Isn’t it fraud because they are misrepresenting their name and address, not to mention the fact that they don’t know Huell at all?
I don’t know the intricacies of the bar’s rules, but it’s pretty clear there are actions that are not crimes you can be prosecuted for, but which are grounds for disbarment. There’s got to be some of that in there.
I would agree that there are grounds for disbarment, using my little knowledge of the law.
It’s the “committing major felonies” that I have an issue with.
A lawyer who defends criminals pro bono in her spare time has her reputation enhanced, not diminished. Especially if one of them is a beloved saviour of a church who had hundreds of testimonials to his character. And most especially if she has a habit of winning those cases.
That’s if the story holds. If it doesn’t, what other lawyers think of her will be the last of Kim’s problems.
I think we can use the BB omniscioscope to deduce that this particular scheme does not blow up in Jimmy and Kim’s faces. There is no way that this case could take Kim down without also taking Jimmy down, since we know in BB he is a practicing lawyer and therefore not disbarred.
This is Kim’s turn to the dark side, but I don’t think it is what’s going to end he story arc. That’s still down the dark road she stepped onto.
There’s really two possibilities. If you’re playing dumb, I’m not interested in playing the game where I put a lot of effort trying to explain something and look up real world laws to post and you keep playing dumb until I’ve wasted a bunch of effort. On the other hand, if you really believe that what they did doesn’t involve any kind of crime, nothing that I cite will change your mind, so looking anything up would be a waste of time. It’s like if we were discussing an organized crime show and you were asking things like “Why could Fat Tony be in trouble? It’s not a crime to take care of someone, it could actually be a tax writeoff!” when it was clear to anyone watching the show that the “take care of the that guy” line was actually an order to kill the guy.
On the topic of ‘discussion’, in general the ‘playing dumb’ game of mentioning really specific actions while ignoring both the greater context of them or even all of what’s involved in the action (like leaving off that the letters were solicited by other people for a specific purpose and contain false information) doesn’t actually lead to good discussion. But it’s even less likely to result in good discussion when you’re willing to imply that I said the exact opposite of what I actually said. I never called what they did “mail fraud”, and in fact the only use of the phrase “mail fraud” by me in this part of the thread was to point out that what they did doesn’t seem to actually qualify as mail fraud under the federal statute. If you’re going to act like I claimed that what they did was “mail fraud” when I explicitly and clearly stated the direct opposite, it’s clear that you’re not going to engage in real discussion, you’re just playing at some game of your own. Hope you have fun with it!
Sorry, but I have better things to do then “play games” on a message board with anonymous people.
You said this:
WHAT state felonies? WHAT federal charges? Be specific. I mean, it took you longer to type out the response that said you weren’t going to respond then it would to just type out what charges. We’ve already ruled out “mail fraud” so what else is there?
Jimmy summed it up in the last scene: “Ex parte communication, contempt of court, and several hundred cases of mail fraud.” Kim did not disagree.
It seems like there is disagreement here on whether or not “mail fraud” occurred.
Is “Ex parte communication” a major state felony or some other federal charge?
Is “contempt of court” a major state felony or some other federal charge?
Heck, I’ve no doubt the plan was disbarrable and arguably criminal, I’m just not sure how the Albuquerque DA proves it, assuming the involved parties keep their mouths shut.
That’s a good point. All Kim has to say is that the guy must have had some friends work up a scam to help get him off, and she had no idea about it.
But that assumes Jimmy never accidentally left tracks behind.
But Kim should be thinking about this: If the ADA suspects she was involved in shenanigans, she’s not going to get caught off guard again. The next scam (if pulled on the same court) will be much more dangerous. This time, she had had the advantage of blind-siding the ADA. Next time, she won’t.
Aside from the legalities, the scam was ridiculous. Anyone who would have gotten the name of the church would have put the name of the church into a search engine, not typed in the church’s URL. They would have gotten just one hit for the new web page. There would have been no other mentions and in particular, no news story about the fire in the local paper. This was an obvious scam that anyone would have seen through.
They could have found a church that existed but didn’t have a web page. A small church with just a few hundred members would not necessarily have had a web page in 2004. The story about the fire was a bit much, but Jimmy dialed it back to a just coffee maker burning up, the church wasn’t damaged so not necessarily a story in a newspaper. If pressed, Jimmy could have said the fundraiser for Huell gave them the incentive to set up their web page.
Missed the edit window:
For example, I just googled Freedom Worship Babtist Church in Coushatta, LA. I get their location, a bunch of business listings (I.e., manta) but no church web page. A Facebook page, but that would be unlikely in 2004.
