Oct
17

Breaking Stupid Criminal News

Posted by Clif Burns at 11:39 am on October 17, 2007
Category: Arms Export, Criminal Penalties

Leupold ScopeA friend of mine, a former policeman who now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, used to say that the easiest thing about being a cop was that most criminals are really, really stupid. Case in point: Doli Syarief Pulungan.

Mr. Pulungan, an Indonesian national, was indicted last week for attempting to export Leupold Mark 4 CQ/T rifle scopes to Indonesia without a license. Now comes the stupid:

Pulungan is accused of approaching Norwalk-Wilton Police Chief Steve Kaczik on Sept. 26, saying he wanted to buy 100 rifle scopes for $1,000 each, about $300 above list price, and then ship them overseas.

Another news report indicates that Pulungan requested Kaczik “not to tell the company the scopes were going to Indonesia.”

Going to a police chief to buy these scopes and then asking him not to tell the company what they were for is about as bad as reporting your stolen marijuana to the local constabulary. Or writing a robbery demand note on the back of your latest pay stub.

Kaczik, not surprisingly, notified the FBI and the rest, as they say, is history.

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5 Comments »

  • I think the saying goes, “stupid is as stupid does”.

    Comment by Shawn Wheatfill — October 17, 2007 @ 12:09 pm

  • But Clif, the defendant’s request begs the question of whether he was attempting to evade ITAR, or whether he just didn’t want the company to circumvent him and go directly to the end customer. As someone who has drafted more than my fair share of ordinary distributor and broker, I can fairly say that most middlemen live in constant fear of being by-passed by the US vendor or manufacturer. This guy could have just been doing business as usual: Stupid, maybe; but, required degree of specific intent? Not clear on these facts.

    Comment by Mike Deal — October 17, 2007 @ 1:06 pm

  • Mike, if you look at the stories, he also said to the police chief that he was shipping them to Saudi Arabia first and then to Indonesia because of the arms embargo on Indonesia. That looks like specific intent to me, if it is in fact true that he sad that.

    Comment by Clif Burns — October 17, 2007 @ 1:47 pm

  • Clif: OK, I admit that I didn’t go beyond your report when I posted previously. After your response, I did, and it seems the Chief of Police who made the report to the FBI is on suspension for various and desultry violations. And some of his officers don’t seem to think he is particularly trustworthy, and that the the Chief might possibly be inventing all this to rehabilitate himself. Of course, we should all ignore all this because we all know that no “sworn officer” would ever, well not hardly ever (apologies to G&S lovers), violate his sworn duty and fudge the truth.

    Comment by Mike Deal — October 17, 2007 @ 2:45 pm

  • Mike, I admit that the story does also have the whiff of it’s too good to be true. So either the defendant is really stupid (a possibility) or he’s been badly framed.

    Comment by Clif Burns — October 17, 2007 @ 3:04 pm

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