"Not guilty" in a 1099-OID case

[Demosthenes]

She's a follower, not a promoter.

http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/239350

Excerpt:

It had started in August 2006, when Tucker, known to her friends as "Dot," went to a luxury car dealership, told a salesman and manager she was inheriting money, then tried repeatedly to persuade them to let her take the Mercedes in exchange for unusual-looking documents that she and her financial adviser said were vouchers for some sort of federal payment.

To Assistant U.S. Attorney Pat Hogeboom, when Tucker gave the car dealership a supposed federal 1099-OID -- a form usually used to report profits from bonds -- she seemed to be following the tax defier tactic of trying to use the form to claim the government owed her money. And on other forms, Hogeboom said, Tucker seemed to be asserting that spelling her name in all caps referred to someone different than when standard capitalization was used, an argument also employed among tax defiers.

[Judge Roy Bean]

Am I the only one wondering why she wasn't just prosecuted locally for attempting to defraud the auto dealership?

[bmielke]

If I were going to try this I would have tried a Chevy Dealership first. I figure a Mercedes Dealership probably sees all kinds of weird, but legitimate documents and payment forms a Chevy Place might never see.

Of course if I wanted the best chance I would try a used car place.

[David Merrill]

Am I the only one wondering why she wasn't just prosecuted locally for attempting to defraud the auto dealership?

Or maybe why the judge didn't prosecute her from the bench?

But all of that was in the mix Tuesday as a jury in U.S. District Court in Roanoke heard a day of testimony, deliberated about three hours and finally acquitted Tucker, 56, of Roanoke, of charges of mail fraud and creating a false, fraudulent financial document in her attempt to gain the luxury sedan.

[grixit]

Am I the only one wondering why she wasn't just prosecuted locally for attempting to defraud the auto dealership?

That might still happen. Also, the dealership should be able to sue her for wasting their time.

[Arthur Rubin]

That might still happen. Also, the dealership should be able to sue her for wasting their time.

I don't think that's grounds for prosecution.

[Nikki]

It's a totally legitimate reason to bring suit against someone -- even if there's no legal basis for the suit.

As long as we don't have 'loser pays' in civil suits, deep pockets can inflict a great deal of financial injury when they want to. Putting up a successful defense to a civil suit requires some money.

Such a suit is going to cost her either way. Either she pays an attorney to handle the legitimate dismissal, or she pays the dealership after it gets a default judgment.

Ugly, but she opened the door.

[Judge Roy Bean]

It's a totally legitimate reason to bring suit against someone -- even if there's no legal basis for the suit.

As long as we don't have 'loser pays' in civil suits, deep pockets can inflict a great deal of financial injury when they want to. Putting up a successful defense to a civil suit requires some money.

Such a suit is going to cost her either way. Either she pays an attorney to handle the legitimate dismissal, or she pays the dealership after it gets a default judgment.

Ugly, but she opened the door.

IMHO, someone dropped the ball on this one. It seems to me that if the players wanted to actually whack her for scamming the dealership they would have done so under various state statutes. Instead, someone passes the buck and hands it up to let the Federal Grand Jury take a whack at her.

Now what we wind up with is a perpetrator of a rather simple case of attempted criminal fraud who plays an apparently viable sympathy defense to the more onerous Federal charges and gets away with it.

Now, she and her guru dance the happy dance and the scam will be used again.