Ticket Scam Arrest Outside Lerner

A tipster just wrote that he saw 10 cops handcuff a man outside Lerner and take him away. Apparently there were a lot of cops and Public Safety folk around. Bwog was outside Lerner a few minutes later, but found nothing- no cop cars, no Lerner personnel. We’ll update you as soon as we get more information, but if you saw or heard anything, please email tips@bwog.net or leave a comment.

Update: Public Safety confirms the arrest, and we’re waiting on details.

Update, 3 PM: Alright, here’s the lowdown from James McShane, VP for Public Safety. A man named Daisuke Mizouchi was arrested last night outside Lerner Hall. He was “engaged in a bogus theater ticket scam.” Basically, he would offer Broadway tickets for sale, take the money, and not deliever any tickets. “In at least five cases,” McShane wrote Bwog in an email, “he used Craigslist to promote his sales.” Last night the 26th Precinct of the NYPD (Columbia’s precinct) and CU Public Safety caught Mizouchi outside Lerner and arrested him “after a brief chase.” Bizarro!

In other news, Rangel will officially stand trial on ethics violations after a possible settlement fell through. He is accused of violating 13 counts of House rules. Not good news for your adopted Congressional District, good old reliable #1-5.

Update, 4 PM: Another tipster, Aryeh Hillman, CC’11, sends along this photo of the suspect being arrested, and recounts what he saw of the incident: on College Walk at about 9:15 an undercover police car started flashing its lights for students to get out of the way. The car then did a U-turn and parked on Broadway and 115th, outside Lerner. When Aryeh walked by the 115th gates, Mizouchi was pinned down by a plainclothes cop with his knee on the suspect. The suspect was then handcuffed. Another witness watched the chase and said Mizouchi looked like he was “flying” he was running so fast. As Mizouchi ran past Lerner, plainclothes cops ran out from multiple locations on campus. Mizouchi tripped and fell outside Lerner, where he was handcuffed. According to Aryeh it was all over very fast (which makes sense, as Bwog was on the scene just a few minutes after the arrest), the suspect was whisked away in an undercover police car, and the scence was clear. Also mysterious: the suspect has a Japanese name, but he didn’t look Asian, according to Aryeh and the photograph below. Curiouser and curiouser!

Photo by AH

Tags: crime, lerner, rangel, scams, tickets
28 July 2010 @ 10:23 PM · 14 comments

• puppy cops · 4  16 · 28 July 2010 at 10:29 pm · Track

  we have the situation under control, everything is okay

  • Mader Gende · 4  4 · 29 July 2010 at 11:25 am · Track

    Cha feshol, sag.

• Anonymous · 3  6 · 29 July 2010 at 12:08 pm · Track

  I saw the guy being arrested, and he looked to be in total shock, mouth agape, being restrained by a couple of plain-clothes. It was a supremely weird scene. Some kind of shaggy-haired hipster with a dangling cross earring. Wong Kar Wai stylized weirdo.

• cc11 · 2  6 · 29 July 2010 at 12:10 pm · Track

  yo i emailed you guys about this with pics, check your spam filters

  • Eliza (Bwog Staff) · 29 July 2010 at 12:15 pm · Track

    Thank you so much- is there anyway you can re-send to eliza@bwog.net. I’ll owe you one!

• Anonymous · 0  6 · 29 July 2010 at 1:48 pm · Track

  upload these damn pics

• I seen em · 14  21 · 29 July 2010 at 1:51 pm · Track

  From my vantage point a few feet from the scene of the crime, I spied a zit-ridden, balding, red-haired jazz-flute street performer, decked out in a pink tang-top, a paisley tie and dungarees. He was munching on dunkaroos when about 14 cops perched atop ferris booth leaped onto his unsuspecting 6’4”, 450 pound girthy frame. But the peewee’s playhouse meets Carrot Top crook wouldn’t go down without a fight. He began flailing his arms wildly and shouting obscenities about Toy Story Three. This clearly upset one particular portly, ambiguously-gendered cop because he began to foam at the mouth and whipped out a taser from inside the zipper of his jeans, where his Woody was. The hermaphroditic cop who smelled like a mix of baby-powder and raw onions, proceeded to tase that bro for about thirty-five minutes (eastern time). Soon, a pile of excrement, most likely resulting from the tasing, accumulated in the dungarees of the plus-sized Ronald McDonald vagrant, and the odor was pungent. It was at this point in which the mob of cops fainted from the smell and the thief made his escape, leaving a trail of peanut-M&M encrusted feces in his wake. But just in the nick of time, PresBo appeared out of nowhere equipped his trusty nunchucks and challenged the ginger blob to a game of rochambeau. They went rock for rock, scissor for scissor for about twenty minutes until I cupped the criminal with an oversize butterfly net. Then I felt the kick and realized I was in the ginger criminal’s dream the whole time. Then I woke up for good and realized I was the awkwardly-proportioned hermaphroditic cop. fml.

• Actually... · 6  1 · 29 July 2010 at 2:03 pm · Track

  The above comment is completely incorrect! His skin was blemish-free.

• Anonymous · 2  7 · 29 July 2010 at 2:06 pm · Track

  Who the freak was this dude

  • Fucker · 1  8 · 29 July 2010 at 4:32 pm · Track

    Not Japanese, apparently.

• Guess he · 4  4 · 30 July 2010 at 11:21 am · Track

  won’t be appearing on Broadway anytime soon…

• captcha · 1  0 · 31 July 2010 at 3:26 pm · Track

  captives 319-321: that’s quite a captcha!

  • captcha · 1  0 · 31 July 2010 at 3:27 pm · Track

    to be clear, i meant my captcha was

    captives 319-321:

    and is rather appropriate given the nature of the post

• Orbit · 0  0 · 26 August 2010 at 11:29 am · Track

  How is he Japanese and not look asian?