For flash mobsters, crowd size a tempting cover
by Eric Tucker and Thomas Watkins
AP
August 9, 2011

The July 4 fireworks display in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights was anything but a family affair.

As many as 1,000 teenagers, mobilized through social networking sites, turned out and soon started fighting and disrupting the event.

Thanks to social networks like Twitter and Facebook, more and more so-called flash mobs are materializing across the globe, leaving police scrambling to keep tabs on the spontaneous assemblies.

“They’re gathering with an intent behind it – not just to enjoy the event,” Shaker Heights Police Chief D. Scott Lee said. “All too often, some of the intent is malicious.”

Flash mobs started off in 2003 as peaceful and often humorous acts of public performance, such as mass dance routines or street pillow fights. But in recent years, the term has taken a darker twist as criminals exploit the anonymity of crowds, using social networking to coordinate everything from robberies to fights to general chaos. (more…)

What not to do:

4 Charged in False Brain Surgery Claims
June 2, 2007

New York (AP) — Four people billed a health insurance company for 20 brain operations that were never performed on them, sometimes for the same person on multiple occasions, authorities said.

One 36-year-old man from New York City claimed nine brain surgeries for himself, along with his wife and two sons, receiving reimbursements from New York-based Group Health Incorporated totaling $142,268, federal investigators said Friday. Read the whole story here.

What not to do!

Salad Dressing Semen Spawns Trouble
May 24, 2007

Wheaton, Ill. (AP) — A judge has ordered a 17-year-old to pay a $750 fine and perform 120 hours of community service for contaminating salad dressing with semen and returning it to a suburban Chicago high school’s cafeteria.

DuPage County Judge Terence Sheen also placed Marco Castro on two years probation Wednesday and ordered him to write a letter of apology to Wheaton North High School officials. Castro must complete his community service work for an agency that works with AIDS patients. Read the rest of the story here.

From: katra.vox.com

On the other hand… what not to do:

A 13 year old boy was arrested and held without bail on suspicion of making a criminal threat after he allegedly wrote “Shooting Friday” as a prank on a bathroom wall at his school in Vista, California. Read the story here.

In my natal family, the holiest of holidays were April Fools, Valentine’s, Halloween, and the first night of Passover, in that order. To joke was to love was to entertain was to celebrate liberty. My friends were brought up to take praying seriously; my brother and I, to take playing seriously. (more…)

We take our pranks pretty seriously, so we’ve made up some prank guidelines: (more…)