Scuttlebutt Pipeline

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Well, perhaps calling them scam artists might be going a tad too far. Front page of today’s Las Cruces Sun-News¹ reads:

Pizza scam partners: D’ough!
Duo used bad checks to buy pies, then resold by the slice, police say

Las Cruces, NM- Two men have been indicted for allegedly using forged checks to buy Domino’s pizza and the using a Pizza Hut Uniform to resell the pizzas - still in Domino’s boxes - for $5 [a slice].

Adolfo Martinez, 33, and Mark Anderson, 26, both of Las Cruces, were indicted Thursday each on 11 counts of forgery and one count of conspiracy.

According to a criminal complaint, from March 26 through April 2, the men wrote a total of 11 checks to an unspecified Las Cruces location of Domino’s

That is just absolutely brilliant. Let me tell you, there is absolutely nothing strange at all about a couple of guys going door to door, in a Pizza Hut uniform, selling Domino’s Pizza. Nope, nuh-uh, nothing strange there. Hand me a box will you?

Granted, I have seen pizza places have workers, usually equipped with pepperoni pizza, set up a van somewhere and sell pizzas cheap there. At $5 a box though, not $5 dollars a slice! It attracts consumers who normally wouldn’t travel to where their store is located and can drum up new customers as well. But really, someone going door to door to local businesses in uniform and selling a competitor’s product? Did no one’s warning bells go off? Apparently not, because the article goes on to say that these two did make a bit of a profit, though it doesn’t specify how much.

From the sound of it, the only clue that something was up came in when every check bounced and the same two men, with the same number, kept calling in to have the pizza delivered to them. Eventually Domino’s employees caught on that something was amiss.

Martinez and Anderson, both of whom list a lengthy arrest record in their indictments, remain jailed at the Dona Ana County Detention Center on a $60,000 bond each. If convicted, they each face a maximum of 34 and a half years in prison.

The “profit” they made could not have been worth this. Although, you have got to love how their maximum sentence each is twice as long then the sentence men serve for killing their spouses. Oh the irony.

1. I found this in the copy of the Sun-News I picked up today. I haven’t found an online link to the article on their website though. If you have access to print media, you can read this article in it’s entirety on the front page of the Las Cruces Sun-News, Tuesday edition, dated April 29th, 2008. 128th year, No.29 [↩]

• @mskat wiser words were never spoken #
• jamming out to "Vicitm" by Eighteen Visions #
• now listening to "Hell Yeah" from Rev Theory. I need to stay out of mp3 stores. XD #

• @kissmykitty I like to drink 7up! (not sprite, 7up!) and eat some saltine crackers when I have an upset stomach. Helps tremendously. #
• @alydescends *sniffs* Now we know why we hardly see you at vertigo. =P #

• @IZEAinc 2 suggestions - reservation notes: give us the link to the opp we reserved so we can actually get to it! #
• @IZEAinc Second thing: please make up your minds! When we click to wait for a slot we’re told we’ll have 12hrs to complete. Your note says 6 #
• I think I’m shutting down the computer and walking away now. Maybe to go read, maybe to boot up the laptop and do some graphics work. #

It started out as a test in Phoenix, Arizona, but after 90% of the travelers showed a preference for a whole body image scan versus a full body pat down, the whole body imaging machines are being rolled out at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and the Los Angeles International Airport in California soon after. The Transportation Security Administration will be purchasing, at least, another thirty machines to be placed at various U.S. airports this year.¹

The TSA claims that the images are non-invasive, the faces are blurred to protect one’s privacy, and the person (screener) viewing the travelers is situated in an enclosed booth and cannot see the passengers faces as they enter the machine or leave it. They also assure travelers that images are not stored at all.²

It truly seems like TSA is watching out for traveler’s privacy rights while, at th same time, using the best methods available to keep security tight. At least until you read this segment in the CNN article:

Travelers will continuously and randomly be selected to go through the machine. While signs will inform them of the pat-down option, screeners will not announce that choice. But passengers electing not to go through the millimeter wave machine will be given the option of the pat-down.

We know people are notorious for not reading or paying attention to signs. So if you don’t believe you have a choice in the matter and are told you have to go through the body scan machine or kiss your flight goodbye, what are you going to do? The machine of course! Now if that isn’t underhanded and sneaky I don’t know what is.

1. Taken from this CNN article. For more details, please read this article. [↩]
2. Read this article to get a better understanding on how it works. [↩]