77 CommentsAnthony Johnson, CC ’13, was arrested on Tuesday after a package he ordered containing 42 fake IDs was intercepted in Lerner. Spec reports that he went into the scheme with a group of friends, who each ordered two cards. He has been suspended from school until his court date in June, and charged with 42 counts of Criminal Possession of a Forged Instrument in the Second Degree. Johnson is quoted as saying at the time of his arraignment, “I ordered the IDs online because there’s a lot of places around school where you need to be 21.”
Spec also reports that fake IDs are common among students. More on the story tomorrow!
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77 Comments
@Anonymous Thank god the NYPD has caught these evil and wicked criminals. I’m so glad they devoted such a great deal of effort to prevent college students from drinking alcohol when they could be wasting their times with NYC’s real problems. Fortunately, these students had absolutely no future whatsoever, so whether or not you think what they did was as evil as I do, they will still have criminal records that will ruin their lives.
@The Kid He didn’t charge extra to make a profit. The $2 was added on to pay for the moneygram because the website doesn’t accept credit cards. Check your facts before you publish them.
@Anonymous Does it really make that much of a difference? Dude still got arrested.
@Anonymous 1. He had the package in his hand.
2. It wasn’t NYPD that walked him out. It was DEA. So was it fake ID’s in the package?
@who in their right mind... would be stupid enough to order from a website like that anyway…it looks like a 4th grader made it, seriously.
@Anonymous If they were only seized out of his mailbox, is that really possession? Seems to me that “possession” implies direct control.
@Anon I actually agree there, I mean, he technically didn’t own it… I’m just saying,
Also, what if someone mails cocaine to someone they don’t like at columbia? Will you get arrested if that’s intercepted, under the assumption you ordered it?
@from a 2L, non CU friend “Is it me, or do Columbia students have a propensity to commit felonies (allegedly)? I don’t really know if the other kids whose IDs he was going to distribute will be charged with something. In my not-expert legal opinion, so long as you’re not caught with the actual/physical fake-ID in your control, charging you with Criminal Possession of a Forged Instrument in the Second Degree – a felony – (which is what he was charged with) seems unlikely, especially where another element of that crime requires “knowledge that the document is forged.” It’s possible they are charged with something else though.
p.s. – running a meth lab out of a dorm room is also a BAD idea…”
@Uhh wat do u think his sentence will be?
@... in other news, the nypd announced today that jeff scott, executive vp of student and administrative services would also be charged with two counts of obstructing a peace officer in the line of duty for the egregious and unreasonable delays officers encountered when attempting to approach the package counter.
@umm Who is Allegra Roberts? Can’t find her on facebook and I know she does not live on his floor
@lmao she deleted her facebook upon realization of the hate she would soon be receiving from the Columbia community.
@Anonymous baha i just noticed that
@Anonymous as if i havent seen allegra roberts in every single bar around campus
@answer anything for some cheap publicity
@What really happened The police had a warrant for this package, having been tipped off by the USPS that it was from an almost certainly criminal source.
They waited for USPS to confirm that the package and then went to the package center. The package center told them it wasn’t it in the system yet, and the police went back everyday for three weeks before they could get their hands on it.
After wading through spoiled fruit and a bunch of other perishables locked within the bowels of the package center, they came to the new deliveries. They then went directly to the greatest threat to the city of New York, walking past lesser packages such as the AK-47 some mafia student had ordered and again past the box containing a Ukrainian woman in sexual slavery. They found a bunch of fake ids inside and arrested the kid.
@Anonymous You’re so full of shit.
@How to Win Friends and Influence People What could possibly have compelled Allegra Roberts to give such wildly incriminating statements to the Spectator?!
@not so rare disease dumbbitchitis
@Anonymous Here’s $10,000 worth of legal advice. If you ever get arrested: DON’T TALK TO THE COPS. Ask for an attorney and then keep your fucking mouth SHUT.
@I guess we now know why things move so slowly at the Package Center…
@Anonymous why are they allowed to go through our packages in Lerner? The mailroom is an embarrassment.
