5 ms·

How ^NOT to Forge a Search Warrant

38 points by mchannon 4y ago

anigbrowl 4y ago
Interesting title, useless content. Video seems to be just a collection of document screenshots. Faking search warrants is a serious issue, but the compiler of this collection would have a lot more impact by adding a few hundred words to explain the point of the site instead of leaving it as a puzzle for the reader. Is this an attack on bad prosecutors in general? Is the website author the victim of prosecutorial harassment? I can't easily tell, and after 5 minutes lost interest in trying to figure it out.
- mchannon 4y ago
  Thanks for the attempt at constructive criticism. There are actually that many words as subtitles in the video, I didn't leave out the hearing impaired. And a few hundred words are not necessary when six words at the top of the screen pretty much make it clear to most people. Maybe <h1> is not big enough, will consider making it bigger.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Your video didn't have subtitles. I get what it's about, but I don't want to sit through your video or spend lots of time trying to figure it out from documents without any other context. Watching videos is extremely time consuming compared to reading, and since I'm going to have to read the source documents anyway to fully understand your argument., I really don't want to process two different kinds of media. It could be that you're making a really great point, but it could also be that you're a crank or a bullshit artist. If you want me to invest time caring about your issue, invest a little of your own in explaining it.
  - vasqw 4y ago
    Many people won't watch a video, especially not a 16 minutes long one. I know I won't. Use written words.
  - zerocrates 4y ago
    Just so you know, captions don't appear to be enabled for your video.
    - mchannon 4y ago
      Good catch, thanks! Fixing (or trying to fix) that now.
      - altairprime 4y ago
        As well: If you’re able to post a link or the copy of the transcript at the end of the page, that would be helpful even without time markers.
  - glaucon 4y ago
    I realise you are being sarcastic but I genuinely did not see the H1. The face on the video was probably the first thing I looked at and then I went scanning for some explanatory text. It's your choice what you do with your web page but a short paragraph would, imho, help to engage casual visitors.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > a few hundred words are not necessary when six words at the top of the screen pretty much make it clear to most people The title makes clear the allegation. Not the evidence. Even allegation specifics, e.g. who forged whose signature on which form, is elusive.
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    The point of the words isn't in service of the hearing impaired it's to convince the person of the worthiness of a cause or at least to keep an open mind while watching a 16 minute youtube video. The meat of many matters can be digested in about 10 seconds and the whole meal disposed of in 5-10 minutes given that adults easily read at 300 words per minute. Most "causes" on youtube are to be quite frank absolute garbage and take 15-30 minutes to cover issues that could profitably have been read in 2 minutes of actual content in between ads and words from your sponsor. You had about 10 seconds to convince people that they wouldn't be wasting their time watching the video and you entirely failed. Based on reading others analysis it could have been summarized as convicted conman who is almost certainly guilty alleges unproven proprietorial misconduct to distract from own guilt and invites rubes to get in on the con on the ground floor. I believe that misconduct happens even happens frequently and have an interest in stopping it but I don't believe the most effective vehicle for that change would be donating money to a conman. I would prefer causes like the ACLU and the innocence project while leaving this party to handle his own affairs. I trust that his extreme vested interest in dealing with this matter will inspire him to pursue it to its end without outside investment.
    - michaelmrose 4y ago
      Edit: prosecutorial misconduct damn you spell check. Is it just me or is spell check getting worse?
dotancohen 4y ago
Why would a prosecutor risk his own career and jail time to forge documents?
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  Why would police risk their own career and jail time to murder people? Because there are virtually no consequences.
- pixl97 4y ago
  I mean looking a prosecutors to be moral people is your first mistake. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-texas-prosecutor-first-history-be-jailed-withholding-evidence-flna8c11566289 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-texas-prosecutor-fir... >A former Texas district attorney agreed Friday to serve 10 days in jail for withholding evidence that could have stopped an innocent man from going to prison for nearly 25 years — apparently the first time a prosecutor has been sent to jail for concealing evidence helpful to the defense. I would say if this actually the case and the prosecutor was forging documents the following is true. 1. This isn't his/her first time. 2. It wasn't their original idea and there is a history of this behavior in this area that needs investigated.
  - codetrotter 4y ago
    >> A former Texas district attorney agreed Friday to serve 10 days in jail for withholding evidence that could have stopped an innocent man from going to prison for nearly 25 years 10 days is nothing. Why not give the prosecutor 25 years in prison? After all, that is how many years the innocent man was sent to prison for.
  - salawat 4y ago
    ABA states: Standard 3-1.2 Functions and Duties of the Prosecutor >(b) The primary duty of the prosecutor is to seek justice within the bounds of the law, not merely to convict. The prosecutor serves the public interest and should act with integrity and balanced judgment to increase public safety both by pursuing appropriate criminal charges of appropriate severity, and by exercising discretion to not pursue criminal charges in appropriate circumstances. The prosecutor should seek to protect the innocent and convict the guilty, consider the interests of victims and witnesses, and respect the constitutional and legal rights of all persons, including suspects and defendants. I get that everyone laughs at normative standards nowadays, and the concept of 'civic duty' is apparently dying out, but there's your standard right there. If you're forging warrants, you are abdicating the responsibilities of your station.
