Really. So, they dressed up and frightened a few people in order to engage in shady land deals. I can certainly see some trespassing violations, but if people are stupid enough to believe that you are actually a legendary monster or some malevolent ghost who is corporeal and hell-bent on your destruction due to some ancient evil perpetrated by your ancestors, then I think that you certainly would have to shoulder a little of the blame yourself. I’m not sure if it’s even fraud.
But nevertheless, the baddies are always carted away by the police at the end, still wearing their costume but sans mask. And someone typically wisecracks that the baddies will be going away for a long, long time.
But for what? What would the charges be?
This may not be the right forum. If not, I apologize.
I think I asked this question around 8 or 10 years ago on the SDMB. My question came up after seeing an episode where someone had discovered oil or something valuable on the property and wanted to scare off another buyer. How is it fraud or robbery? If you want to purchase property and someone goes around pretending to be some sort of ghost or monster on that property, what laws is he breaking? Seriously, if I didn’t want to sell my house because there was an oil deposit underneath and pretended it was haunted and then dressed up like a ghost, what would I be charged with?
In the first place it deprives the seller of the full value of the land he is selling.
And in the second place it is a form of intimidation. Telling someone that if he buys the land then will drain his blood, or telling someone that if he buys the land he will get his legs broken are pretty much the same.
On your own property? probably nothing. But why would you need to? If you don’t want to sell your own land, then don’t sell it. No need to put it up for sale, then scare away buyers. What would be the point of that?
It depends; some crimes are worse than others. One particularly creepy episode had a man gaslighting his own niece to drive her into an insane asylum so he could take over the hotel she’d inherited.
OTOH, there’s the ep where Scooby Dee, Scooby Doo’s movie star cousin, was “dognapped” so she’d be replaced by the culprit with an obedient double. Granted, the Scooby family is intelligent, but is dognapping really a crime?
Isn’t dognapping at least stealing someone else’s property? Then again, does anyone “own” the movie star cousin or was he something of a free agent? Hard to tell with these dogs.
If the dognapper charges a ransom, then it’s demanding money with menaces.
If the dognapper keeps the dog, then its theft.
And it might be fraud, eg if the dognapper substitutes one dog for another in a race.
I remember one episode of the Brady Bunch where Mike and Carol were thinking of selling their house, but the kids didn’t want to go, and every time a prospective buyer came to look they ran around in sheets and made strange noises in the attic to make the buyer think the house was haunted. Why weren’t those kids charged?! :mad:
I think they weren’t charged for the same reason that Mike and Carol wouldn’t have been charged with false imprisonment if they’d locked the kids in their rooms for doing it.
