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| High-Tech Crimes Revealed |
By Steven Branigan
448 pages; $29.99
Addison-Wesley Professional |
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In this excerpt of Chapter 3 from High-Tech Crimes Revealed, author Steven Branigan introduces "Wesley" and the incidents that led to a computer forensics investigation.
The problem with many criminals is that they get addicted to
illegal behavior. The excitement that comes from committing
the first crime has its roots in the fear of getting caught. If
they don't get caught, they are encouraged to do it again and
possibly again. As they get away with more crimes and
infractions, they begin to feel untouchable. Eventually, they
feel like they can commit any crime and get away with it.
Fortunately for us, that becomes their fatal flaw. All of
these little crimes eventually catch up with them. This is
why police training teaches cops to investigate small crimes,
because they can lead to the discovery of much larger ones.
Of course, you can never tell when a small incident will turn
out to be nothing or become a pretty big deal, so it is important
to examine them all.
Take the case of our new friend, Wesley. He was renting an
apartment in New York City (NYC) for about $2,000 a month.
NYC is a tenant-friendly city, so it is difficult to evict a deadbeat
occupant. It did not take much for Wesley to figure this
out, and soon he stopped paying the rent on his apartment -- which went on for months. As you might imagine, his landlord William didn't like this at all.
William was getting weary of trying to chase him down to
collect the rent. He would get evasive answers and empty
promises of payment, but no money. After six months of
fighting for some attention, he had enough and decided to
proceed with legal action. It was time to evict Wesley. It was
not an easy route, but the way he saw it, he simply had no
alternative.
William hired a lawyer and filled out the necessary paperwork
to start the eviction process. In NYC, this can be
very tricky, and trying to do it without a lawyer is often a
mistake. The process requires a final, formal demand for the
rent. Once this is done, and after a few more steps, the case
can go to court. Only through a trial can the landlord get the
legal authority to forcibly evict the tenant. When he gets the
judgment in his favor, he gets a Warrant of Eviction, which
empowers the government to physically remove a person
from his rented home.
In this case, Wesley went without paying the rent for six
months before the Warrant of Eviction was finalized and
assigned to Sheriff Yar to execute. Expulsion can be either
difficult, or more difficult. Difficult is when the tenant is in
the place at the time of the eviction. The Sheriff lets the
tenant take his personal belongings and escorts him out of
the apartment. The more difficult option is when the tenant
is not there. The Sheriff then needs to forcibly enter the
apartment and remove the personal property that is inside,
usually putting it on the street. Either way, once the process
has been completed, the apartment is turned over to the
landlord.
Tenants can usually sense that they are about to be kicked
out of their residence, especially when they haven't been paying
rent for a while. By that time, they have usually vacated
the apartment, taking away anything of value. Wesley wasn't
this bright.
There was no one home when Yar arrived, and it was
beginning to seem as if Wesley had skipped town. Because
William was there as well, he was more than happy to open
the apartment for Yar. Upon entry, it was obvious that
Wesley had not cleared his apartment out, as there were
quite a few televisions and other strange electrical equipment.
This seemed very odd, and Yar immediately suspected
that the apartment was being used to store stolen goods.
Because the equipment might have been considered evidence
of a crime, leaving it on the street was not an option.
He needed help and wanted to contact the NYPD to have
them check it out, but what was he going to do with the
apartment in the mean time? Unfortunately, since this
was not an emergency, he could not call and wait for them.
Instead, he would need to set up a time when they could
come by and in the meantime secure the site to prevent
Wesley from coming back in. He could not let William have
his place back—not yet. Oh great, William thought, he would
have to wait even longer before he could rent out the apartment
again.
So Sheriff Yar padlocked the door, put some yellow tape
across its opening, and posted a notice that an eviction warrant
was being served. He wanted to make sure Wesley was
not going to be able to remove or destroy any of the evidence.
Now he could go contact the NYPD.
Read the
rest of the story, including the forensics investigation.