csydas 4y ago
In case anyone else is confused, apparently this comes from a defendant in a wire fraud case, [name redacted], as per the gofundme page [0] The case apparently found the couple guilty and charges were held against them, and I believe some jail time also [1] [2]. My post's purpose isn't to affirm or deny the claim in the video, but to add the context I was missing for when the video got to the end and changed its tone considerably. I do think their observations are interesting, but I also assumed at first this was from an attorney showing instances of forged warrants, not from a layperson. So while I do think there are interesting discrepancies, I would feel more comfortable taking them at face value if persons within the field of law would confirm some of these statements. 0 - https://gofund.me/a58c25bd https://gofund.me/a58c25bd 1 - https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/16-2254/16-2254-2018-01-31.html https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/1... 2 - [link redacted] Edit: Fixed gofund.me link
- hackish 4y ago
  Thanks for the context. Was the GoFundMe campaign accessible when you linked it? I caught your comment at "3 minutes ago" and it can no longer be found. Edit: Link was fixed!
  - csydas 4y ago
    Happy to help. And interesting, yes, the gofundme was live when I watched the video on the site (link is on the site). I think it's just maybe how GoFundMe handle's the links? https://gofund.me/a58c25bd https://gofund.me/a58c25bd Works as normal I suppose for you.
    - mchannon 4y ago
      Appreciate your updating (and catching) that. GoFundMe apparently thought it needed to be changed. No alert to me or anything. Guess I'll have to make one minor change in iMovie and re-upload 2GB. I hope they don't pull this again.
      - 4y ago
primitivesuave 4y ago
The defendant defrauded Office Max's loyalty program to the tune of ~$180,000, although they managed to void $130k of rewards upon uncovering the scheme. They did so in a manner that could easily be traced back to them (e.g. signing up for 5400 Office Max accounts using the same 4 GMail addresses with randomly inserted periods to make slightly different user IDs). They accessed the email from the same IP address, put their actual personal home address for three of the 5400 accounts, and left several other pieces of breadcrumb evidence leading back to themselves. This whole thing seems like a guilty person using accusations of prosecutorial misconduct to distract from their hopeless position in an FBI case.
- vxNsr 4y ago
  What are you basing this comment on?
  - zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
    https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/16-2254/16-2254-2018-01-31.html https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/1...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - rtkwe 4y ago
    Most of it is available in these two links. The justice.gov is the easiest and shortest but the justia.com has some information about their appeal and evidentiary challenges. 1 - https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/1 https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/1... 2 - https://www.justice.gov/usao-nm/pr/albuquerque-couple-senten https://www.justice.gov/usao-nm/pr/albuquerque-couple-senten...
  - primitivesuave 4y ago
    Reading the indictment: https://dirtyprosecutor.org/11401.pdf https://dirtyprosecutor.org/11401.pdf If you skip to page 12 and 13, you get a pretty good sense of the amateur nature of this fraud. There is a preponderance of evidence against [name redacted]. He used the same emails from the fraudulent scheme to sign up for a Netflix account, pay for items shipped to his home address, and even used a personal PayPal account in conjunction with stolen rewards to make purchases. The FBI got data from eBay, Netflix, Google, and even Staples, to make a pretty airtight argument that this guy was the sole perpetuator behind the fraud.
formerly_proven 4y ago
(16 minute video, didn't watch) Generally speaking, search warrants are pretty easy to get for prosecutors, and for good reason: If they required a ton of hard evidence to get, then a prosecutor wouldn't need it any more, they'd just charge the suspect. The entire reason for having search warrants is that there is "something" (a fact) which suggests you'll "probably" find evidence of a crime. So because they are easy to get, why exactly would a prosecutor need to forge a warrant?
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  because they often do not have facts, just conjecture and assumption. No facts Thus was born the "confidential informant" to get around that last little problem the 4th amendment held in their way
- hackish 4y ago
  I'm no fan of the U.S. justice system, but the evidence in the affidavit included in the search warrant application undoubtedly gets the form signed in this case. Did this FBI special agent risk the case, his career, and prior cases to take down a barely-six-figure crime scheme? Or did he open his network share and print "AO_106_Affidavit_for_Search_Warrant_7-87-scanned-OCR-dont-use.docx", last edited by Johnny the intern, instead of "AO106-latest.pdf"?
  - AifVI 4y ago
    Exactly. The evidence in the video is utterly meaningless. Here is what he has: - The scan of the magistrate judge's pen looks like it is running out of ink. - The form was copied and edited, and some of the edits use inconsistent fonts or have artifacts from being printed and scanned previously. - The magistrate judge left off the year in one instance, and the time in another. So what? Nothing about that says anything was forged. It's not unusual for attorneys and the Court to use messed up forms, because the forms aren't what matters. You could hand-write it on a napkin and it would be valid. Nor is it unusual for a hurried judge to be inconsistent in how they sign things. Nothing here indicates a "forgery."
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
AifVI 4y ago
This should not be here. This is an individual criminal defendant complaining about an alleged forgery of documents in their own case, and also arguing that the U.S. Attorney's Office was in a "corrupt alliance with OfficeMax," followed by a rant against the U.S. judicial system, prosecutors, and judges, and then a request for money and self-promotion of his merchandise and his book about another subject.

