Yes, You ARE a Criminal…You Just Don't Know it Yet

Asset Protection Blog
Nov. 30, 2009

How many felonies have you committed today? If you're like most Americans, you probably violate federal or state law several times each day, without even knowing it.

Just ask Sally Harpold. A resident of Clinton, Indiana, Sally purchased some cold medicine for her husband back in March. A few days later, she purchased some additional cold medicine for her daughter.

Four months later, police showed up at Sally's door with an arrest warrant. Her crime? She had purchased more than 3.0 grams of pseudoephedrine, a common and legally available decongestant for runny noses. Deputies led Sally away in handcuffs, and the local newspaper ran her mug shot on the front page. The headline read, "17 Arrested in Drug Sweep."

Sally didn't realize—and no one at the drug store told her—that pseudoephedrine is also an ingredient used in the manufacture of crystal meth, a highly addictive drug. Many states, including Indiana, now restrict sales of pseudoephedrine.

You might think that the authorities would have backed down when they realized that Sally had no intention of manufacturing crystal meth. But you'd be wrong. "The law does not make this distinction," said Vermillion County Prosecutor Nina Alexander. "I'm simply enforcing the law as it was written." She now faces up to 60 days in jail and a US$500 fine, along with a criminal record.

Unfortunately, this isn't an isolated incident. Consider the sad case of entrepreneur and clean energy researcher Krister Evertson, who was recently released after serving two years in federal prison. Until 2004, Krister had never been arrested. But that changed on May 27, 2004, when federal agents driving black SUVs ran him off the road, pointed automatic weapons at him, and placed him under arrest.

Krister's crime was forgetting to put a federally mandated sticker on a UPS package he mailed from Alaska. The package contained sodium (an ingredient in fuel cell research he was conducting). Since federal environmental laws classify sodium as a dangerous material, it's illegal to ship it by air. Krister knew that, so he packaged the material according to published federal guidelines, and even checked "ground transportation" on the UPS shipping form.

Unfortunately for Krister, he didn't realize that there is no ground transportation via UPS from Alaska. All shipments, even those marked "ground transportation," go by air. Federal prosecutors could simply have fined Krister for the mistake, but after ransacking his mother's home in Alaska, decided to indict him on felony charges. Krister refused to plead guilty and in 2006, he was acquitted on all charges.

But that was just the beginning of Krister's ordeal. Most of his fuel cell experiments took place in Idaho, and he stored a large quantity of sodium there in an industrial storage facility. To make certain the sodium would be safe, he kept it in a reinforced stainless steel container with 3/8-inch thick walls.

In the mind of federal prosecutors, however, Krister had "abandoned" the sodium. So not long after his acquittal, the feds brought new charges against him based on a provision in federal law making it a crime to abandon "hazardous waste." The fact that Krister had clearly intended to reclaim the sodium, and use it in future experiments, was immaterial. This time, the jury convicted Krister and he spent the next two years locked up in a federal prison.

Once up a time, you had to knowingly violate a law in order to be found guilty of violating it. However, in the last 50 years, legislators have largely eliminated the requirement for "criminal intent" to exist to be found guilty of a criminal offense. It's no wonder that the United States has the highest per-capita incarceration rate of any country in the world.

Could what happened to Sally Harpold and Krister Evertson happen to you? It could. The only thing that's keeping you out of a jail cell is the fact that prosecutors haven't yet targeted you. Just hope that they don't, because it's almost impossible to go through life without inadvertently committing numerous felonies on a daily basis. Here are a few examples.

Do you have a maid clean your home? If you don't go through the time-consuming and expensive process of completing IRS and immigration forms, you're committing numerous crimes.

Have you ever taken a vacation and written it off as a business expense? If so, add tax fraud to your list of crimes.

Have you ever thrown anything away? Better retrieve it! Because under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, you face criminal penalties if you destroy "evidence" relating to any actual or contemplated federal investigation, matter or official proceeding. On the other hand, laws targeting identity theft in many states require you to securely dispose of many types of personal records. So guess what? By complying with a state law, you may have violated a federal law.

Welcome to America!

Copyright © 2009 by Mark Nestmann