The Case of the Fake Fed

The town of Gerald, Missouri was one of many small towns struggling to overcome the scourge that is methamphetamine. So when a stranger with a Federal badge came to town, the higher-ups welcomed him with open arms and the arrest rate went up. WAY up. Then everything came crashing down, as the NYT reported yesterday:

Those whose homes were searched, though, grumbled about a peculiar

change in what they understood — mainly from television — to be the law.

They

said the agent, a man some had come to know as “Sergeant Bill,” boasted

that he did not need search warrants to enter their homes because he

worked for the federal government.

But after a reporter for the

local weekly newspaper made a few calls about that claim, Gerald’s

antidrug campaign abruptly fell apart after less than five months.

Sergeant Bill, it turned out, was no federal agent, but Bill A. Jakob,

an unemployed former trucking company owner, a former security guard, a

former wedding minister and a former small-town cop from 23 miles down

the road.

Mr. Jakob, 36, is now the subject of a criminal

investigation by federal authorities, and he is likely to face charges

related to impersonating a law enforcement officer, his lawyer said.

There are a ton of questions, like why Jakob would go to such lengths to impersonate a federal agents, how so many were taken in, and who gets first dibs on turning this into a novel. (Thanks to SP for the link)