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Convicted Tax Fraudster Sues CNBC for Defamation, Says He's Not a “Hacker”

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday November 25 2018, @12:16PM   
from the I-am-not-that-kind-of-crook dept.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Convicted tax fraudster sues CNBC for defamation, says he's not a "hacker"

Daniel Rigmaiden wants the world to know that, while CNBC's American Greed television show may have portrayed him more than two years ago as a "hacker," a "recluse," and more, he is none of those things.

Earlier this year, Rigmaiden sued NBCUniversal, CNBC's parent company, and an Arizona Republic journalist shown in that episode, accusing them all of defamation.

Rigmaiden wants unspecified damages and also a permanent injunction that would stop further distribution of the episode, which is currently available on Amazon Video for $2.99.

Lawyers for CNBC have tried to get the case dismissed, and the two sides will face off in a Miami-Dade County courthouse on Monday, November 19.

In actuality, Rigmaiden is a man convicted of tax fraud who became a privacy activist—he has become something of an icon in surveillance-law nerd circles.

"Plaintiff did not use black-hat computer hacking to steal money from the IRS," he wrote. "Plaintiff used computer software to automate the process of filing fraudulent tax returns and collecting the refunds. The IRS was not hacked by Plaintiff, and Plaintiff otherwise did not use black-hat computer hacking to facilitate the tax-refund fraud scheme."

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Original Submission

• Re:the real crime Re:the real crime (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 25 2018, @09:10PM (1 child)

  by khallow (3766) on Sunday November 25 2018, @09:10PM (#766273) Journal

  Glancing at the last two, there are two things to note. First, there are a huge variety of parties who do this. Environmentalists push the relatively benign (but still modestly harmful) propaganda about recycling that is criticized in link 3. As to link 4, it is in error. What is neglected is that are forces which pushed US consumers [soylentnews.org] towards bacon and eggs:

  Think about that. Before this dude got involved we did not eat bacon for breakfast. One of our key meals for the day is corner-stoned with an advertisement campaign. Anyone I mention it to fails to see why it is important.

  And they should. Let's look at the story in more detail:

  The majority of Americans ate more modest, often meatless breakfasts that might include fruit, a grain porridge (oat, wheat or corn meals) or a roll, and usually a cup of coffee.

  In other words, a shitty breakfast.
  
  Bacon and eggs can be cooked in a similar length of time as the grain porridge (Beech-Nut sliced [google.com] its bacon thin (ad is from 1905 [which was years before the ad campaign discussed in the post to which I was replying at the time] no less and they're pushing thin, sliced bacon for breakfast then), making it a quick cooking food). And there's a synergy there. Cook the bacon first and then you can reuse the grease for cooking eggs (need some oil/fat to keep from sticking to the pan). Third, bacon and eggs just taste good for most people. And the aroma fills the house. It's definitely a better experience to wake up to.
  
  Instead of a silly story about Beech-Nut getting propaganda cooties on our sacred bacon, perhaps we should consider what was actually going on. People from the late 19th Century through to the early 1920s were steadily becoming more affluent. And one of the many things affluent people do is eat better tasting and better cooked food. That means more meat, eggs, and milk products among other things. At that point, you run into the gritty realities of making breakfast. You want something that cooks and cleans fast. The wife isn't going to get up two hours early just to make breakfast. Any tricks like the above reuse of bacon fat for cooking eggs is a time-saving synergy that a busy wife would appreciate. So meats that are suitable for breakfast? Ground or thin sliced meat will cook faster. Poultry and fish don't have a good texture for that. You're stuck with stuff like pork, beef, or mutton. Bacon and eggs probably just survived this breakfast evolution process better and Beech-Nut was one of the lucky benefactors of that.
  
  They, of course, advertised. And the dude who specialized in modern advertisement is, of course, going to claim that he was instrumental in selling said bacon and eggs even though Beech-Nut had been pushing bacon for at least two decades before. People weren't going to continue to eat the old crap.
  
  Tl;DR. Cool story bro, but I notice nobody actually looked hard at how successful this advertising campaign was supposed to be.

  This is a common thing. Some social or market trend happens and someone takes credit/blame for it because they were doing something at the time.

  Parent

• Re:the real crime (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 25 2018, @09:23PM

  by khallow (3766) on Sunday November 25 2018, @09:23PM (#766276) Journal

  To elaborate on the first point, there is a huge difference between a world where only a small group can issue propaganda and a world where millions of parties are doing it. In the grandparent post, there is a lot of "they" doing this and that. What is missed is that this propaganda is for the most part unfocused with conflicting intent and varying scale of operation. This means that despite extraordinary expenditures on advertising and propaganda, it just isn't that effective despite the claims to the contrary (such as the story about bacon and eggs).

  Parent