.
Re:He's good. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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You can tell me that, but I have noticed that as soon as a particular good investment becomes available to those not "well connected", it stops being a decent investment. E.g., CDs and Treasury bond consistently produce less than the rate of inflation. Back when they were only available to a few they produced quite good rates of return. (And actually, for a few years after they were opened up they still beat inflation...but not for long.)
Re:He's good. (Score:4, Insightful)
I can assure you that pretty much everyone* has access to investment vehicles with a larger return than 2%.
By definition it's not possible for everyone to be able to beat inflation.
Having worked in finance
Understandable. Daniel Kahneman has some amusing anecdotes who people who work in finance really don't seem to figure out what it is they're really doing.
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Let's assume that someone without "enough spare income for a whole portfolio" has the desire to invest, and the ambition and effort to do their own research. They'll find a whole class of funds and brokers that will pool several clients' investments into a single security purchase, and those brokers will often accept even a few dozen dollars' investment at a time. Most will also diversify investments appropriately, as well, as a part of their normal business.
Several investment vehicles have purchase minimum
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By definition it's not possible for everyone to be able to beat inflation.
Only for very wide definitions of "everyone", including VC investment, R&D, government subsidies, international trade, and every other economic influence, many of which are high-risk investments that effectively dump most of their money into lower-risk investment vehicles.
I'm not suggesting that if everyone invested in a widely-diversified portfolio, they'd be rich. That's ridiculous, since that's exactly what banks do with their abysmally low-return (but very safe) accounts.
I'm saying that if someone w
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Yes. My point is that for someone to beat inflation someone else mustn't.
It's that simple.
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Sounds reasonable. No one who's understood the message in either Taleb's "Black Swan" or Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow" would support the scam that is the financial markets.
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No, it is not only not that simple, but it is plain wrong. Productivity improvements using, say, technology, can help a vast majority of people beat inflation, sometimes even everyone.
For someone to get market beating returns, someone else mustn't. But don't conflate market beating with inflation.
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Thought experiment: Everyone beats inflation. That causes inflation.
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Beating inflation doesn't cause inflation.
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Poor people can't even open a bank account anymore.
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The banks have insurance for this.
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Not sure where it is you think I made a moral judgement. I was responding specifically to OP's claim that either the state or the customers would foot the bill.
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Yes, and the customers or state would still foot the bill, because the insurance premium raises the cost of doing business for all banks, making the interest rate spread offered to customers higher and a bank in trouble more likely to fail, due to the increased difficulty of making profits when the cost of business is higher.
Stealing from someone where insurance will cover it just means you're stealing from a lot of people instead of just one.
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I was responding specifically to OP's claim that either the state or the customers would foot the bill. Not sure where it is you think I made a moral judgement.
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Sure, there's insurance premiums. But those would be there regardless, and as you say, they will only go up if fraud in general trends higher. The impact of this particular case is negligible.
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Not to mention that defrauding banksters isn't the crime it is made out to be
Actually, even if you've managed to delude yourself into thinking that it's OK to steal from people you don't like, defrauding bankers hurts us all here.
And that's ontop of the hurt from the bankers defrauding us all already. Fuck the banks. Their whole model is based on other peoples money. They use your money to make their money, don't share profits and pass losses onto you. Fuck the bankers, fuck them all.
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... which will boost inflation and reduce the value of everyone's money.
Re: He's good. (Score:4, Insightful)
... which will boost inflation and reduce the value of everyone's money.
which will boost inflation and reduce the value of everyone's money so little that you wouldn't even notice. FTFY. Rich people might have enough money affected that it might be a minor inconvenience to them, which is why they, their news organizations, and their useful idiots in politics think this needs to be such a worry for all of us.
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You mean it will reduce the value of everyone's debt.
Re: He's good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh look, a broken record.
Tell me, if my fiat currency isn't worth anything, how come I'm able to use it to acquire land, a house on that land, the contents of that house and a nice car that lets me travel to and from it?
Might not have value to you, but it's been pretty fucking useful to me.
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Read and educate yourself, you are the one without facts here.
About why Barclays was pushing the submissions lower:
At the onset of the financial crisis in September 2007 with the collapse of Northern Rock, liquidity concerns drew public scrutiny towards Libor. Barclays manipulated Libor submissions to give a healthier picture of the bank's credit quality and its ability to raise funds. A lower submission would deflect concerns it had problems borrowing cash from the markets.
Source [bbc.co.uk]
About what index is used for variable mortgages (*hint* it is not LIBOR):
What is a Standard Variable Rate?
A Standard Variable Rate is (rather obviously) a type of variable rate – this means your payments can go up or down according to movements in interest rates. Unlike a tracker, a Standard Variable Rate (or SVR) does not track above the Bank of England Base Rate at a set percentage.
What is the Bank of England Rate
Changes are recommended by the Monetary Policy Committee and enacted by the Governor.
Link [wikipedia.org]
The comment I replied to is just a random mix of poorly used facts to bash against banking without understanding and jumping from imprecise facts to incorrect conclusions.
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You don't understand modern finance. That website is full of shit.
If I credit your account with $10k as a loan, I'm not creating $10k I'm transferring $10k of my assets to you.