@because as explained above, the package came from china, which meant customs had the right to inspect it. When they figured out there was 42 fake ids they sent that info along to the appropriate authority, in this case NYPD. Package center had nothing to do with this.
No need to knee-jerk blame Columbia for everything. It detracts from the piles of things they legitimately are to blame for.
@Columbia has outsourced its War On Fun to the NYPD.
@me a lot of kids here ordered them successfully, he was just unlucky to get caught. And to address some of the stupidity above: the packages obviously dont have ID Chief written on them, using a fake ID as a drivers license will fail the first time you get pulled over, and arrests are not intended to be spectacles – just the opposite in fact. sometimes im ashamed to be associated with the overwhelming amount of lames at this school..
i wish him the best of luck
@You call them... ‘lames’?
I’m a little ashamed of you right now to be honest.
@bwog uncensored.com
@Anonymous Do you know what would be cool, if the school and police timed arrests to happen in the classroom. I’d love to be sitting in frontiers of science and the feds bust in, a dean pointing a finger, and cuffing some fool thats crying and dragging them out in front of everyone, and in the mist of the mayhem the look of the professors face as it all unfolds. I pay a whole lot of money to come here, the least they could do is make it a little more like a Hollywood image around here.
@Anonymous amen, brotha.
@Anonymous If you went to Hudson University, that would happen almost every week.
@Anonymous The exclusionary rule doesn’t apply here. Because the package came in from oversees it is amenable to search by Customs and Border Protection. This is true for anything entering the country, including your personal belongings on your person. Once customs saw that the package contained illegal materials, they tip off the appropriate authorities, those authorities have probable cause and we get an arrest.
@the real question is: who snitched and gave up the story to the CU media? this obviously happened a while ago…
@spec breh read the spec post. it happened last week, and Allegra “ragged jeans” Roberts, CC ’13 is at least one snitch, and like all snitches, she needs help sewing her pants together…
@Anonymous bahaha. i know a few poor sophomores who were in on this order.
WHOOOOOPPPPSSS!!!!
@Anonymous Unless they had some good reason to open up this kid’s package, he’s protected under the Exclusionary Rule principle: “evidence illegally seized by law enforcement officers in violation of a suspect’s right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures cannot be used against the suspect in a criminal prosecution.”
While I don’t condone what he did, I think it’s very alarming that his package was somehow “intercepted” in Lerner. Bwog, do you know of any details regarding why his package was specifically opened?
@Anonymous I think the fact that he was dumb enough to order from a place called “ID Chief” is good reason to open the package.
@Anonymous Yeah, and a quick Google search reveals that the ID Chief website is lolably bad.
@Anonymous what’s up with the bwog staff and their exclamation points….is it that exciting?
@Hans Yes!!!
@lol Isn’t it a federal offense to open someone else’s mail? Unless these IDs were emitting some kind of strange order or something?
@sorry odor*
@Anonymous lmao, what a gee
@bill o'reilly is going to have a field day with this news
@eh I think he’s too busy waging a war on poor people, heathens, and Barack Obama to care
@With that hater There is always time for Columbia. Or one of his subordinates will no doubt try and win favor through it. Fox news is retarded.
@Uhm... Are they opening our packages?
@Seriously Relevant question here; do they scan packages that feel suspicious, or did the thing come with a “Fake ID Super Deluxe Package” sticker on it?
@Anonymous According to the Spec story, the IDs came from a company called ID Chief. Maybe they were dumb enough to put that name on the outside of the package? Can someone who knows something about law tell me whether that would constitute a good enough reason to open it?
@Anonymous The NYPD intercepted it. I don’t think that package center staff is rifling through your mail.
@hmmm he should have just said they were novelty ids. I’m pretty sure most of the companies that sell ids do so legally. Until you actually use them to break the law they aren’t fakes.
However once he opened his mouth like a dumbass and started talking about places where you need to be 21 he probably screwed himself
@hmmm woops didnt mean for this to be a reply
@most likely the IDs were sent from China and intercepted by customs, who tipped off NYPD. it wouldn’t be the first time this has happened.