I agree that it would have been treated more skeptically, but you have to remember that this was much earlier in the internet era, and people were much less savvy about how it all worked. A WHOIS query wouldn’t even be known to anyone who wasn’t a geek. Most people really had no idea how any of that worked, and probably wouldn’t have considered that a lawyer could put up a web page in a few days.
The other point is that Kim was counting on them not looking too closely for such a minor case. In fact, she was counting on the fact that the ADA had gone to far with the charges, and the Judge would just decide that she was unreasonable given the hassle it was causing him.
Also, this was partly revenge for Kim. Both the judge and the ADA were quite unreasonable with her.
Then why was Saul so worried that Lalo had captured him, back in his first appearance on Breaking Bad when Jesse and Walt kidnapped him? As soon as he discovered his masked, armed kidnappers were NOT Lalo, Saul visibly relaxed.
Assuming it’s not just a mistake, I am really looking forward to finding out… because I have no idea whatsoever.
Maybe Jimmy simply is not around / not informed of the crucial details?
Maybe… Maybe… something unfortunate will happen at the restaurant. Something unfortunate enough that Tuco, when released from prison, wisely decides to move his operation to a new location. Maybe.
Scooby and Shaggy could blow that con in half and episode.
YES! Thank you. Now I don’t have to be excoriated. 
Very much this. I kind of wonder at the ages of people disbelieving some of this stuff. For us dinosaurs it’s still incredible to think how far the internet has come in a very short time. I’m fairly sure my home connection in 2003 was still dial up. (Admittedly that was in Oz). I’ve always been pretty geeky, computer-wise, and I doubt I would have known about Whois in 2003.
Your second point is spot on, I’m sure for such a minor case, Kim’s gambit of discovery and continuation motions would have produced the results she wanted 95/100 times, because the ADA wouldn’t have had the time or inclination to waste resources on pursuing something like that. To me that extends even further to any chance of uncovering the scam. No way is she sending investigators, or spending even more time on a minor case, where a judge has instructed “make a deal”.
Show takes place in 2004, back then small town papers generally didn’t post their news online if they even had a webpage, same with small businesses and churches, especially ones in a backwater area. This was back when the web was well established enough that major companies had a web page. Also search engines were not as ubiquitous as a ‘first stop’ on the web and didn’t do as good a job at capturing non-major pages. Remember, 14 years ago is before high speed internet at home and smart phones in your pocket were common. If you’re looking for that kind of hole, I think it’s more likely that they’d do what you said and get no hits, since the church site wouldn’t be indexed yet (indicating that it’s a brand new website).
Also the fire that Jimmy described isn’t something that would make the paper. I’ve had three occasions over the years where an appliance at work (2 toaster ovens and 1 microwave) caught on fire at work and set off a smoke alarm. In all cases the fire department came out but no reporters and it was never in the local news.
What makes the scheme tenuous is that the ADA needed to hit the right middle ground to not realize that the church is made up. She needed to call the church and some of its members directly and go to its website, but not call local law enforcement to ask any basic questions about this church. It’s a really big loose end in the scam that simply calling the local police to ask about the church at all would crack the whole thing wide open. The scheme relied on the ADA poking at the mess of yokels a little bit, then going ‘this is way too much trouble for a bag of sandwiches’ without doing any serious investigation - which itself is not unrealistic, but does stretch credibility just a bit when she tells a whole roomfull of people to drop what they’re doing and look into it.
Jimmy and probably Kim’s literal fingerprints all over the letters as we’ve seen both of them touching the paper without wearing gloves on screen, so there is physical evidence. Whoever created and registered the website would be easy to find. Also phone company records would probably put the phones as delivered to Jimmy, and there would likely be some record of him fixing area codes. Whoever they got to set up the website (doing that is way outside of any tech skill Jimmy or Kim have shown) would probably be easy to track down, and isn’t ‘uncrackable’ like Jimmy or Kim. Once they have firm evidence that the Church is a scam and a good idea who’s behind it, they can up a sting to get Kim to say something problematic on tape (her statement to the judge about the church was carefully crafted not to be actually untrue, but under further questioning she wouldn’t be able to keep that up).
Sorry, but I have better things to do then “play games” on a message board with anonymous people.
I tried my Mom’s “Home Church” in Gay, GA. (C’mon down for the Cotton Pickin’ Festival!) Enon Primitive Baptist Church has a facebook page with nothing but an address. All the other hits were for a similar church name in Alabama. There are still wide swaths of our country that don’t have internet access unless it’s dialup or a smartphone. And most of the folks there can’t afford either one.
Is it ever treated as minor when a police officer has been assaulted though? I thought that was the surest way to bring the wrath of God down on yourself. Or at least the full force of courts and LEOs.