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Well, that was the idea. Plymouth man Roger Moore was caught speeding in a hire car, but decided that faking CCTV pics of his own car sitting on his drive would prove he’d already collected his car and driven home, and therefore was not the man hammering the hire car.
The switched-on local police submitted Moore’s innocent home CCTV images to photography experts, who decided that the shadowing on Moore’s car didn’t match up with where the shadows ought to be for the time of year. They put it to him that he’d used an older pic, edited the time and date stamp, then sent it off as evidence of him not being where the police thought he was.
He crumbled in the face of this overwhelming forensic evidence and admitted to the significantly more serious crime of perverting the course of justice. Moore’s Photoshop work exacerbated his punishment, leading to a suspended 16-week prison sentence and £2,000 in costs. [BBC]
Image credit: Parked cars from Shutterstock
I love it when a plan comes together!
Moonfaker
I bet that 3 points and £60 fine is now looking pretty reasonable. I assume he will still get the points he would have gotten in the first place. I can only imagine the guy had 9 points already and was looking at disqualification in order to do this.
Also, why was there a need to submit the photos to forensic experts? Surely the hire car company will have a log of exactly when the car was picked up and dropped off (possibly with their own CCTV). Even if the CCTV images were legit, how would you know what time the events took place at? If it’s because the date/time is stamped onto the video then surely an easier photoshop would have been to photoshop the timestamp?
That’s exactly what he did do. He didn’t photoshop in an entire car and shadows and “get the shadows wrong”, he simply took legit footage of his car parked in his drive and changed the timestamp.
Only, he took footage from a different time of the year to the time he claimed (and the altered timestamp said), and the wrong shadows gave him away.
Its not the first time that photos have had their timestamps doctored, its common practice with traffic wardens who think their photos won’t sway the judge so they alter the timestamp so the victim ends up with a huge fine. Some even admit afterwards they have done exactly that.
I can sympathise with him.
In my (extensive) experience parking enforcement and moving traffic offences are used by local authorities to raise revenue. Using the law against its citizens in this way is morally wrong in the first place, but Council compound this my acting unlawfully in the way they consider appeals and relying on a flawed ‘independent’ appeals process that denies the innocent fair compensation for making appeal that shouldn’t be necessary in the first place.
As long as they ignore the law then they can expect people to do exactly the same in trying to evade fines that often shouldn’t have been levied in the first place.