Something similar but less intrusive happened to me. 10 years ago I was in the early stages of building a price comparison website, still hosted at home. It scraped product prices of several hundreds of online stores. One day I got a letter from the police asking me to come to the police station. I called them asking what this was about, but they said they couldn't tell me on the phone. I said fine, but I won't bother to make the trip if this is not something serious. They then told me I was suspected of fraud.
So I made an appointment and talked to the investigator. He told me someone placed an order at a web shop, then hacked the iDeal transaction, the electronic payment system in the Netherlands. My home IP address showed up in the logging. I asked him what the IP address was and I confirmed it was indeed my IP address. For the investigator, this was a sure sign I was the hacker, because who on earth knows his IP address by heart unless you're a hacker? Yeah, I know, not a very smart move.
I told him why my IP address had shown up: the scraper had visited the store to update prices. And I told him if I was able to hack iDeal transactions I wouldn't have bothered to make a transaction for a few hundred Euro's. In the end it turned out someone had just placed an order, had it delivered, but didn't pay the invoice afterwards.
After a couple of months I received a letter stating I was no longer a suspect, and that seemed the end of end. But not quite: whenever I buy some form of insurance, one of the questions is if I have ever been suspected of fraud. Answer yes and there's a good chance the insurer will refuse. Answer no, and I'm actually committing fraud and the insurance may not be valid. It's also inconvenient as the same question comes up during screening (I'm a security officer now).
Lesson learned: my home router now routes all traffic through Mullvad. Just in case.
Interesting that "suspected" flies in the EU. I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think an insurer would be allowed to ask anything more than if you've been convicted of fraud in the US.
I seem to recall that US forms not infrequently ask whether you've ever been "arrested" for X (which is another standard falling short of conviction), but maybe that's just govt forms.
I'm not familiar with the legal dynamics of the netherlands, but this is a good example of why you should never talk to police without a lawyer present in the United States.
Good general advice, but I'm not sure if that would have made a difference in my case. I was a suspect already. Giving a statement didn't have any negative consequences for me. Maybe it prevented a raid like in the OP's case.
> whenever I buy some form of insurance, one of the questions is if I have ever been suspected of fraud. Answer yes and there's a good chance the insurer will refuse. Answer no, and I'm actually committing fraud and the insurance may not be valid. It's also inconvenient as the same question comes up during screening (I'm a security officer now).
Yep, his new advice is to insist on a lawyer. You can even say something like "If it's important, I'd love to cooperate and talk to you, so I need a lawyer in order to do that. Let me know if you want me to set that up." That link is to his old talk where he recommends invoking the 5th. His newer talk is:
His book should be easy to find at retailers or cough other ebook sites.
Critical points:
1. The police are almost never trying to railroad anyone, but mistaken evidence, mistaken witnesses, or unfortunate consequences of telling the police things can make you look guilty.
2. You have no idea what the police are investigating. They can and will lie to you about this. They can and will lie to you about anything they want. See point 4.
3. There are tons of laws, especially federal laws, that are BS, and you're playing with fire thinking you can answer questions about what the investigators claim they're investigating without implicating yourself in some other crime.
4. Interrogators are trained to put an enormous amount of psychological pressure on you to help them, even if you realistically can't help, so you'll end up talking about anything and everything until (hopefully) the police realize you're actually not a good suspect, or until you've gotten tripped up and either admitted guilt or said something that makes you look guilty even if you're not.
5. Simply asserting the 5th, your right to remain silent, might now be able to be used against you if you don't do it perfectly and the cops/prosecutors think you're guilty and are willing to twist your invocation of the 5th against you.
6. Asserting the 5th isn't likely to stop interrogations immediately. Asking for a lawyer probably will.
7. Talking through a lawyer shields what you say from being used against you. Prof. Duane doesn't make this point explicitly in his talks, but Randy Barnett does in the second half of the above cato book talk.
