Eugene Grygo, Chief Content Editor, FTF News
The fascinating story about James Alan Craig, the man who lives in Scotland and is facing serious criminal and securities fraud charges in an alleged scheme involving Twitter accounts and damaging messages has a strange twist to it.
As our story states, Craig has said via a Scottish newspaper that he has not yet received official notification of the charges against him, and that he only knows he’s in trouble because of the radio and television reports. If convicted, Craig could face a maximum sentence of 25 years’ imprisonment and a fine of $250,000, plus restitution if appropriate, according to U.S. Department of Justice officials.
But it does bring up an interesting question of how to get the legal papers to him as the authorities are in the U.S. and Craig is in Dunragit, which is in southern Scotland.
In this Age of Nonstop Connections, Craig’s claim begs the question of whether it is possible that someone could go off the grid and avoid being served with legal papers.
In this case, the alleged fraudster, who denies all the charges via a story dated Nov. 8 from the Dailyrecord.co.uk, says that he would have preferred that U.S. authorities contact him before news of the case was leaked to the media.
“I have never been approached by any law enforcement agency telling me I am subject of any investigation. Of course I deny it,” Craig says in the Daily Record story. “The first I knew of it was when the TV camera turned up this morning and I thought ‘what’s happened here?’ ”
I was prompted to check out information on this issue offered online by the Cornell University Law School and I found a web page that has a section, “Serving an Individual in a Foreign Country.”
It appears that “serving an individual in a foreign country” can get a little complicated.
“Unless federal law provides otherwise, an individual — other than a minor, an incompetent person, or a person whose waiver has been filed — may be served at a place not within any judicial district of the United States,” according to the Cornell web page.
However, a person of interest must be contacted via “internationally agreed means” that are “authorized by the Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents,” according to the information from Cornell.
If there is no “internationally agreed means” or similar complication, then U.S. authorities in a foreign country must follow “the foreign country’s law for service in that country in an action in its courts of general jurisdiction,” which I think means a legal action via a foreign court system.
Authorities may also have to consider “a letter of request” or finding someone to take the old-fashioned route of hand delivery of “a copy of the summons and of the complaint to the individual personally … using any form of mail that the clerk addresses and sends to the individual and that requires a signed receipt,” according to the Cornell website. There are “other means not prohibited by international agreement, as the court orders,” which is perfectly vague.
My guess is that it will take a while before Craig is served with a stack of legal papers but that it will arrive at his door (if it hasn’t already).
The next battle may be over extradition and I’m certain there is a tangle of rules and regulations and legal hurdles for that step.
It’s a shame that the legal documents cannot be delivered via a Twitter account or two.
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