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Fugitive Arrested After Moronic Facebook Friend Request

by Caleb Johnson on October 14, 2009 at 01:25 PM

Remember the story about the New Zealand authorities who located a fugitive couple, thanks to the misguided Facebook status of their relative? While that mistake was out of the criminals' hands, Maxi Sopo made his own bed with the social networking site.

In 2003, Sopo went from selling roses in Seattle nightclubs to committing bank fraud, making him about $200,000 richer. A natural career move, right? According to Huffington Post, he soon fled in a rental car to Mexico where he lived a playboy lifestyle. He'd sun on the beaches of Cancun till dark and throw down in the nightclubs till dawn.

But just living this MTV spring-break life wasn't enough for Sopo. So, he started bragging about it on Facebook, too. The AP quotes one Facebook as reading, "LIFE IS VERY SIMPLE REALLY!!!!BUT SOME OF US HUMANS MAKE A MESS OF IT...REMEMBER AM JUST HERE TO HAVE FUN PARTEEEEEEE."

While those words alone wouldn't lead police to his front door, Sopo did send a friend request to a person who turned out to be a former Justice Department official. Using information gleaned from Sopo's Facebook page, U.S. authorities worked with their Mexican counterparts to track down the fugitive and, last month, tossed him in a Mexico City jail. Soon, he'll be extradited to the U.S., where the Cameroon native will face bank fraud charges.

If Sopo felt the need to brag, he should've picked a place police might not look. We hear no one uses MySpace any more. [From: Huffington Post and AP]
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Facebook Crime and Punishment

Facebook Crime and Punishment

    Blackmail
    Sending any personal info or incriminating pictures to someone on Facebook is a huge mistake for many reasons. One of the worst possible outcomes is getting blackmailed for money, sex, or, well, anything these sickos dream up. Really, whether they're using a fake profile or not, it's a horrible idea. Read up on the story of an 18-year-old who blackmailed 31 male classmates after he posed as a girl and asked for nude pictures. That's lesson enough.

    Impostors
    Sure, it can be harmless to impersonate a celeb online or create a fake profile for a movie character. But seriously, there's a definite line you shouldn't cross when pretending to be someone else and it can lead to dire consequences for you. Maybe it's not as extreme as the Moroccan man who was jailed for 43 days after creating a fake Facebook profile of a prince, but you never know. Just steer clear of it.

    Self-Incrimination
    Do we really have to explain this? Just look up the shoplifter who posed with her stolen merchandise, the many photos of drunk underage teens, and, most recently, the album featuring a couple who killed and ate an endangered iguana in the Bahamas.

    Suicide
    Social networking sites has been blamed for a lot of things, fairly and unfairly, but in our opinion, the worst offense has been their indirect involvement in suicides. Obviously, there are a lot of factors responsible in each case, but there does seem to be links between social networking and a rash of suicides, and obviously tehre's the case tragic of Megan Meier, who killed herself after a classmate's mom impersonated a teen boy and harassed her over Myspace.

    Murder
    We've reported on numerous incidents of people getting in trouble because of their online behavior. Now, people are becoming victims because of what they're doing on the Web too. In England, a man was convicted of murdering his estranged wife after she changed her relationship status to "single." So, be careful of who can see your profile and what you're doing, no matter how harmless it seems.

    Nigerian Scammers
    Oh, you thought this only happened via poorly worded emails, right? WRONG. Once people got wise to their old ways, these con men are turning to social networking sites for new targets. This time, they're hacking into people's accounts and impersonating them to ask for money, usually with some weird sob story. You can check out a transcript of one of these conversations here.

    Cooperation
    Even if the law isn't on a case, a victim, his friends, or empathetic strangers might be. Since it's easy to get word out for anything online, people are using blogs, forums, and social networking sites to help track down criminals. In one such case, a vehicle thief was tracked down by a bunch of anonymous car enthusiasts after the victim posted his story on a forum. In the end, they identified the guy through his Facebook profile.

    Self-Incrimination
    Do we really have to explain this? Just look up the shoplifter who posed with her stolen merchandise, the many photos of drunk underage teens, and, most recently, the album featuring a couple who killed and ate an endangered iguana in the Bahamas.

Tags: banks, crime, dumb criminal, DumbCriminal, facebook, facebook face loss, FacebookFaceLoss, fraud, fugitives, funny, jail, socialnetworking, web

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