This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Crime

  • …and beer for my horses

    Bubblehead Ray and Country Singer send us a link to an article from Georgia where young Damien Durham robbed a convenience store in broad daylight to jump-start his new life. What he didn’t expect was that the small town of Rhine got plumb mad dog mean, they hastily formed an ad hoc posse, spread out around the town on foot and their vehicles to round up the outlaw;

    “People just kept coming around and they were mad, people in Rhine were mad,” [60-year-old Ken] Lowery said. “Here we had an armed robbery in the middle of the day at Aden’s and they wanted to form a posse.”

    Lowery says more than 20 people, many of them armed, spread out looking for the gunman, in trucks and on foot.

    “We didn’t have no leader of it all, we just went all our separate ways and the people in Rhine they knew they were going to get that rascal,” Lowery said.

    Lowery, a retired corrections officer, ended up tracking the suspect down roughly 200 yards away from the store. He fired a warning shot from his deer rifle and says the suspect stashed his gun and money, and hid in a nearby shed, where he was soon arrested by Dodge County sheriff’s deputies.

    That ought to bring the crime rate down in Rhine for a while. But I suspect that it wasn’t that high to begin with.
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  • Sure, It’s All Legit. Trust Us.

    One of the main boondoggle giveaways in features of the P!ss-Poor Abysmally-Crafted Abomination Patient Protection and “Affordable” Care Act (PPACA) is the fact that it subsidizes the cost of insurance for many.  In fact, that’s one of the main ways it will screw over US taxpayers help the “poor”.

    So, no one would ever take advantage of that, right?  No one would ever think of understating their income so that they’d qualify for “free help”, right?

    Yeah, right.  Uh huh.  Sure.  Whatever you say, amigo.  Just like everyone who gets cash income always declares 100% of that cash income on their tax returns.  And just like they always send Uncle Sam their FICA and Medicare taxes from said cash income, too.

    Of course this is going to be abused like hell.  In fact, it already is being abused.

    And the “kicker”?  Some PPACA “Navigators” are advising people to do exactly that.

    Yeah, folks – you read that correctly.  We (US taxpayers) are actually paying people to tell people how to defraud Uncle Sam.

    Don’t believe me?  Then watch this video clip.  And afterwards, watch this one, too.  And then you can read this article.  (You might want to have a barf bag handy, though.)

    Sheesh.

    Dunno about you, but I’m getting damned tired of seeing my tax dollars siphoned off by blatant fraud like this.  And I’m royally p!ssed that the Federal government is actually paying people to help low-life a-holes certain individuals perpetrate that fraud.

  • Another NY Weapon Seizure

    Well, it seems as if NY authorities are at it again.  They’ve confiscated yet another weapon from a state citizen.

    This case was a bit different than the norm, though.

    Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office officials confiscated the weapon from Brian Malta.  Seems as if he’d fired it, albeit while loaded with blank charges, towards neighboring homes during a dispute with neighbors.

    The weapon confiscated was a Civil War cannon.  Seems Malta had aimed it in the direction of his neighbors’ homes and fired it (with powder charge and wadding only) during his dispute with his neighbors.

    Yeah, firing a freaking cannon towards someone’s house – even if only powder and wadding – is likely to get you a visit from the police, as well as an escorted ride to the station.  Dumbass.

    Malta was charged with 3 counts of harassment and 3 counts of menacing.  He was arrested and later released on bail.

    No, the amount of his bail wasn’t set at $5150.  Though that might have been apropos.  (smile)

  • Florida’s Homer Simpson arrested for impersonating a US marshal

    Homer Simpson, using the name Charles Barry, used his father’s badge to get discounted doughnuts at a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise in Florida. I guess the cops thought that was serious enough to have an undercover cop waiting for him, according to a link sent to us by Andy from ABC News;

    “Yesterday, we had an undercover deputy in the store,” Pasco County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Douglas Tobin said. “He usually comes in at the same time. This time, he didn’t show his badge, but we had enough reason to arrest him.”

    The previous alleged incidents occurred June 6, 7, and 12.

    Police said they found a .38-caliber revolver in his pocket during the arrest, as well as ammunition in the vehicle.

    Barry was charged with impersonating a law enforcement officer and improper exhibition of a firearm or dangerous weapon. He was released Tuesday on $5,150 bail.

    I guess that the cops were upset that someone was taking a piece of their stash. I’m glad this crime is solved finally.

