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Comment by ra1n85 | Hacker News Reader

This judgement has no teeth:

>Under the settlement, Brar — who operated Genius Technologies and Avangatee Services and does not admit or deny the allegations, according to court documents — “is permanently restrained and enjoined from advertising, marketing, promoting, or offering for sale, or assisting in the advertising, marketing, promoting, or offering for sale of Technical Support Services.”

This guy is being made to pay 136,000 despite:

“The cost to consumers ranged between several hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars,” the FTC said of the scam, which appeared to begin in 2015.

This is not justice, and this judgement does not serve as a deterrent. This is grand larceny and needs to be accompanied with jail time for perpetrators.

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Paid to the FCC, and not the victims? It appears that the government is not interested in the victims, rather just wants a cut of the scam for themselves.

Well, congress has only granted them the power to collect fines. The FCC has not been empowered to dispense compensation. However, now the victims have a pretty good piece of evidence for a small claims court filing. Andnof course, the justice department at several levels could bring charges.

How exactly would you propose a settlement of a criminal proceeding be paid out to a large number of victims? This is what class-action is designed for: it qualifies claimants, unifies proceedings and operates in civil court where the barrier is much lower. I'm probably like most in that I think most class-action suits are ambulance chasing lawyers cashing in vs. justice for the true victims, but this seems to be a textbook scenario for class action.

This was not a criminal proceeding.

> I'm probably like most in that I think most class-action suits are ambulance chasing lawyers cashing in

That's not "most people", that's the big business lobby's propaganda. Yes, it's often the case that the costs to prosecute a case are a large fraction of the damages. The defendant doesn't escape punishment just because their payments go to legal fees instead of customers.

GDPR fines also go to the governments and not the victims. The reason this is relevant because there wasn’t any discussion of the potential cash-grab incentives for governments because of GDPR. Violations against a person should have fines paid to the person and not the government, thus the government becomes a neutral party and not a beneficiary.

FTC, although to be fair it doesn't say what will be done with the funds.

I seriously doubt that, unless otherwise stated, the FTC would do anything other than appropriate the funds for itself.

> I seriously doubt that, unless otherwise stated, the FTC would do anything other than appropriate the funds for itself.

The money goes to the Treasury. Congress holds the purse strings.

FTC fines are not designed to make victims whole; fines are inherently punitive. In our current system, restitution and civil damages fill that role; i.e., victims who want to be made whole should sue Mr. Brar individually, sue him as a class, and/or find a prosecutor who will go after criminal charges with restitution and make sure they're included as victims.

The good news for victims is that the FTC settlement generally makes civil suits easier for victims to win. The settlement significantly increases the probability of success and significantly decreasing the cost of each individual victim's lawsuit. In particularly egregious cases, FTC settlements will require an explicit admission of guilt. Those admissions make victims' cases even easier to win (the victim only has to prove that they were defrauded; the question of whether the interaction was fraudulent is already settled).

IMO the most appropriate structure for an FTC fine would be ${some multiple of the money you made scamming people, AFTER paying back all victims who decide to file a civil suit}. I think the ordering is exactly the opposite, though, unless the civil suits include punitive damanges. We'd have to find a bankrupcy lawyer to be sure.

Consumer redress is in scope for FTC

https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/what-we-do/enforcement-authori...

It sounds to me like each individual he scammed also has a case. Which means there's hope for a more just outcome.

That is what I was thinking as well, a civil case from each person scammed, perhaps put into a class action which would result in a some justice for the folks who were scammed, and perhaps create a permanent garnishment on all of his wages from now until he dies where a percentage of anything he makes in any job goes to his victims.

All a class action will do is make one firm 80% or more of the judgment. And it appears the defendant is judgment proof as this is a low single digit percentage of the original award.

Class actions are worthless as a form of justice to the victim. They might get a $30 check.

I wasn't clear in my communications ;-).

In cases like these (non-violent economic crimes) there is often a call for "justice" which includes incarcerating the perpetrator. I am of the opinion that locking them up furthers the damage of their crime by costing tax payers to pay to lock them up, house, and feed them. Because of that opinion, I lean toward justice solutions whereby the perpetrator is allowed to live in the 'outside' world but a percentage of all their earnings going forward is paid into a victim's restitution fund. This is analagous with "mortgaging their life", think of it as a student loan debt for criminals that can't be discharged through bankruptcy.

The idea being that "justice" means impacting the rest of the perpetrators life with an economic cost equivalent to the economic impact they had on their victims lives. And doing so with a minimal increase in tax cost to enforce.

What kind of useful work can a fraudster do? You can't trust him with money, and I'd rather unskilled labor jobs go to honest people.

How many of those individuals will come to realize this particular guy is the one who scammed him? Has there been an effort by the government to reach out to each of his victims and notify them of the identity of the man who scammed them?

If it becomes a class-action suit, you can guarantee the lawyers will find every last victim.

And then some.

Just for those with the knowledge and money to pursue a case against him.

Completely agree. These scum definitely need to go to jail, to send fair warning to would-be scammers that it's simply not worth the risk.

>The judgment was for $7.6 million, but it was partially suspended because of Brar's inability to pay the full amount, according to the FTC.

Pushover justice system, weak.

Unless I'm mistaken, the data suggests that harsher punishments do not work as a form of deterrent. It seems inappropriate to cage someone for a non-violent offence.

In fact many claim that harsher punishments don't work too well for violent offences. Violent people don't think of consequences.

But for premeditated large-scale economic offences, they certainly work, because the punishment is part of the calculation that the criminal makes.

