Taking a page from John Grisham’s The Brethren and scamming a get-out-of-jail payoff didn’t get Steven Smith anything but 33 months in the calaboose – because he ran an Internet scam very similar to one described in the Grisham novel.
Smith will also have to pay restitution to his victims and have his Internet use monitored, according to the sentencing order. His sentencing judge, U.S. District Judge Ellen Burns, told him pointedly enough that she believes the public needs to be protected from him.
Smith posted online ads posing as a young homosexual rejected by his parents and seeking guidance from an older man and, when he got responses, he would reply in turn that he was in the cage and needed money to bail himself out.
That derived from a plotline in The Brethren in which three judges in the jug posted personals in gay magazines, posing likewise and soliciting similarly, according to a published report.
The book’s judges bagged a Presidential candidate and tried to extort him when he became a front runner in the race. Smith, however, got a mere 28 ordinary victims from 18 states and possibly one Canadian resident, all of whom mailed him a total of $64,585 in contributions, the report continued.
The Associated Press said queries for comment to Grisham’s agent and publisher had yet to be returned at this writing.
