A recent story from ABC News, which documents a San Francisco landlord’s allegedly outrageous and abusive behavior towards his tenants and his subsequent attempted flight from the U.S. to evade the resulting criminal charges, nearly completely obscured its own documentation of another blatantly criminal act — this time of the government itself — mentioning it only on the second page and in passing.
Kip and Nicole Macy, the accused abusive landlords, were arrested on numerous charges connected to their alleged destruction of property and intimidation of tenants in the notoriously rent-controlled city, in an attempt to frighten the tenants into moving out and thereby allowing the rent to be reset.
After their arrest, bail was set at $500,000. Kip Macy’s mother, Marie Macy, arranged for a bail bond through liquidating her retirement savings as well as her jewelry. From the article:
Once free, Kip and Nicole Macy jumped bail, fleeing to Italy, leaving Kip Macy’s father and mother, potentially at a loss of half a million dollars.
With the clock ticking before the bail forfeiture deadline, Marie reached out to bailbondsmen, Geri Ito-Campana and Ron Lee to find Kip and Nicole, and get her money back. Gumshoe work by Geri, with Marie as her wing woman, led them to Kip’s bank, where someone had information about where Kip was getting paychecks. This led the sleuths to an address in Florence, Italy.
The private investigator was eventually able to locate Kip and Nicole Macy:
After several days with no luck, Ron Lee was ready to give up, until an unusual sight in the Italian city, a Chinese restaurant, encouraged him to pull out his camera and take a picture. At that moment, in his lens view was Kip and Nicole walking down the street. Days later, after a meticulous plan devised by Geri and Ron, Marie stood in an apartment building lobby, face-to-face at last with her fugitive son.
Kip and Nicole’s Italian idyll was over. The district attorney had not sought extradition, so Geri took the pair to the U.S. Embassy. Ron shot photos of Kip and Nicole, with that day’s newspapers, and an Italian cop ID’d them on an affidavit, all to ensure Marie could get her $500,000 back, as provided by law.
“But then when it came … to ask to have the bond exonerated, the district attorney agent said, ‘well, we’ve changed our mind … we’ve now decided to extradite,'” said Marie.
The stunning switch required a different protocol for Geri to follow and the clock ran out. All appeals were denied. Marie says she followed the letter of the law to regain her bail money and for her troubles she was out half a million dollars.
San Francisco district attorney George Gascon disagrees.
“They fled the jurisdiction. They fled the nation and that’s really what the bottom line is,” he said.
No, the real bottom line is that a mother who sold her prized possessions to secure her son’s freedom while fighting criminal charges — who, after he betrayed her trust, did what was required and hired private investigators to track down that son halfway around the world and deliver him to the authorities — was completely stripped of the wealth she placed at risk, through at best a technicality of law.
The government agents that grabbed her money have the gall to defend helping themselves to her money, even after she had tracked down their fugitive at her own expense as required.
Ain’t that America?
Source article: http://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-landlord-hell-defends-terrorizing-apartment-tenants/story?id=20875476&singlePage=true
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