Monday, April 16, 2007

Answering some questions

Ganellon said...

This is a pretty remarkable story. I almost wonder if the media wouldn't be a better avenue. I imagine at least one of the cable channels like "Court TV" would be extremely interested in your story.
I'm curious -- do the authorities now acknowledge that you are not the felon? How do you prove you're innocent of crimes for which you've already been convicted? I wonder if there is video evidence somewhere of the court precedings that would show the actual felon during his trial. Surely, if he had an arrest in your name, there must be a "mug shot" with an associated docket number that they can reference to determine that you are not, in fact, the person convicted of these crimes.
I feel very badly for you, and am literally stunned.

Ganellon,

I was interviewed by a TV reporter about this last summer. The interview was aired on FOX30 and CBS47 in Jacksonville, Florida. However, when I got to the part of the interview where I had explained how I found out, it was replaced with a short voice-over saying something like "Todd found out when a police officer from the bank mentioned something about 'Miami.'" Nothing at all was left in about what actually happened. And, ironically, they got my name wrong in the segment.

The segment ended up being about 2-3 minutes long, and basically ended saying that people experiencing this type of problem need to contact the State Attorney's Office.

The State Attorney's Office recommended that I report it to my local police department and the Miami-Dade police department. I reported it to both departments eight or nine months ago. However, nothing has changed. It's just stalled with them.

I spoke to an attorney about it before-hand. He told me that while it should be possible to deal with this myself, it's unlikely that I would really be able to get results without legal representation. He'd apparently had a client with the same sort of problem who spent a year trying to take care of it himself, then ended up hiring the attorney to take care of it.

The attorney summed it by up telling me that it was a matter of knowing what buttons to push to make them do their jobs, and even as an attorney it would take a lot of hounding them to get anything done. He said it would be $1500 to get started on it. And at this point I'd gladly pay the $1500. It's a big chunk of money to come up with with my current income, so it's taking some time. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to hire him this summer.

As far as photos, I found pictures of the felon on the Florida Department of Corrections and the New Jersey Department of Corrections websites. It's extremely obvious from the photos that he is not me. In addition to that, all the court records show that he is black, which I am not.

So it's not really a problem proving that it wasn't me. The problem is getting anyone to do anything about it.

Next post: Coming back to haunt me

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