Non-violent, victimless offense, yes.

This appears to have been premeditated with a number of victims, all of whom were disadvantaged relative to the perpetrator.

perhaps for a single non-violent offenses.

But for theft by deception practiced at scale? Absolutely should be jailed for a significant amount of time.

I'd argue for significant amount of jail time simply for the waste and violations of law involved in needlessly ringing so many phones and violating Do Not Call laws.

these people create a real cost for society, and the penalty needs to be bigger than "oh, just give back some of your criminal gains". If you think that caging someone is inappropriate or doesn't work, you can go for lashing, or something else. What would you actually suggest as a deterrent?

I don't think the argument here is against jail time. Just that the reasoning it will work as a deterrent is flawed.

Unfortunately, we/I don't have a good answer to your question what to use as a deterrent. The problem is a) people do not act rationally in a universal way b) people are bad with statistics c) arrest precision (Pr[you get arrested|you commit a crime] is not that great.

Pr[caught]Cost-Pr[not caught]Pr[succeed|not caught]payout >0 => commit crime. Humans are pretty bad at underestimating probability of events against them and overestimate their chance of success (people buy lottery tickets for instance).

If a criminal is irrational, deterrents will not really work by definition -- you might be able to make due in a per case basis.

You can view this as a different version of lottery ticket. No matter the risk of wasting your money, people are going to keep buying them. It really baffles me too.

P.S.

Consider now an extreme version tried in the past -- you commit even a simple crime, you are executed. First, this is a waste of resources (you could still use these individuals). In any system of law, yet in particular in a common law system, where the weight of precedence and law interpretation is much greater, every single one of us has almost surely committed a crime by some interpretation, obscure law etc.

Second, as a criminal at that point you are going to escalate. The damage a single individual can cause to society on average has increased dramatically over time. Do not think about gun ownership. A man can just run over a busy intersection in their attempt to escape.

To give some weight to my words, here is a personal story. My car was hit by an individual in a car a couple of years back on my way home. The driver drove the wrong way on a one way street, panicked and crushed into me. Instead of pulling over the they attempted to escape. In the process, pedestrians had to jump for their lives, while another car was hit also.

That person endangered the lives of several people, damaged one more car, to avoid a DUI (my opinion from their erratic behavior and appearance). So only by luck, a possible DUI/crash did not upgrade to mass murder.

Yes, people are not strictly rational, and I generally consider a lottery an innumeracy tax.

The ideal deterrence, based on psychological studies, is small penalties reliably and immediately handed out, but the only way to implement that is a massive surveillance society and penalties without the delay of trials.

This could work with speeding, instead of being an infraction, would just be taxed, maybe $0.01 per [mph over the limit] per mile. So I could go 100mph in a 65 zone for $0.35, but it'll add up real fast, and cruising at 79 in a 65 for your 20 mile commute would cost .14202=$5.60/day or $1400 per year. Actually higher penalties than now, since most people wouldn't get caught even once per year, and a 79mph ticket might be $200 in comparison. So it'd provide a solid deterrence.

Yet, prison does still serve purposes. First, while people rarely calculate the exact rates of [getting caught] and [getting convicted] and then calculating the odds vs the payoff, the general concept of wanting to avoid the criminal justice system is enough that many people act to avoid it. So, it's a general. nonspecific deterrence, and it needs people getting imprisoned to maintain that.

Perhaps more importantly, it does a very specific type of deterrence. For the sample of people who have been convicted of a crime, it ensures that they won't be out and available to do it again while imprisoned, and will have paid disproportionately for their previous venture. So, this select group who have already demonstrated probability =1 for this crime, will be strongly deterred.

for that reason alone, I'd vote for keeping this perp off the streets for half a decade.

edit: error, clarity

It’s not as simple as violence = jail and non-violence = no jail. A person could still inflict a great deal of harm without physically administering it. Punishment is circumstantial.

If a person swats another person on a livestream should they go to jail? What about if a scammer wipes out the bank account of someone who is already poor and the anxiety causes them to commit suicide? What if someone’s life gets ruined by identity theft and it takes them years to recover? There’s lots of ways a person could ruin the lives of other people and inflict tons of damage while “non-violently” sitting behind a computer screen.

Why isn't it appropriate to "cage" someone for a seriously harmful, non-violent offense?

not saying I agree with these, but here's a couple of reasons:

* prison is part punishment - lose your freedom as a consequence of your crimes. Most probably relate to this.

* prison is to protect society from the individual - for non-violent crimes is this the optimal solution?

* prison is super expensive - will you pay extra taxes to keep this guy in jail?

* prison has a mixed record at best (and sometimes the opposite impact) at keeping people from re-offending or rehabilitating them - do you think there are programs in most/any prison tailored for white-collar tech crimes? Should there be when so few would benefit?

* Prison hurts society as a whole if the opportunity cost for the individual is high - Could this guy get a legit job, pay taxes, participate in the community?

I see the job of the legal system as weighing these factors (and more) to determine punishment. Every jurisdiction does that differently...

I'm certainly not suggesting that jailing people is always (or even often) the right course of action, but that some non-violent crimes are arguable more serious and harmful than some violent crimes, and ought to be punished accordingly.

The only lesson learned here is:

If you're going to pull a scam like this one, be sure to spend all of the money or hide it really well before you get caught.

Good job, FTC. That'll show 'em.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Brar was a crypto 'pioneer'.

If you hit the paywall, here's the story https://outline.com/GS6Yz8

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