The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: January 23, 2011

Official News page 8


REAL LIFE NEWS: LIFE-LIKE MASKS CAUSE WRONG GUY TO BE ARRESTED

by Hazed

Remember those TV series and films like Mission Impossible where people could put on life-like masks that made them look completely different? Totally implausible. Well, now mask technology has caught up with fiction.

It's now possible to buy absolutely realistic masks for costume parties - if you have the money, because they are expensive. But these new masks have a more sinister use.

A white bank robber in Ohio recently used one of these masks to disguise himself as a black guy. The mask was so realistic that police mistakenly arrested an African American man for the crimes when six out of seven bank tellers wrongly identified him as the culprit in a photo lineup. If wasn't until the real culprit's girlfriend tipped off the police that they realized what had happened.

Then there was an incident a few months ago where a young Chinese man who wanted asylum in Canada used one of these masks to masquerade as an elderly caucasian in order to fool airport security in Hong Kong.

The company producing these amazingly life-like masks, SPFXMasks from Van Nuys, is not too pleased at the use they are being put to, although the publicity surrounding these cases and others like them is increasing their business.

You can read more about how their masks are being used in crimes here.


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