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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

There are so many problems with the story. It's fairly embarrassing for NPR.

Besides being a one-sided story, it's also obvious PR for Ervine's new company, which is dutifully linked at the end of the story.

Secondly, the story presents Ervine as the heroic protagonist. An interesting choice for someone that turned in his middle-eastern clients to the FBI because they took a cab and didn't talk like typical rich people. Ervine's response to this is to hand over all of his client's private information to the FBI, without a warrant, after which his client is jailed and deported.

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> An interesting choice for someone that turned in his middle-eastern clients to the FBI because they took a cab and didn't talk like typical rich people. Ervine's response to this is to hand over all of his client's private information to the FBI, without a warrant, after which his client is jailed and deported.

So he suspected someone was breaking the law and reported them to the appropriate authorities? Or are citizens supposed to always cover for criminals unless and until the government gets a warrant?

Probable cause matters. Taking a cab and being foreign is not probable cause for fraud.

He ended up being correct, but that’s posthoc justification.

Are citizens required to follow rules of probable cause before reporting someone to the authorities?

The fact that he turned someone in and they "turned out" to be guilty makes it very likely that we just don't have all the information here. Certainly not enough to condemn an accuser that was right.

You didn't read the original article. He claimed to be being picked up by his chauffeur. According to this guy anyway.

You are very mistaken about the legality here. Probable cause only matters to law enforcement agents. It has no bearing on private citizens.

The private citizens rights to seize property, turn it over to LEOs, report someone, conduct a search, do not change if they have probable cause to believe a crime has been committed. So, if I'm your boss and can legally read your emails, I can just turn them over to the law enforcement agencies no question asked – they're "my" emails after all.

I know right? Those rich people are not assholes! They must be criminals.

EDIT: /s It ended up he was right, but maybe he had no reason to actually know they were cons. We don't have the full story, which is exactly why it has been retracted.

Only fairly rich people can do this. They know the proper people to ask, to get the proper phone number for the proper "private investigator" who continuously bribes the proper FBI agents in the proper field offices and the proper assistant prosecutors in the proper districts. Lots of money changes hands, the proper evidence is entrapped or manufactured, and then the poor unconnected schlub who pissed off the wrong rich dude is carted off to federal PMITAP. Typically the rich dude then has the requisite noblesse oblige to let it go after simply ruining a family. However, in some cases he's a real asshole, and objects to Google linking to the poor schlub's complaints about his mistreatment...

I dare you to call the FBI the next time you have a business disagreement. You won't even get past the phone bank.

Do you have some references for this conjecture? This all sounds very "tinfoil hat" for me. Like, sure, what you suggest is totally plausible-- but is it not a stretch to just assume this is a commonplace thing?

I personally know people to whom something like this has happened. No I won't share their stories here. Every time the general public learns more about FBI, it's always more sordid and awful. Remember this is the house that J. Edgar Hoover built. Those who care to notice, have received notice.

Mostly, though, search your recollection: have you ever heard of anyone who isn't really wealthy doing what Ervine is reported to have done?

> I dare you to call the FBI the next time you have a business disagreement

I have a friend of humble means who, in response to an incident, filed a police report, sent copies to the public e-mail addresses of our state's responsible regulators and then packaged that correspondence and sent it to a field office's public mailing address. The response was quick, courteous and effective.

You're launching baseless conjecture.

How many years in federal PMITAP did your humble friend's business rival get?

I have to say I laughed outright at the whole "taxi-cab -> call the FBI" thing. That was kind of mad.

So he did the wrong thing by reporting someone that was then convicted for fraud? It's not like he sentenced and deported them. He reported someone that was committing fraud.

No, he reported someone for, essentially, not being stereotypically rich. The person happened to be committing fraud, but that doesn't mean his initial report was justified based on what was written in the original article.

The person was alleged to have been committing fraud according to the now retracted story.

Did he break a law, or did he just do something that you personally disagree with? I don't really understand the criticism here.

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