No money creation going on. Now shut the fuck up until you've learned basic double-entry bookkeeping.
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Not quite. There's a little trick, fractional reserve. The bank loans you $10k, you put it in the bank, they immediately loan $9500 of that to someone else, who puts it in the bank... Effectively the amount of currency in circulation can be vastly greater than the amount of currency that actually exists. Debt itsself becomes currency.
The big down-side to this is that it becomes possible, in theory, for the bank to run out of money and hundreds of thousands of people to lose everything they have through no f
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Debt itsself becomes currency.
But that's the point. They haven't created money, they're recognising the value of the asset.
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You really don't understand banking at all.
Neither, it would appear, do you.
I can't open a bank and magically create money to deposit into your account in the form of a loan. That money must come from somewhere - and does come from somewhere.
Shit, have you even heard of capital adequacy, and the regulations mandating it?
Re:He's good. (Score:4, Insightful)
"he was originally convicted after calling several banks and getting them to send him upwards of £1.8 million."
I want to know what you say to a bank to get them to release that kind (quantity) of money!
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stuff like "hi, my name's romney." or "hi, my name is bush." or any other super rich person.
they really are different from the rest of us little people.
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Interesting that you'd pick those names. A quick google for wealth of US Presidents (adjusted for inflation), puts Bush at 15 (the elder) or 17 (the younger).
And this is as opposed to, say, John Kennedy (1), Lyndon Johnson (7), FDR (9), Clinton (10), who all have that peculiar D after their name.
And note that Obama is #21. Hardly poor by any definition of the term....
Note that I ignored the rest of the top 10 because they served far enough back that the Party they were part of had no real similarities
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(once upon a time, the Republicans were the anti-slavery Party, not the Democrats, for instance)
Both major parties in the US are anti-slavery today, as well as most minor parties.
Talented (Score:1)
Did he roll out of the prison? (Score:4, Funny)
With balls like this, he is probably unable to walk...
He watched Idiocracy (Score:5, Informative)
"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.
Don't jump to conclusions so fast (Score:2)
You only know because they caught the man; in the USA the guy would still be free and nobody would be the wiser.
If somebody noticed anything fishy the usual lazy excuse of "It's not my job" would prevent actions from being taken; unless, you can be fired or sued few people here lift a finger.... and if you do take selfless initiative you are equally at risk of being fired or sued.
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"You only know because they caught the man;"
It came out because his lawyers came to see him unannounced.
Perhaps he would have been back from his 'mission' undetected otherwise, with a similar trick.
It happens... (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.
Re:It happens... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
Courts have no money for electronic upgrades, and when they have the money they have to fight a bureaucracy to get them. Seattle is still using DOS-based systems.
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I have a history of depression, and there's a common survey that medical offices use to get a rough feel for a person's depression and/or anxiety level. In fact, it is so common that in the four states I have filled out the survey, I'm pretty sure that every single one was a generational photocopy of the same document. In many cases it has a slight "right" lean and offset that is recognizable; in others there's a "blur" along the left side, as though it was copied with a stack of papers on top of it or from
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And, as a guard, you never thought, well this is fucking stupid ??
Have you ever tried to reason with a PHB? Especially when your argument, however correct and well-supported, doesn't come from someone who has that specific responsibility?
What!?!? (Score:1)
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Easy, he used a British accent. We always believe anything someone says if they have a British accent. The hard part was getting that accent into the email.
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A for Effort (Score:5, Interesting)
Kicking themselves (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Free (Score:2)
"I should have known when the instructions told me to give him £50 out of my wallet, too."
I heard he called slashdot... (Score:2, Funny)
and convinced them to drop the Beta. This guy is good.
Year old story (Score:2)
IDK why BBC are reporting this now, it happened a year ago, summary also doesn't mention that he handed himself back in within a week of escaping.
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An Inspector Morse fan? (Score:2)
Sounds like an imitation of the Inspector Morse episode "Masonic Mysteries", in which a criminal whom Morse has had imprisoned pulls a similar trick. And then the fun begins!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt06... [imdb.com]
Sounds like (Score:2)
Release notices by email? By email from an unofficial email address? By unencrypted, undigitally-signed email from an unofficial email address?
Hire him! (Score:2)
" my EURO bank notes are better than the official version!"
"so prove it, you clod!"
"One cross each" (Score:2)
Coordinator: Crucifixion?
Mr. Cheeky: Er, no, freedom actually.
Coordinator: What?
Mr. Cheeky: Yeah, they said I hadn't done anything and I could go and live on an island somewhere.
Coordinator: Oh I say, that's very nice. Well, off you go then.
Mr. Cheeky: No, I'm just pulling your leg, it's crucifixion really.
Coordinator: [laughing] Oh yes, very good. Well...
Mr. Cheeky: Yes I know, out of the door, one cross each, line on the left.
If he was really good,.. (Score:2)
why did charge him with escape from custody? I.e., They must have been able to prove that he sent the e-mail.
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he's obviously talented
He's obviously stupid! Otherwise, he would have cut and run after getting the initial 1.8 million pounds.
Re:He should run for political office (Score:4, Funny)
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You mean like traditional signed release orders written on paper? No chance of forgery there...