Bizarre, Criminal law, Society, Torts

California Charges Mugshots.com Owners . . . Then Releases Their Mugshots

WPTV_Thomas-Keesee-and-Sahar-Sarid_1526580362433.jpg_87226339_ver1.0_640_480 The alleged owners of Mugshots.com—Sahar Sarid and Thomas Keesee—are now among the mugshots of the week.  The company has long been criticized as little more than a shakedown of people desperate to remove embarrassing mugshots on the Internet.  California prosecutors alleged Sarid, Keese, Kishore Vidya Bhavnanie and David Usdan engaged in with extortion, money laundering, and identity theft through the site.

The  29-page affidavit details an alleged fraudulent scheme praying on people embarrassed by prior arrests.

The company was accused of running a “pay-for-removal scheme . . . to profit off of someone else’s humiliation.” The charges state that the company “extracted more than $64,000 in removal fees from approximately 175 individuals . . . [and] defendants took more than $2 million in removal fees from approximately 5,703 individuals for the same period.”

Bhavnanie has been reportedly been hit with a massive $1.86 million bail.

 

The 29-page affidavit provides a lengthy explanation of what prosecutors call a “business permeated with fraud.”  Individuals claim that musgshot.com would post booking photos and then its sister site, unpublisharrest.com, would charge hundreds of dollars to remove it.

 

12 thoughts on “California Charges Mugshots.com Owners . . . Then Releases Their Mugshots”

  1. It’s often legal to post these photos, just as it’s legal to post on the Internet pictures taken from a public place of what you see through an open window. It isn’t legal to ask for money NOT to post these pictures; nor is it legal to ask for money to to de-post them after they are public. That’s intuitively understandable, but it’s tricky to get a handle on the precise moral reasoning here.

    Google “blackmailer’s paradox.”

    1. you are NOT suppose to use these photos to harrass people.
      IF the public only knew what little some of these people did OR DID NOT DO ! buy were accused , convicted on he said she said bs. they wouldnt think a thing of it. the accusers should be posted the ones who made up lies !

  2. Yet the United States Forced all States to create Sex Offender Registries that do the exact same thing……. Its the government so thats OK with the courts and the Constitution? It should scare us all so very much more.

  3. I”m sure there are some exotic dancers in south Florida, that now knowing who these guys are, would be willing to tell some stories.
    The Karma coming from this is really rich.

  4. California attorney Janice Bellucci (ACSOL advocacy organization) filed suit a few years back against a couple of renegade money-grubbers and shut them down. The grubbers were in Arizona and the case, after being transferred there, was successful.
    Vicki Henry – Women Against Registry

    1. MexiCal must have been seeing too many ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS AND GANG MEMBERS having their mugshots posted on this site. This would have been interrupted by the FAR LEFT LAWYERS (aren’t they all) as an “inclusivity” that would not be desirable for the bad hombres. My guess anyway.

  6. I suspect that that mugshots..com acquired these booking photos through either public records requests or obtained them from online booking photos. Some states prohibit public disclosure of booking photos.

    There are two sides to this issue. The first is to prevent situations such as this but there is another side that resonates on dictatorships or oppressive governments where citizens would be whisked off the streets without any notification as to charges or where the defendant might be held. The requirement of notification of arrest will defend against this type of action, provided the government actually submits to such a law.

  7. Where did they get the mug shots in the first place? Obviously, from state and local law enforcement agencies. So if they acquired the mug shots lawfully from the government, are they not allowed to publish them on the internet? I think charging people $400 to remove them is sleazy, but if I had a mug shot out there, I would prefer the option of having it taken off the internet, even if I had to pay. On the other hand, the data brokers who buy and sell and publish your personal info, such as name, address, tel number, occupation, relatives, etc are not prosecuted. They publish our personal information on the internet, and then turn around and try to sell us “identity theft protection” to protect us from the very problem they created. I don’t see any discernible difference, and I hope CA or some other state begins to crack down on the data broker industry.

    1. Tin, you are a mindreader and have given a thoughtful response to this article. While, these men may have a somewhat sleazy initiative, it is legal. Of course, MexiCal has Judges who don’t follow the LAW but make up their own. We’ll be watching this case. Thanks again.

  8. One or more attorneys built the following industry: they posted copyrighted porn. Persons ABC would violate copyright law and illegally download said porn. The website industry’s lawyers would shake down ABC, demanding thousands of dollars (allegedly civil penalty for the copyright infringement) in exchange for the website’s agreement not to publish the true names and identity of ABC.

    Whatever happened to that case?

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