38 points by mchannon 4y ago

Interesting title, useless content. Video seems to be just a collection of document screenshots. Faking search warrants is a serious issue, but the compiler of this collection would have a lot more impact by adding a few hundred words to explain the point of the site instead of leaving it as a puzzle for the reader. Is this an attack on bad prosecutors in general? Is the website author the victim of prosecutorial harassment? I can't easily tell, and after 5 minutes lost interest in trying to figure it out.

mchannon 4y ago
Thanks for the attempt at constructive criticism. There are actually that many words as subtitles in the video, I didn't leave out the hearing impaired. And a few hundred words are not necessary when six words at the top of the screen pretty much make it clear to most people. Maybe <h1> is not big enough, will consider making it bigger.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Your video didn't have subtitles. I get what it's about, but I don't want to sit through your video or spend lots of time trying to figure it out from documents without any other context. Watching videos is extremely time consuming compared to reading, and since I'm going to have to read the source documents anyway to fully understand your argument., I really don't want to process two different kinds of media. It could be that you're making a really great point, but it could also be that you're a crank or a bullshit artist. If you want me to invest time caring about your issue, invest a little of your own in explaining it.
- vasqw 4y ago
  Many people won't watch a video, especially not a 16 minutes long one. I know I won't. Use written words.
- zerocrates 4y ago
  Just so you know, captions don't appear to be enabled for your video.
  - mchannon 4y ago
    Good catch, thanks! Fixing (or trying to fix) that now.
    - altairprime 4y ago
      As well: If you’re able to post a link or the copy of the transcript at the end of the page, that would be helpful even without time markers.
- glaucon 4y ago
  I realise you are being sarcastic but I genuinely did not see the H1. The face on the video was probably the first thing I looked at and then I went scanning for some explanatory text. It's your choice what you do with your web page but a short paragraph would, imho, help to engage casual visitors.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > a few hundred words are not necessary when six words at the top of the screen pretty much make it clear to most people The title makes clear the allegation. Not the evidence. Even allegation specifics, e.g. who forged whose signature on which form, is elusive.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  The point of the words isn't in service of the hearing impaired it's to convince the person of the worthiness of a cause or at least to keep an open mind while watching a 16 minute youtube video. The meat of many matters can be digested in about 10 seconds and the whole meal disposed of in 5-10 minutes given that adults easily read at 300 words per minute. Most "causes" on youtube are to be quite frank absolute garbage and take 15-30 minutes to cover issues that could profitably have been read in 2 minutes of actual content in between ads and words from your sponsor. You had about 10 seconds to convince people that they wouldn't be wasting their time watching the video and you entirely failed. Based on reading others analysis it could have been summarized as convicted conman who is almost certainly guilty alleges unproven proprietorial misconduct to distract from own guilt and invites rubes to get in on the con on the ground floor. I believe that misconduct happens even happens frequently and have an interest in stopping it but I don't believe the most effective vehicle for that change would be donating money to a conman. I would prefer causes like the ACLU and the innocence project while leaving this party to handle his own affairs. I trust that his extreme vested interest in dealing with this matter will inspire him to pursue it to its end without outside investment.
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    Edit: prosecutorial misconduct damn you spell check. Is it just me or is spell check getting worse?

