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Rikers Island State Penitentiary, NY where Raphael Golb the son of an academic rival, could be sentenced to 4 years. . . . . .for certain emails that he sent perhaps hoping to "obtain a benefit" or perhaps hoping to "annoy," by parodying a professor; AND EMAIL ACCOUNTS HE OPENED, -INCLUDING MANY HE NEVER USED; And for a name he invented; And for perhaps hoping the professor might not get $650. [But which the professor got.] |
Reminder:
Raphael Golb testified that he opened up email accounts in the names of people who were aggressive against his father. (By the way, since the real "Jonathan Seidel" was not one of these people, it wouldn't make sense for Raphael to use his name in any way; or even to know of him.)
But not exactly in their names: Raphael Golb testified that he was careful to use off-kilter approximations of those names.
Raphael was also careful not to use email addresses that looked real. A witness for the prosecution, the person in charge of all New York University computers system-wide, stated quite emphatically, some two or three times, that it is "extremely easy" for anyone to forge an "nyu.edu" email account. But Raphael testified that he used no professional-appearing account addresses, only general accounts like "Gmail."
I go into more detail on all this in my post::
THE BIG "HOWEVER"
From Raphael Golb's point of view, the names he used were "approximate" enough for legal parody. But the jury ruled that even "approximation" was enough to convict Raphael of several criminal charges, such as for "criminal impersonation" of those people.
Mystifying to me is that many of these "approximate" names were on accounts that Raphael never sent an email from, never even used.
