TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Last Laugh! German Online Fraudster Protests Jail Term

Last Laugh! German Online Fraudster Protests Jail Term

Reuters News Wire (reuters@telecom-digest.org)
Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:08:16 -0600

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Today, we shall pause to make mock of
this German internet fraudster who protests the jail term he was given
by climbing up a 22 meter pole. PAT]

A German father of five sentenced to jail for online fraud is
protesting against his conviction by occupying the top of a 22 meter
(72 foot) pole.

Fred Gregor, a 45-year-old lathe operator, has been squatting in a
tiny cubicle atop the converted television mast since last Saturday
morning in a bid to overturn the 15-month prison sentence he is due to
start serving on March 1.

"I've been unfairly judged," he told Reuters from his perch in the
village of Werben by telephone. "I want a new hearing."

In May 2006, a court in the eastern city of Dessau convicted Gregor
after a man accused him of selling goods online that never
arrived. The man told the court he tried to buy a laptop from Gregor
but instead got a box filled with sand.

The court also found that Gregor's online business ventures were in
breach of Germany's telecommunications law.

Gregor, who has a number of previous convictions, one of which
involved setting up a Web site on which his wife stripped in front of
a camera, said the judge at his trial was biased.

"He only based his decision on my past record," he said, adding that
the judge had overseen all of his previous cases.

Since last weekend, Gregor said he had not left the rudimentary 3.25
square meter wooden box atop the pole, surviving on U.S. military
surplus provisions and using a system of bags and pulleys as a toilet.

And his wife, 25-year-old Susanne Gregor, says she is very proud of
him. "I'm backing him all the way," she said. "The children will know
that their father stood up for what's right."

The unusual protest has attracted considerable attention from German
media, and Gregor said he would not go quietly when authorities come
to enforce his jail term.

"They'll have to come up here and get me," he said.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.

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[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What the man did not seem to realize
(in his complaint about same judge hearing previous cases) is that
although on your first trip into court, fairness indicates that a
computer (or some random selection) is used to detirmine who shall
be your judge, _future_ trips into court are given to the judge who
heard your first case. If you were arrested twenty years ago, for
example, dealt with and then re-arrested on some new charge this
year, assuming the original judge is still alive and on the bench,
_he_ will be assigned your new case, mainly, I suppose, to insure
context to the matter.

So his wife is very proud of him, eh? PAT]

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