Flunker’s fees

Arrests go awry sometimes.

As Shawn Brown strolled down the middle of Roswell Road with a shopping cart, disrupting one lane of traffic in Marietta, Georgia, on 19 January, a police officer confronted him.

Brown warned the officer not to touch him and identified himself as a cop, pulling out a metal badge that had the words “Special Police.” He then declared the officer under arrest for assault and read him his Miranda Rights, WSB-TV 2 Atlanta reported.

The antic backfired as local officials quickly learned he was not a real police officer. They turned the tables on Brown, arresting and charging him with impersonating a police officer, obstruction, terroristic threats, and giving a false name, according to WSB-TV 2 Atlanta.

The impostor landed in the Cobb County Jail.

The unsuspecting public not only has to deal with fake police officers. A Binangonan, Rizal resident wanted to sue a neighbor and sought the help of a lawyer from Pasay City who was referred to him.

Lawyer Robert SP Garcia charges a professional fee of P60,000 per court appearance, which the Binangonan client paid, Unang Balita reported. When Garcia asked the client, who declined to be identified, for a Christmas gift worth his court appearance fee, it raised suspicions.

With his legal bill amounting to more than half a million pesos already, the client checked the list of lawyers of the Supreme Court and discovered that Garcia was not on the roster. When the client sought a second opinion on the case, the new lawyer found the ID and legal and supposedly notarized documents of Garcia to be fake.

The client set up a meeting with Garcia to pay another appearance fee at a coffee shop in Pasay City. It was an entrapment, and police arrested Garcia when he received the marked money.

Garcia admitted he was not a lawyer because he did not pass the bar exam and said he only represented himself to the victim as a consultant.

Garcia would need a real lawyer now to defend him against the swindling and estafa charges he is facing.