Facebook Poser Gets Three Year Sentence
Michael Arrington
41 comments »
On February 7 we reported that a Moroccan man named Fouad Mourtada had been arrested for pretending to be the Moroccan king’s younger brother, Prince Moulay Rachid, on Facebook. The specific charge was “Villainous practices.”
Well, justice is swift in Morocco. Mourtada was convicted, and sentenced to three years in prison and a $1,000 fine. Moroccan bloggers expressed outrage to no effect. A good roundup of opinions is here.
I’m scratching Morocco off of my holiday list until they get their basic human rights situation in order.
You can sign a petition here to help free Mourtada. My guess is that it ain’t gonna help.
Internet….. serious business
Pretty sad…
3 year is a little harsh if he did not rip some one off but it is still identity theft.
Online reputation is important…anonymity allows people to pretend to be anyone. I’m sure if you search for Michael Arrington, you’ll find a few blogs telling people you are gay.
And its a problem since regular people have no clue about anonymity of the internet(just watch O’Reily factor and his rants), and they take blog posts at face value.
Now how would you feel if you lost money because a company did a google search and read the lies on that other blog.
So this guy got what he deserved, maybe if there is more crack downs like this, we wouldn’t have this problem
Or, we could kill people who pretend to be other people. Maybe then we wouldn’t have this problem. Look ma, I can think!
Facebook has a link to Report Abuse and they would have deleted the profile.
That would work also, would you pretend to be someone else, if you knew you could get your head chopped off if someone reports you?
Lucky Fake Steve Jobs is not Morrocan.
Everybody that doesn’t live in Morocco should create a Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Bebo, Hi-5, and Friendster profile pretending to be Princess Moulay Rachid.
Identity theft is a crime in most countries. One that is both as technologically behind and as unstable as Morocco (weak central Gov’t and Monarchy) you can imagine that they need to send the right message.
Note to self, delete fake Moroccan facebook accounts. Also, cancel trip to Morocco.
Interesting. When yahoo gave the info about the reporter to the government of China, everybody was so angry on yahoo. But the similar case repeated right now with facebook and for most people the facebook is a good one, and the government of morocco is bad. Maybe the man wanted to deleted his profile after he realized the problem, but there is a f..king facebook policy that will have all information for a reasonable time. So if my child just for fun write that he is a one of many BRAD PITTS, then it will be a big problem, because even though I will find out that there is a mistake and try to delete the profile,but there will be no way back. Shame on you facebook.
Actually Andrew, I would never pretend to be someone else - that would be dishonest. I am simply anonymous. So are you. Online anonymity is a much more complicated topic than pretending to be someone else.
By the way, identity theft and creating a fake Facebook Profile are very different things. The former generally involves trying to use the identity of the person for some malicious purpose (accessing their bank account, committing a crime in their name, etc.) while the latter is most often a joke.
Sorry I’ve forgot, we are in the USA, and people understand that there is a slight chance that the real Brad is on facebook. :-DDDDDDD
Idea.
Let’s all start fake Prince Moulay Rachid accounts. See what happens.
doh, just saw that Jack had the same idea. Nice one Jack
Peter: Don’t worry, facebook and morrocan government don’t understand jokes, so they will sell us to them, and make it sound like they are doing it for a good thing.
The petition won’t help.
The guy is a moron ’cause at his age he understood well what he was playing with.
As I commented on the previous post about this - in countries like Morocco what he did is horribly stupid and he deserves what he got.
C’mon Mike, I think you should be well aware that it sounds pretty weird for an American to be looking down at “the human rights situation” in other countries during this nasty moment in history. Guantanamo, waterboarding, vigillance without warrants, Abu Ghraib.. the list is long and nasty. The Moroccan government is obviously a POS easy target country; but you, on the forefront of tech; could talk about your own house before taking the high stand against a straw man such as that screwed country.
@Alex: considering the punishment for a fake account on Facebook, I think this news deserved to be here: it’s drastic and it’s related to tech
If someone got waterboarded in the US for a fake Facebook/MySpace/Orkut?etc. account - I think it would have been here really quickly.
BTW: this news came out a couple of days ago (I sent it to TC via “submit” function because there is no other way to contact you guys) why posted so late?