dotancohen 4y ago

Why would a prosecutor risk his own career and jail time to forge documents?

encryptluks2 4y ago
Why would police risk their own career and jail time to murder people? Because there are virtually no consequences.
pixl97 4y ago
I mean looking a prosecutors to be moral people is your first mistake. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-texas-prosecutor-first-history-be-jailed-withholding-evidence-flna8c11566289 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-texas-prosecutor-fir... >A former Texas district attorney agreed Friday to serve 10 days in jail for withholding evidence that could have stopped an innocent man from going to prison for nearly 25 years — apparently the first time a prosecutor has been sent to jail for concealing evidence helpful to the defense. I would say if this actually the case and the prosecutor was forging documents the following is true. 1. This isn't his/her first time. 2. It wasn't their original idea and there is a history of this behavior in this area that needs investigated.
- codetrotter 4y ago
  >> A former Texas district attorney agreed Friday to serve 10 days in jail for withholding evidence that could have stopped an innocent man from going to prison for nearly 25 years 10 days is nothing. Why not give the prosecutor 25 years in prison? After all, that is how many years the innocent man was sent to prison for.
- salawat 4y ago
  ABA states: Standard 3-1.2 Functions and Duties of the Prosecutor >(b) The primary duty of the prosecutor is to seek justice within the bounds of the law, not merely to convict. The prosecutor serves the public interest and should act with integrity and balanced judgment to increase public safety both by pursuing appropriate criminal charges of appropriate severity, and by exercising discretion to not pursue criminal charges in appropriate circumstances. The prosecutor should seek to protect the innocent and convict the guilty, consider the interests of victims and witnesses, and respect the constitutional and legal rights of all persons, including suspects and defendants. I get that everyone laughs at normative standards nowadays, and the concept of 'civic duty' is apparently dying out, but there's your standard right there. If you're forging warrants, you are abdicating the responsibilities of your station.

csydas 4y ago

In case anyone else is confused, apparently this comes from a defendant in a wire fraud case, [name redacted], as per the gofundme page [0] The case apparently found the couple guilty and charges were held against them, and I believe some jail time also [1] [2]. My post's purpose isn't to affirm or deny the claim in the video, but to add the context I was missing for when the video got to the end and changed its tone considerably. I do think their observations are interesting, but I also assumed at first this was from an attorney showing instances of forged warrants, not from a layperson. So while I do think there are interesting discrepancies, I would feel more comfortable taking them at face value if persons within the field of law would confirm some of these statements. 0 - https://gofund.me/a58c25bd https://gofund.me/a58c25bd 1 - https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/16-2254/16-2254-2018-01-31.html https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/1... 2 - [link redacted] Edit: Fixed gofund.me link

