The Smoking Gun continues to stay on top of the effort to out and punish the juvenile a-holes (some of them sex offenders, some of them merely Mom’s-basement types) who go around ruining property and people’s days with “pranks.”
The hilarity involves calling restaurants or hotels, convincing employees to turn on fire-control systems, break windows or even drink a pale liquid that turns out to be urine. They then brag about it online.
TSG did a masterful job of cracking the identities of the Pranknet ring, led by a Canadian who lived in his Mom’s basement. Two Texas participants were identified.
One was arrested last month for his role in causing $1,300 worth of damage to a Baytown Arby’s.
Now the other Texas member has been arrested.
James Tyler Markle of Diboll — like the Baytown dude, a convicted sex offender — was arrested and faces felony charges in two states, TSG reported.
Markle, 19, convinced a [Lufkin] McDonald’s worker to set off the restaurant’s fire suppression system, which released a liquid from overhead extinguishers. Markle then told the employee that the liquid contained a toxin and directed the worker to break the store’s windows “for ventilation.”
Fun stuff for a convicted child rapist. He did the same thing to a Wendy’s in Gretna, Louisiana.
He’s also being investigated for his role in convincing a hotel employee to test-drink a liquid which turned out to be urine that he had convinced a guest to take down to the front desk.
Yeah, the people taking these calls were gullible; the people making them are far worse.
This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2009.