Judge Judy Learns About Bitcoin
It seems Judge Judy had an eBay scam to deal with on her show, and it involved Bitcoin. While talking with the prosecuting party, she wants to know all about the case, and she heard from the defendant something about Cryptocurrency. This “Bitcoin” she says is something you could talk for a day about, and she wouldn’t have a clue.
Also read: The Bitcoin.com Forum’s All-Star AMA Event
The snippy TV Judge has a lot to ask the defendant and breaks right into him and asks about his prior arrests. The defendant lives in Portland, Oregon and he was arrested before for marijuana distribution and intoxicated driving at one point in his life. After hearing this testimony, the man is asked what he does for a living by the Judge. He says:
“I day trade Bitcoin. Which is a decentralized digital currency. The only thing I can compare it to is Internet cash.”— Day Trading Defendant
Now after the man says this Judy tells the plaintiff that she wants to follow up with this case with the police to find out if this man has scammed others before. The man from the prosecution side agrees with the Judge, and she then asks the defendant if he agree that it should be investigated. In which he replies, “No I do not” and the courtroom erupts with laughter and commotion as Judge Judy gets upset at this answer. The defendant says, “because I have an outstanding reputation selling bitcoins” and he completely misunderstands the Judges question. In fact, every member on the show actually looks pretty perplexed as the case continues most notably the courtroom officer.
Describing the case of the eBay scam Judy describes the plaintiff’s story of buying a truck through “outer space” referring to the Internet. The man said he never received the truck and got taken for USD $2,000 but was suing for over $4,000. The judge asks why the plaintiff was suing for so much. The accuser said it took a long time for him to find the young man and it cost a lot of money, “these guys don’t wanna be found” he says. After this Judy then goes into how hard it is to trust a purchase on the Internet and often “criminals don’t want to be found.” She explains the way e-commerce works in her eyes by saying:
“You send the money off into outer space and hope to get something in return.”
The Judge continues to talk about the Internet as a “never-never land that usually has a bunch of drugs to keep people happy.” During this part of the case, the Judge wants to speed it up and discuss how the defendant was tied to the sale of the truck. What happened was a Bank of America account tied to the defendant’s name was tethered to the sale. The man under scrutiny now says that over $30,000 dollars went through that specific account in Bitcoin sales. He says that the man was supposed to be buying Bitcoin from him but used his account within his scamming techniques. The defendant claimed he was a victim to a “man in the middle attack.”
Judy then gets into the fact that the man had acknowledged that his bank account was indeed tied to the scam. She believes a strong follow up with the police should solve this problem better than her courtroom to get to the bottom of the defendants actions. The Judge thinks it’s quite funny that the Bank of America account was open for one month and supposedly closed for fraud. Shouting at the man she says no you probably don’t have any bank paperwork explaining how your account was closed. The defendant says he doesn’t carry this “kind of paperwork in his back pocket” and thinks it’s an odd question. Red in the face the Judge exclaims, “Why not? What did you think you were coming to see today the zoo!” Immediately she gives judgement to the plaintiff for 2,000 and the fun times of the “Day Trader” have ended.
To be honest, the whole courtroom scene was, in fact, a zoo of absurdity with Judge Judy at the helm!The honorable Judge shows a lot of ignorance towards ecommerce and how the Internet operates in the first place. Her reactions make it seem like she never touches the web or has made an online purchase. Understanding a digital currency and how it works would be extremely difficult for this woman as she shows no sign of wanting to learn. Unfair bias doesn’t seem to make a legal judgment sound logical when approached like this. It seems bringing up Bitcoin itself was an act of sensationalism and basically bait for a poorly performed show. But after all it’s only TV. 😉
http://youtu.be/Zhl6zx_tYkY
What do you think about Judge Judy’s show and the way Bitcoin was spoken about?
Images: Judge Judy
