A scheme only a Private could think of.
Ok, putting aside that trying to steal someone’s identity to use their good name and criedt to fix your life is wrong. But to try to do it to Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft is stupid. Do you really think that one would get away? That seems what Private Brandon Lee Price tried to do.
In the complaint unsealed Monday, federal investigators allege Brandon Lee Price changed the address on a bank account held by billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, then had a debit card sent to his Pittsburgh home so he could use it for payments on a delinquent Armed Forces Bank account and personal expenses.
Price called Citibank in January and changed the address on an account held by Allen from Seattle to Pittsburgh, then called back three days later to say he’d lost his debit card and asked for a new one to be sent to him, an FBI investigator wrote in a criminal complaint filed in February.
I mean who does this. This person is not a random face. He is the co-founder of the company that has made the OS everyday computer use. Do you really think that every red flag would not be raised? Could it get any worse after getting caught stealing the identity of Paul Allen? Yes it can.
Investigators found Price was listed as Absent Without Leave from the Army and wanted as a deserter, authorities said in the complaint. He was arrested March 2 and ordered detained until April 2 unless the Army takes him into custody.
Doing all of the above while AWOL and a deserter in a time of War? Oh and because of the draw down expect your days in the military to be numbered. But since you went AWOL to begin with I am sure that is not a big concern in your mind What WILL be a concern is a less then desired discharge and your name coming up on every background check you will apply for any job that has any real meaning. That is assuming that you do not get thrown in jail for this little stunt. All for what again?
The card was used to attempt a $15,000 Western Union transaction and make a $658.81 payment on the Armed Forces Bank loan account the day it was activated, according to the complaint. Surveillance footage also captured him attempting purchases at a video game store and a dollar store, authorities alleged.
David Postman, a spokesman for Allen, said the fraud was detected by the bank, who alerted law enforcement officials. The only transaction – out of four listed in the complaint totaling $15,936.99 – that apparently made it through was the loan payment, Postman said.
So all of that for $658.81?
Category: Shitbags
There’s stupid, and then there’s ARMY STUPID.
Hey, at least Army uniforms don’t try to camouflage in situations when you when you really WANT to be found – like that damned “aquaflage” NWU. (smile)
All that inter-service stuff aside – this guy was stupid as hell. He’d have probably gotten away with this for a while if he hadn’t gotten greedy. The $15k wire transfer attempt likely tipped off the bank that something might be going on. If he’d kept to small transactions like the loan payment and spaced them out – say one every 3 or 4 days – he’d probably have avoided detection for a while.
Then again, going AWOL for long enough to be DFR as a deserter in time of war shows he ain’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.
IOW, he’ll be at the next Occupooper rally claiming to be the next “Scoot” Olsen. All he needs is a rock upside his head.
OK, let me put you all a little Marine Corps Stupid:
I had to bail one of my Marines out of the Savannah, GA lockup. I enquired as to WTF had happened. After four or five go-arounds, I finally got this gem:
“Honest, Sarge, I wasn’t trying to start a fight when I called that Army Ranger a faggot!”
Heh….. this numb nuts may THINK he’s gonna be discharged soon, but as I recall, the day you first fail to show up for muster, your contract and remaining time in service gets put on hold. If the Army wanted to, and if I was his CO I most certainly would, I’d give him his article 15 and give hime the max, since he owes the Army for time NOT served. 🙂
Reduction in rank to E-1, restriction for 2 months, and fined 1/2 month’s pay for 2 months. Dock the balance of hid pay for repayment of the stolen funds.
Big Chicken Dinner handed to him on his last day.
Is it too late to bring back flogging as punishment?
#6, Yeah, Congress abolished it in 1861 (if I remember) to make Civil War recruiting easier. Given the Supreme Court’s “evolving standards of decency” standard for “cruel and unusual punishment” – there’s no way flogging would hold up now.
#5 – You’re right that an enlistment doesn’t keep running while the guy is AWOL, but you can’t do a BCD without a court-martial. (And CM’s should be done as early as possible – delaying them on purpose creates problems the prosecution doesn’t need.) If they let the civilians try this one, most likely they’ll just chapter him.
@#7 I meant that (mostly) tongue-in-cheek. I’m amazed that as soft as we’ve become that bread and water is still allowed.
#8, you might enjoy the Duke of Wellington’s testimony before the Royal Commission for Inquiring into Military Punishments – contrasting confinement on congee (water in which rice had been boiled) with flogging (he thought the former too soft).
http://books.google.com/books?id=iwI-AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA348&lpg=PA348&dq=selections+from+the+evidence+of+field+marshal+the+duke+of+wellington&source=bl&ots=CKGJBV-yHc&sig=d-07XSt7aSQ90gmA83bmCIsoQY4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nax0T_dP4tzRAaXuxP8C&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=selections%20from%20the%20evidence%20of%20field%20marshal%20the%20duke%20of%20wellington&f=false
“There is no punishment which makes an impression upon any body except corporal punishment. You send a man into solitary confinement; nobody sees him in solitary confinement, and nobody knows what he is suffering while he is in solitary confinement; and therefore this punishment is no example…”