2007-02-23 Phoney Fax Frees Felon

The NY Lawyer reports that "Officials released a prisoner from a state facility after receiving a phony fax that ordered the man be freed, and didn't catch the mistake for nearly two weeks."

Ok, so there were typos in the Order, the order "demanded" the prisoner's release, and the fax was sent from a grocery store.

The real message is this: Better crafted documents will follow. They will have letterheads, "signatures" and all the trappings of "legitimate" court documents.

Think that can't happen? Remember Parmalat? In that 18 billion dollar bankruptcy, company officials scanned, and then pieced together, a document purporting to confirm the existing of billions of dollars in foreign bank account. How? Scanned Bank of America Letterhead, signature of a BofA VP (technology area) and created document content with bank account number, deposit amount, and a confirmation. The auditors ate it whole.