hackish 4y ago
Thanks for the context. Was the GoFundMe campaign accessible when you linked it? I caught your comment at "3 minutes ago" and it can no longer be found. Edit: Link was fixed!
- csydas 4y ago
  Happy to help. And interesting, yes, the gofundme was live when I watched the video on the site (link is on the site). I think it's just maybe how GoFundMe handle's the links? https://gofund.me/a58c25bd https://gofund.me/a58c25bd Works as normal I suppose for you.
  - mchannon 4y ago
    Appreciate your updating (and catching) that. GoFundMe apparently thought it needed to be changed. No alert to me or anything. Guess I'll have to make one minor change in iMovie and re-upload 2GB. I hope they don't pull this again.
    - 4y ago

primitivesuave 4y ago

The defendant defrauded Office Max's loyalty program to the tune of ~$180,000, although they managed to void $130k of rewards upon uncovering the scheme. They did so in a manner that could easily be traced back to them (e.g. signing up for 5400 Office Max accounts using the same 4 GMail addresses with randomly inserted periods to make slightly different user IDs). They accessed the email from the same IP address, put their actual personal home address for three of the 5400 accounts, and left several other pieces of breadcrumb evidence leading back to themselves. This whole thing seems like a guilty person using accusations of prosecutorial misconduct to distract from their hopeless position in an FBI case.

vxNsr 4y ago
What are you basing this comment on?
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
  https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/16-2254/16-2254-2018-01-31.html https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/1...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rtkwe 4y ago
  Most of it is available in these two links. The justice.gov is the easiest and shortest but the justia.com has some information about their appeal and evidentiary challenges. 1 - https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/1 https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/1... 2 - https://www.justice.gov/usao-nm/pr/albuquerque-couple-senten https://www.justice.gov/usao-nm/pr/albuquerque-couple-senten...
- primitivesuave 4y ago
  Reading the indictment: https://dirtyprosecutor.org/11401.pdf https://dirtyprosecutor.org/11401.pdf If you skip to page 12 and 13, you get a pretty good sense of the amateur nature of this fraud. There is a preponderance of evidence against [name redacted]. He used the same emails from the fraudulent scheme to sign up for a Netflix account, pay for items shipped to his home address, and even used a personal PayPal account in conjunction with stolen rewards to make purchases. The FBI got data from eBay, Netflix, Google, and even Staples, to make a pretty airtight argument that this guy was the sole perpetuator behind the fraud.

formerly_proven 4y ago

(16 minute video, didn't watch) Generally speaking, search warrants are pretty easy to get for prosecutors, and for good reason: If they required a ton of hard evidence to get, then a prosecutor wouldn't need it any more, they'd just charge the suspect. The entire reason for having search warrants is that there is "something" (a fact) which suggests you'll "probably" find evidence of a crime. So because they are easy to get, why exactly would a prosecutor need to forge a warrant?

phpisthebest 4y ago
because they often do not have facts, just conjecture and assumption. No facts Thus was born the "confidential informant" to get around that last little problem the 4th amendment held in their way
hackish 4y ago
I'm no fan of the U.S. justice system, but the evidence in the affidavit included in the search warrant application undoubtedly gets the form signed in this case. Did this FBI special agent risk the case, his career, and prior cases to take down a barely-six-figure crime scheme? Or did he open his network share and print "AO_106_Affidavit_for_Search_Warrant_7-87-scanned-OCR-dont-use.docx", last edited by Johnny the intern, instead of "AO106-latest.pdf"?
- AifVI 4y ago
  Exactly. The evidence in the video is utterly meaningless. Here is what he has: - The scan of the magistrate judge's pen looks like it is running out of ink. - The form was copied and edited, and some of the edits use inconsistent fonts or have artifacts from being printed and scanned previously. - The magistrate judge left off the year in one instance, and the time in another. So what? Nothing about that says anything was forged. It's not unusual for attorneys and the Court to use messed up forms, because the forms aren't what matters. You could hand-write it on a napkin and it would be valid. Nor is it unusual for a hurried judge to be inconsistent in how they sign things. Nothing here indicates a "forgery."

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

AifVI 4y ago

This should not be here. This is an individual criminal defendant complaining about an alleged forgery of documents in their own case, and also arguing that the U.S. Attorney's Office was in a "corrupt alliance with OfficeMax," followed by a rant against the U.S. judicial system, prosecutors, and judges, and then a request for money and self-promotion of his merchandise and his book about another subject.