8. If cops say they're going to arrest you, remember they're only arresting you if they have probable cause (or worse, they already have an arrest warrant). You need a virtually unassailable alibi that can be immediately verified (and hope the cop will verify it immediately) in order to be likely to talk your way out of being arrested. That almost never happens. A witness who will vouch for you is not the greatest alibi; cops may not believe them, especially if the witness is your friend or family, or the witness may not tell the cops what you hoped. If there's any doubt about your alibi, the cops are going to arrest you and book you anyway and sort things out later. And meanwhile what did you tell them for the 5 minutes or 30 minutes you were trying to talk your way out of it?
And as Prof Duane notes, the advice he gives and that's in his book doesn't really apply to routine traffic stops. However, if it escalates to "can I search your car" or "step out of the vehicle"...
There's actually quite a bit more you can do but it does start to err on the side of being risky. Remember, all of your interactions become evidence during a trial. And the police can say and do things that will invalidate evidence or violate your rights. If you drag out the interaction you can give them more opportunities to screw themselves.
- You can ask the police if you are allowed to speak to an attorney. They can say no, since in some DUI stops you're not entitled to an attorney, but you can ask them to explain why, ask them if you're being arrested, and then ask if you're entitled to an attorney later, then claim in court you were "confused" about your rights. Look up Confusion Doctrine+DUI.
- You can piss them off, and get them to say or do something stupid (Hopefully not shooting you). The cop ends up saying something like "You know I can arrest you for anything I feel like, right?". If you record everything, you might have a chance. I had an interaction like this that was dismissed in trial; the officer requested to dismiss it in the interest of justice, IMHO because what he did was embarrassing.
- You can ask the cops "why" they stopped you or "why" they are questioning you. If they answer the question differently or two officers claim different things, it can raise reasonable doubt. If they neglect to answer you can use exactly the same tactics on them they'd use on a suspect. Tell them you want to help but you need to hear their side of the story.
- You can ask "Am I being arrested?" or "Am I a suspect?" if a cop starts pushing too hard. You can ask them "Why do you think that?" etc. Again, it gives him an opportunity to do something stupid.
Lastly, remember, the police are probably a lot better at all of the above than you, since they do this often. Hence why no attorney is going to give this advice. But it IS possible to pull the same tricks on them that they pull on the people they pull over every day, it just takes a lot of cunning and experience.
Well I just tried some of this. I was being questioned, I answered the question about my name but that was it. I flipped them asking why, i'd love to help but why do they think that, etc. I was then detained, cuffed and placed into a police car.
Cops have more power than you, the average joe. I do not recommend doing the above.
"On advice of every defense lawyer I've ever heard, and even former prosecutors now in a position to give unbiased advice, unlike you, so I'm following their advice."
The real answer to "why" is that "Asking for a lawyer is a ritual incantation that drives cops away like holy water does for vampires."
You can't say that, so blame advice you've been given instead, or just keep repeating "I want a lawyer [in order to be able to talk to you]" like it's a mantra. You don't have to explain yourself. Cops are not interested in "why". They know perfectly well why. They know you don't want a lawyer, you just want to end the cop's interview and fishing expedition. They don't like that, so they're going to make you feel guilty about asking for a lawyer when you know and they know you really don't want one, and they're going to try to make you say something dumb as a result.
So I made an appointment and talked to the investigator. He told me someone placed an order at a web shop, then hacked the iDeal transaction, the electronic payment system in the Netherlands. My home IP address showed up in the logging. I asked him what the IP address was and I confirmed it was indeed my IP address. For the investigator, this was a sure sign I was the hacker, because who on earth knows his IP address by heart unless you're a hacker? Yeah, I know, not a very smart move.
I told him why my IP address had shown up: the scraper had visited the store to update prices. And I told him if I was able to hack iDeal transactions I wouldn't have bothered to make a transaction for a few hundred Euro's. In the end it turned out someone had just placed an order, had it delivered, but didn't pay the invoice afterwards.
After a couple of months I received a letter stating I was no longer a suspect, and that seemed the end of end. But not quite: whenever I buy some form of insurance, one of the questions is if I have ever been suspected of fraud. Answer yes and there's a good chance the insurer will refuse. Answer no, and I'm actually committing fraud and the insurance may not be valid. It's also inconvenient as the same question comes up during screening (I'm a security officer now).
Lesson learned: my home router now routes all traffic through Mullvad. Just in case.