I think this would make a wonderful setting for a sitcom
Paging BBC3 or E4, are you reading?
A US card cloner forced would-be gang members to take part in group sex sessions as part of an initiation ceremony designed to weed out undercover cops, according to a detective. Vikas Yadav - an Indian national resident in Athens, Georgia, at the time of his crimes but has since been deported - used chat rooms frequented by …
I was asked if I minded sharing an office with a woman, at a job interview many years ago. Maybe I wasn't listening properly, and he actually said orifice...
This (and a couple of equally weird questions) persuaded me that here was a man I didn't want to work for. He subsequently made the national press, by making someone dance like a chicken, at an interview for a sales job.
"Riddick was sentenced to two years of probation after he pleaded guilty to interstate transportation of stolen property. McQuiller and Grittner pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud, earning jail terms of 30 months and 10 months respectively."
That's a lot less than they're threatening Gary Mckinnon or Richard O'Dwyer with isn't it?
Bear in mind these are proper criminals, caught in the act, stealing REAL (as opposed to intellectual) property by spending other people's money.
"Representing McKinnon in the House of Lords on 16 June 2008, barristers told the Law Lords that the prosecutors had said McKinnon faced a possible 8–10 years in jail per count if he contested the charges (there were seven counts) without any chance of repatriation, but only 37–46 months if he co-operated and went voluntarily to the US. US-style plea bargains are not a part of English jurisprudence (although it is standard practice to reduce the sentence by one-third for a defendant who pleads guilty) and McKinnon's lawyers contended that in effect this was intimidation to force McKinnon to waive his legal rights. McKinnon also claimed that he had been told that he could serve part of his sentence in the UK if he co-operated. He rejected the offer because the Americans would not guarantee these concessions."
So it was 3+ years they offered, but would not give any guarantees.
It rather seemed like the Tories used this sort of recruiting practise back in the day, didn't it? I think that on the whole they've been more successful than labour in recent decades.
If the stories about the Etonian extra-curricular acitivies are to be believed, they probably still do.