Rolex is Not Amused by Dallas Pop-Punk Singer's Counterfeit Watch Business

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Facebook
Jonathan Cook, second from left, is accused of selling counterfeit Rolex watches.
Their bio on Jam Base chalks it up to a "magical combination of talent, perseverance and opportunity," but, whatever their secret, Forever the Sickest Kids has enjoyed a remarkably long run in the music business. The Dallas-based pop-punk band managed to land a major-label record deal months after its formation in 2006 and has since released a handful of decent-selling albums, made appearances on MTV and Conan O'Brien, and joined the Vans Warped Tour. Their new album is set to be released on June 25.

But surviving seven years in the music industry doesn't necessarily bring riches, and lead singer Jonathan Cook eventually turned to other means to help support himself. Specifically, he started selling counterfeit Rolex watches on Craigslist. He admitted as much in a statement released last month following his arrest by Dallas police for selling counterfeit goods.

See also
Q&A: Forever The Sickest Kids' Jonathan Cook Talks About Finally Having The Time To Make The Record His Band Wanted With Its Latest.


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A Federal Prisoner is Suing Taco Bell for Stealing His Idea for the Doritos Locos Taco

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BroBible
You've no doubt spent the 14 months since Doritos Locos Tacos were introduced wondering how Taco Bell came up with the brilliant idea of turning the popular chips into popular taco shells. If you just assumed this was the work of a dedicated, and probably high, Yum Brands food scientist, Gary Cole is here to tell you that you're wrong.

To be accurate, Cole isn't here exactly. He's in the super-max prison in Florence, Colorado.

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Watch a Dallas County Jailer Slam a DUI Suspect's Face into a Tile Floor

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For the record, the jailer in the above photo no longer works for Dallas County. Rachel Leigh Graham lost her job and pleaded guilty to official oppression for slamming her handcuffed charge into the tile floor of the Lew Sterrett jail. But that doesn't make the video, seen below in a clip from NBC 5, any less brutal.

In it, you'll see Rhonda Wells, the 47-year-old being booked in on a DUI charge, saunter up to the counter while Graham is looking through her purse. This angers Graham, who has twice instructed her charge to stay on the red line, and she slams Wells into the ground face-first. Graham's fellow jailers can be seen cringing while Graham casually resumes her search of the purse.

The impact knocked Wells unconscious, broke multiple teeth, and caused serious head and facial trauma, according to the lawsuit she filed against Graham.

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Customer Claims a Dallas Red Lobster Served Him Beer Laced with Caustic Poison

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Google
Justin Grogg was in town from Panama City on a business trip when he and a colleague went out on the town to sample the local fare. They went to the Red Lobster at Stemmons and Northwest Highway, and Grogg ordered a Budweiser.

Grogg says it took only a second for him to realize that the burning sensation in his throat, esophagus and stomach was something more than the tingle of carbonation. He was rushed to the hospital, where he was treated for inflammation and ulceration of his esophagus and pharynx. The pain eventually subsided, but doctors told him his future would likely be plagued by infections, acid reflux and difficulty swallowing.

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Trina Trisch Missed a City Council Meeting, So Now She's Suing the Mayor and the Council

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Trina Triche, a regular at City Hall, had been preparing her remarks for nearly a week. She was going to address the City Council on the topic of government corruption and wanted to make sure she was signed up to speak during the open mic forum that closes each meeting.

She told the city secretary's office last week that she planned to deliver her remarks on Monday. She even filled out and submitted the required public speaker's card. But when she showed up to the council chambers on Monday morning, Mayor Mike Rawlings and his colleagues were nowhere to be found. She never got her turn at the mic.

So, Triche is now suing Mayor Rawlings and each of his 14 colleagues on the council in federal court, alleging that they violated her civil rights by denying her the right to speak.

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Kidney Failure Keeping You From Peeing in a Cup? The Feds Can Lend a Hand.

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We have no idea why this pee cup is so jaunty.
Filing a federal employment discrimination lawsuit is easy. All you need to offer up a not-transparently bullshit claim that you were discriminated against because of race, gender, age, disability, et cetera, is a right-to-sue letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and to pay your filing fee. The bar is low, which helps explain why so many people do it.

Rarer are the cases in which the EEOC steps in and sues on a person's behalf. In those instances, the evidence of discrimination is so clear or the offenses are so egregious that the federal agency feels compelled to intervene.

