25 March 2005

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (6)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Thursday, March 24; link good at time of posting):
An Alabama man has been given three years' probation and fined $5,000 after he was convicted of impersonating a federal tax agent in an effort to keep from being cited for hunting violations.

Patrick Clete Blankenship . . . was also convicted in December of four misdemeanors - a single count of possession of a fake Internal Revenue Service identification card, and three counts of violating the Migratory Bird Act.

. . . .

Blankenship told jurors in December that, upon being confronted by the officers, he put into action a plan he had concocted after listening to a radio talk show about ways people have sidestepped various citations.

He pulled out an official-looking but phony IRS business card that he had made after downloading the agency's logo from the Internet. It identified him as a senior auditor. Then he asked pointedly if the officers had been audited lately, and insinuated that he would audit them if they cited him.

Blankenship told Moody on Wednesday that his attempt to evade a $627 fine for hunting violations was not worth "what I've had to go through and what I've put my family through."

[Previous TGIS]

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