Posted on 07/21/2009 1:31:05 PM PDT by buccaneer81
Ohio man faces terrorism charge over phone call Tuesday, July 21, 2009 4:06 PM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ST. LOUIS -- A northwest Ohio man has been jailed on a terrorist charge after allegedly threatening in a phone conversation to set fire to a firm selling extended car warranties.
Charles Papenfus, 43, called a telemarketing firm in St. Louis in May after receiving a mailing that said a factory warranty had expired on a Ford Taurus driven by his 23-year-old son, his wife, Tracie Papenfus, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The car had been purchased as-is for $3,000 and hadn't had a factory warranty in years. He repeatedly asked why the mailing had been sent, when they'd never had a factory warranty on the car, she said.
He called back to complain some more, and when the firm called to return a voice mail he'd left, he allegedly said he would burn down the firm's building and kill employees and their families, according to court documents.
"They insulted each other," said Douglas Forsyth, a lawyer representing Papenfus. He said Papenfus referred to "a scam" and the lawyer alleged the telemarketer then called Papenfus names.
Forsyth said several minutes into the call Papenfus said something about burning down the firm's building. Court records don't identify the firm, but only one firm at the address, TXEN Partners, provides auto service contracts, also called extended warranties.
A man who answered the phone today at TXEN Partners, which does business as Service Protection Direct, declined comment.
The Better Business Bureau recently accused the firm of sending mailers to consumers that incorrectly state factory warranties on their vehicles either have expired or will run out soon. Last year, then-Attorney General Jay Nixon sued the firm for misleading customers. The business as part of a settlement was to only refer to expiring warranties if it believed in good faith that those claims were true.
Tracie Papenfus said she hasn't seen her husband since his arrest on June 27, when he went to a Fostoria, Ohio, police station. She says she can't post his $45,000 bond. He is jailed in St. Louis.
She said her husband's outburst was unusual for him, but said he was on prescription painkillers for a wrist fracture he had gotten in a motorcycle accident a few days before. Forsyth said irritability can be a side effect from the drugs.
If this was during the initial, company-initiated call, I’d give him a pass and a pat on the back.
But the dumbass called them back.
Du-OH!!!
“Hello, is this the office of ‘TXEN Partners’? I’m calling because our records show that your fire protection plan is about to expire. This is your FINAL NOTICE to extend your warranty....”
To qualify as terrorism, an act must be motivated primarily by one or more political motives. Threatening to bomb a business over a commercial/financial matter is an act of either extortion or revenge, not terrorism. It is not terrorism unless there is some political purpose, some intent to change the policy of a nation or government, to protest its political stance, or to intimidate its citizens regarding their foreign or domestic policy preferences.
Caller ID is worth it just to avoid telemarketers. These car insurance scammers called me many times, but the only way I knew was by searching for their phone number on the web.
While Islamists are taking over America, they incarcerate a ‘politically correct’ suspect, aka white Christian male, on charges of terrorism. Liberalism on full display.
Given our freedoms of speech, what name is associated with the supposed “crime”?
Verbal assault?
From http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Verbal+assault
I have ... “The act required for an assault must be overt. Although words alone are insufficient, they might create an assault when coupled with some action that indicates the ability to carry out the threat. A mere threat to harm is not an assault; however, a threat combined with a raised fist might be sufficient if it causes a reasonable apprehension of harm in the victim.”
In Ohio, the charge would be menacing.
I wonder if the order for his arrest came from Eric Holder himself.
Geez, throw the ad out.
I do.
Some of these places were cold calling dozens of times. My cell phone got hit 15 times one weekend.
But yes, Tuesday is usually junk mail day. Off to the trash with any printed matter.
I have had a cell phone since the early 90s and have never gotten a spam call.
>>Charles Papenfus, 43, called a telemarketing firm in St. Louis in May after receiving a mailing that said a factory warranty had expired on a Ford Taurus driven by his 23-year-old son, his wife, Tracie Papenfus, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.<<
I could understand if he was being called. This was a mass mailing.
My hubby is getting calls for a Karen something to collect a debt. He has tried calling back and it’s porn. Sprint won’t help and just says “change your number”. It’s eating our minutes every month.
She had one jack@ss on the phone for 30 minutes describing every detail of a time share condo before he realized he was the one getting scammed. After a few times, the nuisance call trailed off considerable. Time is money for them...I figure this is kind of my families little fine for interrupting our evenings.
This firm is a bunch of dirtbags.
If the DA is going to go after this fellow, he should go after the warantee guys as well for misleading people, and offering a rip-off product.
Overzealous prosecutor: I don’t think it will pass any of the true threat standards given the context of a yelling match with a telemarketer.
Personally, if I were on the jury, I stand up and give him an ovation!
It sounds like Warranty Services has some competition in the scam department.
If I’m in a particularly patient and playful mood, I play dumb and extend the converstaion as long as possible until they catch on that we’re just going in circles. Make them explain the same thing over and over and never quite get it. Not even listen to the answer, go back to the ball game or whatever, and when you hear them saying “hello, are you there?”, you just ask another dumb question. Sometimes I think they’re programmed to NEVER HANG UP.
I figure I’m wasting their time and keeping them from bugging anyone else and if we all did it, the business model would collapse. Of course, I rarely have the time and patience for that game, but I have done it.
The other one I like - but it’s hard to keep a staight face - is to affect some strange accent, like the character in Slingblade or Elmer Fudd or Sgt Shultz and see how long you can do it without cracking up.
I agree. But the charge is absolutely absurd. These telemarketers and mailings are out of control. All this was was a case of ‘mail rage.’ The cops are out of control, too. Common sense has left the building.
It’s too bad the guy wasn’t smart enough to figure out that the letter he received was a scam instead of either thinking his old “as-is” clunker still had a warranty or else getting so mad about receiving the stupid mailer that he decided to throw a fit. I mean, how dumb can someone be? Doesn’t he have bigger fish to fry? That stuff is nuisance mail. Just round-file it and move on. I look at it this way: creating, printing and mailing those things keeps people employed, and it’s no stupider than most of the things we pay gargantuan sums to the government to do.
Anybody want a ham sandwich?
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