alt Hacker NewsWoman charged with computer fraud due to scam CashApp account being in her name
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> Meanwhile, authorities have offered Smith a plea deal including a $1,000 fine, $1,000 in restitution and three years' probation. She has refused, saying she is innocent.
This is nuts. Is it possible US prosecutors give so few shits about justice?
Time for CashApp founders and C-levels to be held personally liable for creating a system with so few checks that it appears to be designed to facilitate fraud and theft.
Then you sue all the law enforcement officers and local officials who are attempting to lay the blame for this on someone they should know is likely innocent. Make all of the financial liability for this lazy investigation come directly from the pockets of the cops and prosecutors until they have nothing left to their names and then extract every thin dime that you can from the city that hired or elected these clods so that the whole city is bankrupted.
Money is obviously the only thing that talks in this society. Make all these assholes pay with everything that they have managed to accumulate in their lives and kick their asses to the curbs after pointing at a dumpster and telling them that they can likely find some cardboard suitable for beggar signage. They'll need to supply their own writing tools though.
It will never stop until prosecutors/police become liable for gross negligence.
This is the original reporting: https://www.404media.co/amanda-smith-opened-a-cashapp-in-her...
Being extradited to Arkansas for a crime one didn't commit, one which is impossible to refute because there is no evidence to begin with, seems like a weirdly American spin on Kafka.
Police never thought to subpoena the ISP for the IP address associated with the cashapp login? This seems like an egregious omission in the investigation. Even if it were a VPN, you could subpoena her email to find payment receipts to the provider, etc. Even that may not necessarily prove guilt if there are no logs. That's all an enormous leap of evidence to assume the account is genuinely hers, especially given how endemic identity theft is.
Meanwhile, Cash App who facilitated the scam and actually cost the buyer actual money... walks away with no repercussions. There is something horribly broken when tech companies who are ruining people's lives have zero responsibility but are making money in the process.
So how exactly does Cash App verify users that signup for new accounts? If the process is so lax, shouldn't they be forced to temporary block it? To say nothing about money laundering charges, that would be raised against any bank in such situation.
Not a single comment on how an individual can prevent this? Or is there no way to protect from one’s identity getting stolen and used this way ? What can the rest of us learn from this so that we stack the odds in our favor?
I was scared just reading the article.
I don't understand why ID cards with digital features aren't really a thing in the U.S. In many countries, such as Germany, there are ID cards that you can scan with an app to prove your identity. That makes it much harder for fraudsters to simply open bank accounts in other people's names.
I have a feeling that she will get a very good lawyer, willing to work on contingency, on the ensuing sueball that she'll throw at the state.
As mentioned in other comments, plea deals are basically unconstitutional.
Still waiting for industry fans to comment. But let's get the ball rolling:
"I would never defend <company/common practice>. But this article is such egregious ragebait that I must speak out. It's a very sad outcome. But it's also clearly <her fault/impossible to legislate a fix/evidence that the system is working>."
Irony notice. This comment contains irony.
I recall once reading some Patrick Mckenzie article where he discussed how administrative issues like this used to be easily fixed by journalists. They could reach out to an institution seeking comment on a story, the institution's PR department could then ask for 48 hours to comment, in which time they could run something up the flag pole and get it fix. But with the speed on online reporting, they're now incentivized to report on the scandal ASAP, leading institutions to similarly fail to fix the errors. In that case I believe it was about bank foreclosures, but in this case I suspect there might be a way to convince the DA they're prosecuting an old woman and not an e-scammer.
If it does go to court, would explaining to the jury how half the nation's personal data is leaked twice a month be allowed? Or is this one of those truths that society is not allowed to acknowledge?
Isn't it Cashapp that allowed a criminal to open an account with someone else's social security number? Does she have a case against Cashapp?
I believe this is the case record and the arrest warrant:
Cash app and all of the organizations that stored but did not secure her social security number and other information should be liable, not her
It's good this is seen as big news, but to anyone paying attention this is an everyday occurrence.
All you need to charge someone is to show by a preponderance of the evidence that the elements of the offense were committed. Account being in your name and used in the crime meets that criteria. The problem is that many times a "thorough investigation" was not performed. There's nothing in law requiring a thorough investigation, but it's usually included in department regulations. You can file a complaint, but they won't do anything about it. There is no accountability anywhere in the system. The judges who are supposed to be neutral are severely biased due to the structure of the system and lack of training.
If innocent, the prosecutors need to fail jail time. This is absurd.
I hope she wins, sues the state, sues the individuals, sues everyone, and retires on a private island.
Would the EFF get involved in a case like this? Feels like it could set an important principle about how weak the link can be between “PII” and the actual person, given the preponderance of data leaks.
