Judges stupidity
"... the appeal was based on the premise that two different webmasters in countries other than the UK had used his details fraudulently."
No it wasn't, that was just a piece of nonsense apparently invented by the CoA judges. To me it looks like the appeal was based on the idea that the *Landslide* webmaster used O'Shea's details fraudulently on several different client sites. Once you realise this, virtually all the CoA's criticisms of the appeal vanish.
For example:
"30. ... The theory put forward on his behalf is that a webmaster, presumably the webmasters of the Child Rape, Forchild and Babyworld sites, had dishonestly acquired and used his details in order to benefit from the credit card payments that resulted. 31. One of the difficulties with the fraudulent webmaster theory is that the webmaster of Babyworld was German, whereas the webmaster for Childrape and Forchild was Indonesian. The theory therefore has to posit at least two fraudulent webmasters. [and later in [33] a third one]".
- No it doesn't. All it needed was for the Keyz webmaster to be fraudulent, which is hardly a long reach since even the prosecution expert admitted (see par 37 of the judgement) that the Keyz guy was conducting fraudulent transactions. If the CoA judges were too stupid to see this, then they were too stupid to hear the appeal and their decision should simply be ignored.
Next for example:
"49. The appellant’s only answer to the prosecution’s case is that the transactions in question were made by a fraudulent webmaster. This is pure conjecture, unsupported by any evidence relating to those transactions."
- On the contrary, it is supported by the prosecution expert, admitted (see par 37 of the judgement) that the Keyz webmaster was conducting fraudulent transactions.
Next for example:
"50. First, there is no evidence that the webmaster had access to the data concerning the appellant that were used in these transactions. The appellant contends that the webmaster could have obtained it from an email sent by the appellant to protest against the wrongful debiting of his credit card account as a subscription for “Web’s Youngest Women”, following the cancellation of his membership. The email was dated 9 February 1999, and concerned debits similar in amount to those that were the subject of the indictment. This contention is hopeless. The email was not addressed to the webmaster of the Childrape and Forchild websites and there is no evidence he had access to it."
- Complete and utter rubbish. The fraud was conducted by the webmaster of the Kewz site who *would* have had access to O'Shea's data. The CoA judges have run away with the idea (presumably planted on them by Gamble) that the fraud was conducted by the other webmasters.
Next for example:
"56. It is also surprising in the extreme that if the supposed fraudulent webmaster was able to debit the appellant’s credit card account, he did so for such limited amounts and on relatively few occasions."
- Nonsense. That is, or was, how fraudulent commercial websites work. You charge small amounts that will not immediately reveal your fraudulent operations.