> We contacted Verizon about the incident today and will update this article if we get a response. A Verizon spokesperson told 404 Media that the company is cooperating with law enforcement on this matter.

Someone at Verizon should maaaayyyybe have sliiiiiightly adapted that boilerplate response in this particular instance ;D

(Also, yes, no laughing matter really, but still very funny.)

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FWIW I moonlight at a small community ISP and we've had to deal with the legal system twice. When we first got a request, we scratched our heads trying to figure out how to authenticate it. Our procedure became to discard all contact information from the warrant, find fresh contact from some trustworthy source (ended up being the official state webpage in both of our cases), and call them to verify.

… maybe Verizon should adopt that procedure, sounds like it would've caught this instance:

> The Cary Police Department confirmed that no officer named Steven Cooper is employed by their agency, […]