Such is the case with Patsy Robertson. In 2011, Robertson applied for and effectively got a job as a certified nursing assistant at the Fort Worth Center of Rehabilitation. All she had to do to make it official was to undergo a quick drug screening.

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SMU Says Professor's Claims of Sex and Nazi Fetishism in Human Rights Program Are B.S.

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Patricia Davis
SMU agrees with a number of points former professor Patricia Davis made in the rather wild lawsuit she filed last month. Both agree, for example, that Davis is a woman, that SMU has 11,000 students and that Davis worked at the school until she was fired last October from her position as associate director of the Embrey Human Rights Program.

Where opinions start to differ is on the conduct of Rick Halperin, a well-respected academic and Davis' former boss at Embrey. She says he's a Nazi-obsessed sex fiend. The university (and Halperin's colleagues) say that's not true.

In a response to the lawsuit filed yesterday afternoon, SMU goes through Davis' allegations point-by-point, denying that anything improper occurred. Yes, Halperin did meet with female students alone in his office, but no, he didn't have sex with them. Yes, Davis did make numerous allegations against Halperin and call him a "predator," but no, there was zero evidence to support her claims. And, yes, a dean did once refer to Halperin as a "pied piper," but no, he didn't mean that he was leading children to slaughter.

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After Texas Parks & Wildlife's Slaughter of a Hunt County Deer Herd, Questions of Wildlife Ownership Abound

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Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
A sharpshooter with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department guns down some of the Anderton Whitetail Ranch in 2010.
For eight hours, rifle reports echoed across the Anderton Whitetail Ranch in Hunt County. In the larger paddocks, a wildlife biologist standing in the bed of a white Texas Parks and Wildlife truck picked them off with a scoped .22- or .17-caliber rifle mounted to a tripod. Another shot them in the smaller pens, where the deer couldn't run far. The kills weren't always clean. Some lurched away until another well-placed bullet finally brought them down. In all, the agency killed 71 bucks, does and yearlings on Dec. 6, 2010.

They took brain stems for testing, and left the headless deer behind. The Anderton men, though, weren't there to see the awful deed done. James and Jimmie were sitting in federal prison after pleading guilty to one count of wildlife trafficking and transporting stolen property in 2009. That was why the ranch was strewn with dead deer. Texas Parks and Wildlife said that the Andertons couldn't provide evidence of the state of origin for every animal, and so they all had to be wiped out to prevent the Texas incursion of a highly transmissible, neurodegenerative killer of deer known as chronic wasting disease.

The men said the deer had been bought in Arkansas, a state with no documented cases of the disease so far. But because it can be diagnosed only through autopsy, the agency said there was only one way to be sure. Of the six animals tested, none were infected. Five months later, the agency returned to destroy seven more animals.

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Neiman Marcus is Fighting Back Against a Notorious Dallas-Based Patent Troll

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IP Nav doesn't say what patents Neiman Marcus is allegedly infringing on, but our money's on the driveable cupcakes.
In the decade since it was founded in Dallas, IP Nav has established itself as a global leader in the increasingly lucrative business of "patent assertion," offering clients the ability to "maximize the value of their IP assets." Put more bluntly, it's a patent troll, shaking down companies by threatening them with lawsuits over patents that they or their clients are squatting on. They are a big problem in the tech world, and IP Nav is a big part of it. Rackspace, the San Antonio-based cloud computing firm, recently called the company "one of the most notorious patent trolls in America."

So when Neiman Marcus received a communique from IP Nav in April, the retailer knew the score. Headlined "proposal to negotiate patent license," the letter explains that an analysis reveals that some Neiman Marcus products appear to use patents held by an anonymous client, described only as the owner of "valuable patents in the field of automation of application programs.

"We would very much welcome the opportunity to enter into constructive discussions with your company to determine whether we can agree to a mutually acceptable patent license agreement or that you are not using our client's patents," the letter continues. "We are focused on addressing these issues without the need for costly and protracted litigation."

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The Girl Who Accused Highland Park Baseball Star Ryan Romo of Rape is Now Suing Him

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Ryan Romo
The 16-year-old girl who accused a former Highland Park baseball star of rape is now countersuing him in civil court.

In March, after a grand jury declined to indict Ryan Romo on rape charges, the Romo family sued his accuser and her family, claiming, among other things, defamation and negligent supervision of the girl. The girl and her family denied those charges in a brief filing late last week. And today, a new countersuit from the family says that Romo did in fact rape the girl, and alleges that the District Attorney's office allowed only a "one-sided presentation" that didn't allow them to show evidence proving that she had been assaulted.

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