JACKSONVILLE, Ore. — A pair of hoax ads on Craigslist cost an Oregon man much of what he owned. The ads popped up Saturday afternoon, saying the owner of a Jacksonville home was forced to leave the area suddenly and his belongings, including a horse, were free for the taking, said Jackson County sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Colin Fagan. But Robert Salisbury had no plans to leave. The independent contractor was at Emigrant Lake when he got a call from a woman who had stopped by his house to claim his horse. On his way home he stopped a truck loaded down with his work ladders, lawn mower and weed eater.
“I informed them I was the owner, but they refused to give the stuff back,” Salisbury said. “They showed me the Craigslist printout and told me they had the right to do what they did.” The driver sped away after rebuking Salisbury. On his way home he spotted other cars filled with his belongings. Once home he was greeted by close to 30 people rummaging through his barn and front porch. The trespassers, armed with printouts of the ad, tried to brush him off. “They honestly thought that because it appeared on the Internet it was true,” Salisbury said. “It boggles the mind.” Fagan praised Easley’s honestly but said prosecution was likely for anybody caught with Salisbury’s property. Items can be returned with no questions asked, Fagan said.
Detectives have contacted Craigslist’s legal team to try to trace the ad. Meanwhile, Salisbury could not even relax on his porch swing. Someone took it.
Do you think this guy has made an enemy or two? How insidious can a person be…….. come to think of it, there is this contractor who has owed me money for years……………
Does he have an ex-wife….?
All too easy to believe what you want to believe—especially when you benefit from it?
ON ITS FACE–people were being told when someone was not going to be home and go over and rob him. Hope he got a few license plate numbers.
Yes, this sounds like the ad was placed by someone who knew him well.
I had a similar experience when I was a kid. A newspaper published an ad that a housing development was going to start construction on a vacant lot near our home a couple weeks before christmas. On this lot was a christmas tree farm. Some people in the neighborhood literally passed the word that we can get a free christmas tree because they were all going to be cut down.
So we went and got ourselves a tree!
BUT… as it turned out, the construction wasn’t going to start till two weeks AFTER christmas. OOPS.
It became the “how the Grinch stole christmas escapade”.
Had a happy ending though. Most of the people who took a tree (including ourselves) paid generously, so the owners actually made more money and sold more trees than any other year.
#3, you left out what planet that happened on.
Anyone know Dvorak’s home address?
I heard there’s a grab-as-much-as-you-can on this address:
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
#5, according to Google maps, it’s moved to DC. Here, let me look it up…
Click here.
Didn’t I hear this tale about 6 months ago ?
What a venue
Reminds me of an ad for a freezer to sell
Freezer to sell
Ex-wife too cold
A scam several years ago had a company offering bogus football tickets. Making sure the scamee was truly on-route and far away, a truck with a cleaning logo drove up and began selectively cleaning out the house.
Of course, the cleaning truck had bogus plates.
#8 yes you did hear it before..
maybe even on this blog.. ask the opers
Scary, how easily you can destroy someone these days.
Just goes to show you people believe anything they read. Hell people still think Wikipedia is a viable source of information.
Vengeance is usually very sweet, but too often very illegal. Craigslist should be held responsible as they posted the advertisement.
#14: Get real. Craigslist cannot be held responsible for verifying the ads placed thereon (and this has been upheld in court, if you are wondering).
They CAN be forced to provide any IP/account logging info related to those postings.
#14 – You should learn how the Internet works.
#15
There is a difference between libel, which is a civil offense, and a criminal offense such as mischief. Previous cases have dealt with anonymous postings on web sites. As far as I know, every criminal offense has received cooperation from web sites to find the perpetrator.
If Craigslist does not, or can not, provide a legitimate address then the buck stops at their door. If they have no legitimate IP address to pass on then they simply have no defense. Why? Because of their negligence in not verifying the poster’s address and not verifying the legitimacy of the posting. It was only a few months ago Craigslist had a similar incident where a woman’s home was destroyed because of an posting.
#16
-#14 – You should learn how the Internet works.
Bullshit. How the “Internet works” can not be an excuse to ransack some guys home. How something works or whatever policy someone has is secondary to criminal law. Even non-profit organizations can be and are held responsible for illegal activity.
That is the same type of weak argument Bush gives us when he tries to justify tapping into every email floating through the interwebtubes. If you do buy your argument, then what privacy you think you just gained on the internet has been lost to the government.
#17–Warden==You really should learn how the Internet works.
What else does that mean except what the laws require of website hosters?
You sound like you want everybody running around acting as judge, jury, and free speech censor of what gets submitted to the internet. Lets see–a three day lag between submitting and posting in order to clear the legal department?
Forget how the internet works==think about how a free society works and how the illegal activities of a few should rationally be dealt with.
Its hard, but you can get better.
“If you see on the internet it must be true.”
Ok, that’s a lie…
“Man’s stupidity is only surpassed by his greed.”
Yea, I wish that was a lie…
Same exact thing happened last year:
http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW_040507WABcraigslistadLJ.34e92f1d.html
#18 & 19,
You both make some silly points.
This is a criminal act. By declaring that “this is the way the internet works” as an excuse is laughable. While there may be a wonderful notion of doing something for the “public good”, that can not be an excuse to allow a criminal act to be facilitated using your free service.
The people that took the items from his house were led to believe they had every right to. That isn’t stealing. Therefore there can not be anything criminal on their part. You claim Craigslist isn’t responsible. So who is responsible? Or is this guy just shit out of luck and have to depend upon his home owner’s insurance? Is that your definition of “personal responsibility”?
– ”Yes, I said learn how the Internet works. When I said that, what I meant was … ”
Do they come any more juvenile than that?
“The Internet is based on a principle that information flows freely without centralized control. It’s not an ethic. It’s a design. It’s a function.”
Is this your definition of personal responsibility?
If Craigslist allows someone to hide behind a mask of anonymity in order to facilitate a criminal act, that should make Craigslist partly responsible. But their negligence can not be held out as a free pass simply because that is the way you want the internet to work.