In Virginia's Fairfax County, Robbing Banks for the CIA

[perdurabo]

Or maybe someone's just gullible. Fun little read involving social engineering and open source intelligence, though.

http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/110752-in-virginias-fairfax-county-robbing-banks-for-the-cia

[miclo18d]

I don't even know where to begin on this.

2 things I took away were:

1. That basically NO ONE was charged for robbing 5 freakin banks??? WTFO??? I wonder how many copy cats this will produce? Ones that invent the same story and send themselves emails from a "CIA operative" that posts from the local library?

2. That "Prosecutors charged Brady with impersonating a government official". This blends over to the Stolen Valor Act. Isn't a soldier a government official? Or, isn't impersonating a government official just "freedom of speech"? Judges need to make this across the board either way.

Un-freakin believable!

[Badger52]

Who's gonna be in the movie?
:munchin

[perdurabo]

I don't even know where to begin on this.

2 things I took away were:

1. That basically NO ONE was charged for robbing 5 freakin banks??? WTFO??? I wonder how many copy cats this will produce? Ones that invent the same story and send themselves emails from a "CIA operative" that posts from the local library?

2. That "Prosecutors charged Brady with impersonating a government official". This blends over to the Stolen Valor Act. Isn't a soldier a government official? Or, isn't impersonating a government official just "freedom of speech"? Judges need to make this across the board either way.

Un-freakin believable!

And #3, the author alternates between CIA and DIA each paragraph. Two pretty distinct orgs, although the DIA and CIA both report to the DNI, if I recall correctly.

They had me going at the very beginning though, I almost thought this might be some botched red team exercise for a second.

[miclo18d]

I was reading scam from the start and I felt bad for the doofus that was suckered in but I'm sorry, anyone that says that you can break the law because you have a letter from some unknown entity that you've never met.... Jesus....how stupid are these people.

I have a few stories about soldiers on an exercise, that even included the local police, that were arrested when they took the exercise a little too seriously. One that I know got cleared up. The cop decided to not press with the charges. Another we ALL know about, that happened in Robin Sage and a student was killed for that! Neither of these included robbing banks for Christ sakes!