Greg's Corner

Owners of exploitative website arrested

If you’ve ever had the unfortunate experience of being arrested, you know how much of a harrowing experience it can be. Between prohibitive bail costs and court fees, worrying about your family, and how the arrest might affect the rest of your life, an arrest can be very devastating. Now imagine you’ve been arrested, but the charges are later dropped. The problem with that is your mugshot is still out there and a matter of public record. Sadly, there are websites out there looking to take advantage of that whether or not you’re innocent or not.

One of those websites is Mugshots.com. The website would scour public databases looking for mugshots then would post them on their site. If you wanted to have the mugshot removed Mugshots.com would ask you for a nominal fee to have the mugshot remove, allegedly exploiting an already financially charged situation. If this sounds a lot like extortion to you the California Attorney General agrees, as the alleged owners of the site have been arrested and charged with various crimes from extortion to money laundering.

Not everyone who’s been arrested deserves our scorn. More people are probably arrested for minor incidents such as minor traffic offenses and the like than major crimes. A lot of these people are just trying to get through their lives to put food on their family’s table and having their mugshot online like that could prevent them from doing so. So it’s only fitting that these profiteers of misfortune are about to have their mugshots plastered across the internet.