“So do you have a criminal record?” I asked my client.

“No,” he responded. “I’ve never been in trouble before.”

Meanwhile I was searching his name on the internet and found his mugshot from three states south online. He had been charged with felony assault.

“Is your date of birth, xx/yy/zz?” Obviously there was a real date in that question when I asked it, but I removed it because of attorney/client privilege.

“Yeah, but the state dismissed the charges,” he claimed.

“Oh, well you might want to search your name online. There is a link here where you can pay to remove the picture, but it looks like your name and picture appear on a few other similar sites.”

Now a basic rule of American justice is that you are innocent until proven guilty, but like all the other rules this one is also ignored and violated on a regular basis.

In many jurisdictions, the county jails routinely release booking photos and charging documents of anyone arrested. People can take this information and put it up on websites. They can even automate the process. So if you were even arrested, for anything, there is a chance that your booking photo is floating out there somewhere on some sleazy website. So, if you ever go look for a job or go on a date and someone searches you online, your picture and alleged crime are out there for all to see.

Of course, there is a process to get your name off many of these sites. If you weren’t convicted of your crime you can drive to the courthouse, get proof of this from the clerk’s office, and mail it to all of these sleazy sites and they will take your name down for free. Or you could just click the button that allows you to get your name and picture off the site by paying them money, usually $40 or so, whether you were innocent or not. What a great idea for a business! Take money from some poor bastard who is just trying to get his life back together, even if he was completely innocent. I don’t know how these scumbags sleep at night.

So while you could create a website like this with relative ease, it would be immoral to take advantage of people, especially if they are legally and/or factually innocent of the charges. Potential employers of these people are going to look at these sites and potentially good people aren’t going to get jobs they could otherwise get. And you are going to take money from people who don’t have much to begin with. This is not how you want to earn some extra cash.