Putting out a fire with gasoline is never a good option.
Appearing recently before a court in California, Michelle Astumian pleaded guilty to charges of forgery. She was contrite and said she would never forge anything again.
She then tried to get her 4 year 8 month prison sentence delayed by presenting the court with a doctor’s note. The note, however, turned out to have been forged.
Ms Astumian was facing a jail term for three felony counts of prescription forgeries and passing fraudulent cheques.
The deputy district attorney in San Luis Obispo County was suspicious of the oddly executed doctor’s note and when he rang the doctor from the court building he was told it was not authentic.
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It is unlawful in some circumstances to lie to a public official in the Californian justice system and also unlawful to impersonate a doctor but it is isn’t clear yet whether Ms Astumian will be prosecuted for a forgery committed in her forgery trial.
It seems likely that she will forfeit her $45,000 bail because ‘not falsifying documents’ was a bail condition and she not only violated that but did so in a way which targeted the judge as her intended victim. Committing an offence against the judge about to sentence you is never a good idea.
The prize, though, in the category of crazy forgery must go to Omid Chiang.
Mr Chiang, a bogus doctor, escaped a speeding fine at Southampton magistrates’ court in 2007 by claiming he was on an emergency call when he was caught on a speed camera doing 38mph in a 30mph zone.
Mr Chiang was in fact a sales rep for a company producing nicotine patches but he told people he was a leading neurologist.
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In his car he kept a defibrillator, a florescent jacket marked ‘Doctor’ and a fake ID. Whenever he got caught in traffic he would put a green flashing light on top of his car and race past the congestion.
He also used a ‘Doctor on Call’ sign in his car to park wherever he wanted.
Greed and an inept forgery brought about his downfall. Having been allowed by a magistrate to escape with neither disqualification nor any endorsement on his licence for the speeding offence, he then wrote to the court demanding £1,632.80 in expenses for “locum GP cover”.
Staff at the Safer Roads Partnership at the court became suspicious because his formal letter asking for expenses was littered with spelling mistakes.
It said “I must assist I am reimbursed for my out of pocket expenses”. The letter went on to say “[I] bravely chose to represent myself in court…even though I was offered emple assistance from two of my patients”.
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Sentencing Chiang to a year in jail for attempting to pervert the course of justice, Judge John Boggis QC said “after the ticket was sent to you, you could have paid it and moved on but instead you tried to con a district judge and the legal system”.
Before entering the world of medicine by buying a green flashing light and a defibrillator, Mr Chiang had tried twice to become a doctor through the medical school route. He was not successful, the court was told, because “he could not stand the sight of blood”.
Gary Slapper is Professor of Law, and Director of the Law School at The Open University. His book Weird Cases is published by Wildy, Simmonds & Hill.
You can follow him on Twitter @garyslapper