Take a look at how depressing this is: http://www.economist.com/blogs...../fnord.cfm
if lying in one’s profile online were a crime, all of the dating sites would be shut down…The eharmony ceo is probably jealous he can’t put liars in jail.
antje wilsch : Good point.
@antje: totally agree.
This guy would not have any trouble if he stole the identity of a million average Joes from Morocco. However, he stole the name of a royal, who has huge power in that country.
He played with fire and he got burned.
He knew very well that it’s dangerous, but he did it anyway. I doubt he would know what Facebook is if he were mentally challenged.
gheez I’m glad I live in Australia, I can say right here that I think Kevin Rudd (our Prime Minister) is a d!#khead and know I am safe to get away with it.
By the way, I’m his father!
What happened to Mourtada is terrible, but it shouldn’t be any surprise to people who’ve followed Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara.
If human rights are a metric for that list of vacation destinations, Morocco probably should not have been on it in the first place. It’s an autocracy…
It’s his dumb fault for being an idiot. You have to be retarded to think that the Morocco monarchy would take it as a joke, I mean seriously…
I don’t understand the outrage here. There is no human rights violations. His country has a law prohibiting the impersonation of royalty, and he violated that law. We have similar laws in the U.S. regarding the impersonation of police officers, government officials, etc. This person committed a form of identity theft and fraud.
I agree 3 years seems harsh for a victimless crime, but don’t we in the US have similarly long sentances for other victimless crimes?
$1,000 fine to a 3 year sentence doesn’t seem too proportional at all. How about a $10,000 fine and a year sentence?
@29 you gotta remember this is Morocco, $1000 fine is probably a significant amount
3 years does sound very harsh… but if its human rights you are worried about, what the hell are you doing living in the US!
btw, get your blog software up to date and allow readers/commentors to follow updates to comments via email…
Mike, Mike, your country, the USA is the country of Human rights, freedom, blablabla….. If I tell you Guantanamo, a war in a country supposed to have massive weapons but where we found nothing (this war just killed thousands of sons, fathers, moms…) and also the death penality that sometime kills innocent people, etc… does it tell you something? As a moroccan and although I am against the USA government acts, I visited this country a few months ago. Why? because I think that I should not compare american people and american government . Michael Arrington, if you decide to go to Morocco, whatever you think about Morocco monarchy, I think you would appreciate the moroccan hospitality but next time please, before writing something like “I am scratching Morocco of my holiday list”, think a little bit more about people there that are living by the tourism revenue.
im starting a new profile for that prince and im gonna photoshop his face onto a image of a man banging a sheep, see how that goes down
Mikey, you are the reason I love the internet. It’s a place full of crazy people with entertaining, if not all too often completely bonkers opinions.
“In countries like Morocco what he did is horribly stupid and he deserves what he got”
Whilst I appreciate our Moroccan friend didn’t set out to sabotage the irksome Royal for purely altruistic reasons, making the above statement is a bit like suggesting “those darned females shouldn’t be asking for the vote in 19th Century America”.
You have to wonder what would happen in the US if someone was on MySpace pretending to be the Presidebt of the US. Con artists should not have a safe haven to fraud people. Pretend to be someone you are not and you go to jail. Sounds good to me.
Ambrosius Amadeus (the original)
“In countries like Morocco what he did is horribly stupid and he deserves what he got”
Since when being stupid became a crime ? + there are no laws against it, he was convicted on crimes such as “document falcification” and such (and the accusation was decided *AFTER* he got arrested)
“@29 you gotta remember this is Morocco, $1000 fine is probably a significant amount”
for a beginning enginer (no job experience) $1000 is about 60 to 75% of one month’s salary, so no it’s not by any means a significant amount.
and by the way yes i AM from morocco (and i am a computer science engineer too)
A young Morrocan is in prison for 3 years. It A creates a profile on facebook in the name of a Moroccan prince. Nothing low register. But the Moroccan State does not like the innocence of creation.
Write in Fouad Mortada and ask its release.
lididi@justice.gov.ma (gouvernement)
copy:
petitionmaroc@hrw.org
amdh1@mtds.com
http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=mideast&c=morocc
Le monde entier est scandalisé, le Maroc est ridiculisé !
Bon courage, Fouad !!