  • “Bobby Thompson” convicted

    Andy sends us a link to an Associated Press article in regards to the fraudster known as “Bobby Thompson” but widely believed to be John Donald Cody, a former intelligence agent. We’ve been writing about him since May 2010 when his fake veterans’ organization was unmasked. But a jury convicted him today in Ohio;

    He faces up to 67 years in prison at his sentencing, which was scheduled for Dec. 16.

    The defendant rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and rocked on his feet as the verdicts were read. Deputies cuffed his wrists after the first guilty verdict was announced. Unlike the last two days of his trial, the defendant showed up with his shirt buttoned and his hair combed.

    He was charged with looting the United States Navy Veterans Association, a charity he ran in Tampa, Fla. As his five-week trial wound down, he had appeared disheveled in court, so much so that the judge suggested a break Tuesday to allow him to get a clean shirt and comb his hair.

    He was identified with fingerprints, since he had scores of IDs in his suitcase when he was arrested along with nearly a million dollars in cash.

    ADDED: The folks at ABC News send a more complete report than I’ve linked to above, if the subject interests you.

  • Don’t mess with guys named “Chan”

    Ex-PH2 sends us an article from Chicago where a restauranteur by the name of Jason Chan took off after an I-phone thief who robbed one of his patrons;

    Chan found the alleged iPhone bandit at Lou Malnati’s, just a block away. The man was allegedly looking to run the same scam. When Chan tried to hold him until police arrived, he says the man tried to fight him off and run.

    It was a bad choice. Chan is a martial arts expert.

    There are “after” pictures of the thief in this video (it auto starts);
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  • 83-year-old Rozella Brown defends her home

    Andy sends us a link to an article about 83-year-old Ohioan Rozella Brown who was watching TV in her home when she noticed a snake in the form of a school-aged fellow crawling across her kitchen floor;

    She encountered the intruder in her bedroom and, according to a sheriff’s report, “immediately and vigorously began striking the individual with her cane.”

    She beat the person all the way to the door while asking his name. The burglar got away with about $100 from her purse but nothing else.

    WOKW-TV continues the report;

    He covered his face and ran from the bedroom into the living room where she kept her purse. She told deputies that the man took her billfold from the purse. Brown kept hitting the suspect all the way out the door, asking him his name. She said he told her, “Austin.”

    Nice try, Austin, but you should leave the elderly alone. We’ll kill you. If we don’t have a gun, anything else within reach will do the job for us.

  • Déjà Screwed

    I swear, sometimes I think every freakin’ day is Groundhog Day when it comes to our Federal government.  They simply don’t seem to learn a damn thing from past fiascos.

    Well, at least the current Administration doesn’t.

    Remember the Lifeline fiasco I wrote about the other day – that “free phone” program where the Federal government depended for years on unchecked self-certification to determine eligibility?  Remember how well that worked out?

    Wanna guess how the Federal government is going to determine whether people qualify for tax credits under the new Patently Phoney Patient Privacy and Absurd  ‘Affordable’ Care Abomination Act next year?  C’mon – take a guess.

    But hey, I’m gonna be a hardass here.  You only get one guess.

    If you guessed “self-certification with no requirement for backup documentation or cross-checking” – AKA the “honor system” – give yourself a freaking gold star.  ‘Cause that’s exactly how the Federal government plans to hand out PPACA-related tax credits next year.

    Until last year, that’s the same method the Federal government used to determine eligibility for Lifeline phones.  Based on early indications from imposing cross-checking and requiring annual re-certification, looks like that program had about a 41% fraud rate.

    It’s also how the Federal government determines eligibility today for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).  That program is estimated to lose 20-25% of its total annual outlays to fraud.

    Ya know, I kinda think I’m seeing a pattern here.  But maybe it’s just me.

    Predictably, the FBI expects to see fraud related to this new tax credit – a LOT of fraud.  They’re currently estimating we’ll see on the order of $20 billion in healthcare tax credit fraud next year.  I think that might be in the ballpark – for the first year.  Then it will skyrocket.  And it’s possible that estimate could be way low for the first year, too.

    Looks like it really is “Here we go again.”  And remember:  that’s yet another “bennie” to the US taxpayer, courtesy of the PPACA.  So just grit your teeth and bend over.

    Yeah, that’s courtesy of the PPACA, too.