@Anon Now now bwog, are you making fun of spec for stating the obvious: “fake IDs are common amongst students”. Naughty bwog!
@Anonymous i hate when people personify the bwog
@don't say that! you’re going to hurt bwog’s feelings.
@hm i see what you did there…
@Anonymous … if you actually read the spec story, nowhere is that mentioned.
@anon I don’t bother with that shit.
@Anonymous I’m pretty sure that’s not why underage kids have fake IDs…
@J. S. Mill Another person’s life screwed up by yet another victimless crime.
@John Rawls “Criminal Possession of a Forged Instrument in the Second Degree” isn’t a victimless crime, it’s a non-violent class d felony, which could be used for any number of victimful crimes. His brilliant excuse–“there’s a lot of places around school where you need to be 21”–sounds victimless enough, but it’s tough to prove intent, and the intent of the 40 people he bought ids for.
(Disclaimer: I never read Rawls)
@Anonymous You’re right, there obviously need to be laws about fake ids. What’s moronic is not letting 18-year-olds drink, thus causing massive numbers of otherwise law-abiding citizens to commit class d felonies. (Also, for what it’s worth, I’m > 21).
@Anonymous As much as I love that argument (cuz I’m <21), it doesn't really hold up anywhere outside of the city. It's been shown that raising the drinking age causes fairly significant drops in traffic fatalities caused by drunk teens. Whether that causes on-campus binge drinking, alcohol poisoning, etc. is something else, but that's the law. Too bad we don't have halfway decent mass transit in the rest of this country.
@so you’re telling me i can go shoot people in the head for our country but i can’t have a beer if i’m under 21. this whole fucking country needs dynamic change or its going to hell very soon.
@what makes you think it hasn’t gone to hell already?
@actually raising the drinking age has shown no such thing. “It’s been shown that raising the drinking age causes fairly significant drops in traffic fatalities caused by drunk teens” is bullshit. The experiments with lowering the drinking age never lasted long enough to overcome the new liberty effect. When something previously banned becomes available (especially something as socially acceptable as alcohol), consumption increases dramatically until the novelty wears off. In the short run, lowering the drinking age does have negative consequences, but in the long term, we reduce crime and money spent on incarceration. Not only that, but we lower the deaths related to drinking as alcohol becomes less and less of a forbidden fruit.
lower the damned drinking age already (but keep some of those 21+ bars, darned youngsters can get annoying).
@BAM We should lower the drinking age and raise the driving age. Or at least set substantial restrictions on young drivers. I was terrified to share the road with some of the morons that went to my high school. And I openly refused to be driven by a few of my friends. Most 16 year olds are not mature enough to drive a vehicle that can very easily kill somebody.
@Anonymous do they stay your friends when you won’t ride with them? peer pressure peer pressure!!!
@Anonymous Are you smoking crack? “Victimless crime?” The fake IDs sold by this company are copies of driver’s licences. People can ostensibly use them to drive when they’re not qualified to be on the road, which poses a danger to everyone else.
@Anonymous You can’t drive with a fake ID. It’s the same as driving without any ID, only worse.
Case a) You don’t get pulled over. Not a big deal, fake or no ID.
Case b) You get pulled over. If you don’t have an ID, you get busted. If you have a fake ID, and show this to the cop, either he’ll notice it’s fake right away, or when he walks to the computer in his police car to check your situation, he’ll realize it’s fake. And now you’ve just committed a felony – perhaps multiple.
but IANAL
@McBain 3 Yeah I was wondering why I hadn’t seen him around
@haha at least the drug bust five tried to justify what they saying they needed to pay tuition. This fool is not even trying to cover it up “there are a lot of places around school where you need to be 21” haha what a terrible excuse.
@i like it.... ….a heck of a lot better than “I needed the income of drug trafficking….school’s expensive” of that ass-douche.
@LOL damn that sucks
@also just curious — what will happen to the people who ordered IDs? will they get charged too? bc that’s a helluva lot of people
@Claire As of yet no comment from Student Affairs!
@Anonymous Well, that sucks.