Soon You May Have To Pay For Every Time Your Computer Caches A Song Copy

When Scamming People, Best Not To Admit It In Your Autobiography

from the just-saying... dept

Mon, Jun 5th 2006 6:45pm — Mike Masnick

Just as a story comes out about how many scams these days are pulled off by men who try to charm women into giving them money or (even better) data that's useful for identity theft, comes the story of one such scammer who was convicted. That, by itself, isn't that interesting. What happened following the trial was a bit more unexpected. In the trial, part of the evidence, was the scammer's own autobiography where he admits to pulling exactly the type of scams he was on trial for committing. However, the scammer is now trying to claim that the autobiography is actually fiction -- sort of a "James-Frey-in-reverse" situation, as Kevin Poulsen at Wired News suggests. Seems like a long shot -- but for those of you out there working on autobiographies, it may pay to leave out the parts that involve criminal activity, especially if you're still involved in those types of activities.

4 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Stoned4Life, 5 Jun 2006 @ 7:32pm

My Autobiography
And here I was going to go ahead and write about my life as a contract killer... maybe we can play it on a lighter note as a contract "messenger" boy- delivering unwanted news to everybody.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
nb109, 5 Jun 2006 @ 8:13pm

Wow
I remember making retarded mistakes like that when I was four. What was he thinking?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Blaise, 5 Jun 2006 @ 9:29pm

What he must be saying now
"uh... yeah, that... that's not true... I was just putting that down to impress women... you know... how lots of women are.. attracted to scam artists..."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Moneyguy, 6 Jun 2006 @ 8:36am

Stupid is as stupid does
Can they change this guys sentence from fraud to being stupid?
If you think the jails are crowded now ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]