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Dec 21, 2012

How Is This Witness Tampering?

     From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
A security guard has been indicted in federal court here for allegedly outing a federal investigation by the Social Security Administration, charging documents claim.
The indictment says that Mamie Wills, 66, was working as a security guard at an unidentified St. Louis County office building when on April 4, she spotted an officer of the Social Security Administration's Cooperative Disability Investigations Unit tailing a man who was claiming to be disabled. The man was going to a medical appointment in the building.
Wills apparently became suspicious and wrote down the license plate number of one officer's car, causing another officer to “intervene” and tell her who they were and that they were conducting an investigation, the indictment says.
When their target left, Wills told him that he was being followed and videotaped by investigators, the indictment claims.
Wills was indicted on a witness tampering charge Dec. 13 and appeared in U.S. District Court here Wednesday to plead not guilty to the charge.

5 comments:

  1. Maybe because the security guard told the subject of a fraud investigation that he was under investigation, thereby giving the subject the opportunity to take steps to conceal any fraudulent behavior.

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  2. So she, apparently a private employee of a building, has a legal duty to conceal an investigation?

    Maybe not the right thing to do, but how this would be a crime I don't know.

    Justin

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  3. Justin,

    we all have a legal duty to not obstruct governmental investigations...

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  4. Yeah but... Obstructing an investigation is not necessarily witness tampering. Unless there are other facts not mentioned above, this one shoould fail.

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  5. Was this in anyway related to applying for disability benefits? What was the investigation for?

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