This story is making me angrier than any story in the news right now
An adjacent question maybe lawyers can answer. In a hypothetical scenario, can the accused here take the plea and then turn around and sue the city/state for money and have their records expunged? What are the downsides? I believe double jeopardy should prevent them from being tried again for the same crime.
If you can afford it, always make them take it to jury trial.
Identify theft/identity fraud is a bullshit risk-shifting move by the banking class.
The actual crime is classic fraud and it's directed at the banks and financiers. By inventing "identify theft", the financial sector shifts responsibility and financial consequences from themselves to the uninvolved, innocent, and frequently totally unaware individuals that fraudsters represent themselves to be.
With this system in place, instead of then requiring that banks spend the resources to verify who they believe they're doing business with (or else risk being defrauded), we have "credit monitoring" and "identity security" services and individuals being held financially and criminally liable for crimes they're often so uninvolved in they _literally don't know they happened_.
Meanwhile in our inboxes: “We take the security and privacy of our users very seriously” and “We have no reason to believe that social security numbers in our user database were accessed.”
Third post on the same news item. Clearly struck a chord. Does things like this happen in china?
People indicate how there is no privacy there but if things like this get out of hand and start happening for the masses wouldn’t one prefer a place like china where these things simply don’t happen because the system knows everything about every one? What am I missing ?
>Smith later discovered why she had been arrested: a scammer had tricked someone into sending $1,000 to a Cash App account, one that was in her name but controlled by a criminal.
And that brings $50,000 bail and days spend in jail before trial? Should just be a civic matter at worst.
>It turned out that the account had been created using Smith's Social Security number and date of birth. But Smith, who describes herself as not tech-savvy, said she had never used Cash App. The situation sounds like one that should have been resolved quickly. But Smith says she is still being asked to prove her innocence in an ongoing criminal case. One stumbling block was that Cash App refused to hand over details of the account to Smith because she couldn't prove she was the owner. She eventually received the data through discovery in her case.
Surely some details about her are the same as in the account profile, and not just the name, else they wouldn't prosecute her for an app account that bears no relation to her. Do they prosecute people just for something happening on the same name and surname as them?
If the account had others details about here to fool people, like her photo or SSN or address, she should have got access to the account, without having to demand it via discovery.
Playing devil's advocate here, how should this actually be handled? If the police show up (not saying they did all the due diligence they should have) to arrest you for a crime and the person says "Nope, wasn't me."...is that sufficient for police to drop everything and walk away?
She's been accused of a crime. Yes, she was arrested and had to bail out. This is normal process. How else does anyone propose this work?
Something is missing from this story. From the info in the article there is no way a DA could be confident or convincing a jury to convict. Beyond a reasonable doubt is a very high evidence bar and the many hacks of ssn and address info that the defense could bring up would make this bar impossible to meet. Add to it the defendant getting up on the stand and being able to say “I don’t know anything about this account” convincingly because she’s not lying (we are assuming), and every juror knowing it could be them on the stand next. Impossible to get all 12 jurors to convict. There’s no way any DA (who are all obsessed with their win rate) would press charges unless there was some convincing evidence connecting the defendant to the account. An SSN and address alone are not convincing to anyone.
May be someone who knows Jack Dorsey (CEO of Block which owns Cash App) should make him aware to the plight of this woman and Cash App can actually use this as an opportunity to do the right thing despite thier mistake.
Way to Know Your Customer, CashApp!
Her next lawsuit needs to be CashApp and their grotesque negligence on that front.
This is so backwards that it doesn't even compute in my brain.
This basically says I can act in bad faith to incriminate anyone if I have access to a somewhat "reputable" SaaS.
I hope some black hat group targets these prosecutors identities and create accounts for them so they experience that firsthand to understand how ridiculous this is.
Sad that Block Inc get to profit from frictionless signups, and outsource any costs of failings to innocent people in the form of jailtime.
Computer fraud, unlawful use of a communication device, and (identity) theft describe what Cash App helped facilitate rather than anything she did.
I wonder what happens if I start allowing people to send me personal information, auto-accept everything as the truth, and start sending their money around the world...
Is there a GoFundMe for her?
Shame on Cash App and Block for their horrible customer support.
I wonder whether this type of situation is an artifact of the US system of law being focused on codification / literalism / textualism, as opposed to the UK and similar systems where common law or judge made law has more weight, which permits the injection of some level of common sense into situations where a literal interpretation of the statutes would lead to ridiculous outcomes.
