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What crime? That he put "Legal Expenses" when he should have put "Settlement Payment" in his own ledger? That's a "crime" on the level of putting the wrong category in Quicken.
He’s correct it is a crime.
But every white color worker who has to document their work probably commits it every other day.
Putting the wrong category in quicken is a crime. Telling your co-worker she’s beautiful when she’s bummed a date went bad is a crime.
Technically it isn't. Allowing one co-worker to tell another that she's beautiful when she's bummed a date went bad is a tort on the part of the employer, but sexual harrassment laws are not criminal laws, and are not directly enforceable against non-manager employees.
Normally I wouldn't get this technical, but given that a large part of the "the NY prosecution is a stretch" is based on the distinction between different kinds of illegality, I think we should.
I think it turns into a crime if you make it a business record. If you say it on Skype where it is recorded then it’s part of the business record. If it’s a lie then it’s falsified. I don’t think in the statute it says it needs to be relevant to operations. But it would be a falsified record about the business. You described an employee who is ugly as beautiful which is false.
There is a requirement that it wasn’t intended to defraud. So false is not enough.
I think you can stretch fraud statutes enough to cover that.
It would also need to be a false statement of fact. Statements of opinion can't be legally false. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If "is female beauty a fact or an opinion" gets to SCOTUS, "opinion" wins 9-0, or 8-1 with Thomas dissenting if a "fact" ruling would help a Republican.
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And you have to have “intent to defraud.” I’m not sure legal expense is false but Im very sure there was no intent to defraud.
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