triaim wrote:
Bitch... I've been called that a few times... glad that my skin is tough. I'm sure that word or worse will be said before all of this is over. Whatever! I've been in contact with Ironman, waiting to hear back from them on how they will handle it. They did send me a copy of the fake ID, seems at this particular Ironman, they Xeroxed the IDs as people checked in. I can not recall an event when that happened, so consider myself pretty lucky. The ID is about as crappy and fake-looking as is can possibly be. The morons didn't bother to create one from scratch, used his drivers license and blocked out his personal information (did leave his picture and own driver's license on the fake) and replaced it with inaccurate information of mine..... Aimee is now a male... 5'10" and 165... the volunteers in Mexico buy it.
I've spoken with the US Attorney's office... they prosecute but do not investigate. So far I've had to contact the Secret Service office, FBI and still have a few offices to contact. As I do not know if anything else was done with the fake ID, I plan to continue to pursue it with every office that I can. I've also contacted USAT and am waiting for them to investigate as they either hacked into my account to print out my USAT card or forged information to obtain a one day license.
My only road block so far is that some of the government offices will not pursue it unless it involves finances of over $5000. I believe that I will have to fight this at the state leveI am determined to do something.... beyond the fact that they cheated, my identity was stolen.
This is bound to get ugly. Bitch is mild!
A couple of things...
1. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but, as I stated earlier, USAT would have no dog in this fight. IMCoz is not a USAT sanctioned event, since Mexico isn't part of the USA.
2. You're in a rock and a hard place when it comes to law enforcement for several reasons. I am an FBI Agent (I can't help but not say that like Keanu Reeves in Point Break) so I feel I can intelligently address this part of the equation.
- It was in a foreign country. That's by far the biggest hurdle you'll face. We could debate some possible semantics about where the fabricated documents were made (probably in the USA) but the best venue option for prosecution is Mexico. That's where the race was held, that's where they stole your identity, that's the country they entered while carrying false identification documents, etc.
- Mexico won't do a damn thing about it.
- Even if you could overcome the foreign country venue issue (which you probably cannot) and establish some kind of venue in the USA, there isn't a federal law enforcement agency or US Attorney's Office that will investigate it. It's just not a big enough deal to warrant the use of federal resources. That's just the reality. Federal criminal fraud prosecution really needs the following ingredients: a violation of a US federal crime as defined by some Title 18 USC statute, a victim, a loss, and that it meets the threshold limits of the district. I've had million dollar fraud cases turned down because there were bigger cases that had to be prioritized. My district is much larger than the Eastern District of Louisiana but the loss in this case is still just $600 or so.
- I'm not exactly sure what local/state law enforcement could do. They're even more hamstrung by the venue issue but I could see charging them with some minor theft charge. The problem with that is you had no intention on going to the race so it could be argued it was "victimless" (which would also be applicable to federal charges).
Best of luck. Those people deserve whatever is coming to them if all this is true.
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