The entire concept of identity is very outdated and the general public understanding of digital identity is not accurate. Scammers are one thing but there are other cases where the Gov't itself can direct actions on your accounts if they have a reason to be looking into you. You do not own your medical records, financial records, location data, bank accounts, or anything else.
In this case, it may not matter that she has the truth on her side. The prosecution already took it far enough to offer her a plea deal. All they technically have to prove is that some piece of a digital trail, like having the phone number in the past, is proof that she is guilty of the crime involved here. Her home mailing address, current phone, devices, lack of travel, no associated facebook accounts, none of it mattered to the point she was arrested, extradited and is now being offered a plea deal for something she didn't do.
It's made more complicated by the fact that a prosecution doesn't really care what is true or not. They are not about to devote resources to finding out if the case they are prosecuting is based on accurate evidence. They have to rely on the police report to do this. And good luck with an Arkansas cop understanding how the scamming world operates. He put down his donut long enough to run a search in LexisNexus to link a phone number. And that is enough for a felony conviction in our corrupt court system.
And this was with her being the target of a scammer! Imagine if the Gov't itself was after you and wanted to sort of coerce and frame you for a crime. Or even just use your accounts against you.
The whole system is corrupt and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Starting with the entire concept of IDENTITY.
Bullshit plea deals are offered in bullshit cases like this only so that the "officers" involved can save face and claim "yupp, conviction!! we're the good guys!" because there is no additional downside or risk to them.
It really would be great if judges could (and would) issue sanctions and/or personal fines against people who are so clearly operating in bad faith.
She should say her chatbox went rogue on her. It seems to be a efficient line of defence.
[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50181794
So what do the LEO and prosecutors believe here? That she managed to conceal the money coming into her possession, that she managed to conceal the connection between her internet accounts and the cashapp and facebook activity ... that she had cashapp accounts in many other names, yet she signed up for cashapp with her real name for the account used in the scamming?
A commenter on the article suggests Block needs to do more to verify the account identity-- what are they supposed to do? The scammers have as much or more information than Block does about a person... in part because stealing that "verification" information is primary what powers these scammers in the first place.
If companies did managed to find some morsel of verifiable PII that the scammers don't have (what-- pictures of your butt? they've already got everything else!)-- they'll have not long after companies begin demanding it.
Before you form a strong opinion on the matter, I recommend you take the time to investigate who the source of the claims is in this article and whether the counterparty has had sufficient opportunity to state their case.
> Just hours after the $1,000 arrived, it was divided into smaller amounts and sent to a network of other accounts
Go after all these network of other accounts and cashapp must be held liable. They didn't do proper identity verification... And, these police seems incapable of finding real criminal. They are fool to assume people will use their own account to scam others.
I'm disgusted. How would one go about ensuring that their social couldn't be used to create an account with this much liability? Would freezing a credit line be enough?
And what should be inflicted on the Cash App company for causing her this distress?
Few millions should be fine so they really think through their procedures.
This is equivalent of swatting her. They should pay and at least few people who did actual crime of negligence should go to jail.
This is absurd. Would she be able to sue Block/CashApp? She should. For millions and millions of dollars.
Cash App's stock transfer records in the app vs their backend reports and bank transfer amounts don't reconcile and always in their favor. Their and their partners' terms make no provision for this. I have proof, reported to SEC CFPB NYS no enforcement.
* authorities have offered Smith a plea deal including a $1,000 fine, $1,000 in restitution and three years' probation.*
This is the goal ... They know they are at fault but admitting they made a mistake is damaging to careers.
In a lot of cases a carrot is dangled in front of people ... You can wast a lot of time (and money) fighting for your innocent, and take the risk your still going to get convicted.
Or you can take the plea deal, and it absolves us from our mistakes. And you save money because its cheaper then paying all those lawyers and court costs. And your innocent anyway, so that probations has no effect on you.
I forgot the source but the amount of prosecutions that are plea down is staggering. A lot of actual innocent people take plea's because its cheaper, then the alternative. And there have been plenty of people innocently convicted (even on shaky evidence), so most people take plea deals and they can move on with their lives.
This results in a culture where investigations are annoying. Where pressure is ramped up again and again to break people into taking plea deals. The biggest issue is, if you actually refuse to take a plea deal, then all resources are put against you to get a actual conviction, even if they know your innocent. "Why did you not just take the plea deal". Well, time to punish you for not taking it. Because repeat after me again, careers are on the line and losing cases hurt those future (potential political) careers.
Its the same why prosecutors fight tooth and nail, even if clear evidence is shows that a person was innocently convicted and spend X years in jail. It not about justice, its about protecting those careers.
The proof of innocents is heavily put on the other party, and it really hits hard on people who do not have the financial means.