The conventional wisdom has it that if you want to commit a crime with a cell phone, use a prepaid model. That’s what a woman in California did to get back at her ex-boyfriend and his sister-in-law, by sending harassing text messages to herself and then reporting them to the police. The plan fell apart, however, when her victims hit the pavement to find proof that they were being framed.

According to the Orange County Register, both the ex-boyfriend and his sister-in-law were arrested on false charges of making criminal threats (three times in the sister-in-law’s case) before they were able to expose the woman.

[In 2008] she took out a pre-paid cell phone in his sister-in-law’s name, and started sending the threatening text messages to her regular cell phone.

[…]

Her scheme was uncovered when the victims went to the phone store, talked with the salesman and learned that [the woman] had bought the pre-paid phone.

[…]

During a follow-up investigation, the detective discovered that most of the threatening text messages were sent when the pre-paid cell phone was in close proximity to [the woman’s] home or work.

Last week, a jury convicted the woman of three felony counts of false imprisonment and two misdemeanor accounts of making a false police report, and the judge sentenced her to a year in jail. She also has to pay the victims $50,000.

“Woman jailed for making threats … to herself” [OCRegister.com via CNET]

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