

Should a young entrepreneur who helped students get around the government's retarded 21st century prohibition laws spend life in prison for providing his friends with a voluntary public service? That's the question we're faced with in the case of 20-year-old Theodore Stephen Michaels, a straight-A student at the University of Maryland, who is now facing a maximum sentence of 125 years in jail for the "crime" of producing fake IDs. In a just world, this young entrepreneur would be celebrated for his entrepreneurial spirit, in our world, he's facing a virtual death sentence.



The Baltimore Sun reports:

While some college students consider fake IDs a rite of passage, the Maryland U.S. attorney underscored their illegality Thursday, announcing federal charges against a scholarship winner accused of making and selling phony driver's licenses from his College Park dorm for a few months in 2009.



Theodore Stephen Michaels — a straight-A, triple major at the University of Maryland who goes by "Teddy" — could face decades in prison if he's convicted of the 16 counts returned against him. [...]



"I'm frankly surprised [by the indictment]," Kupferberg said. "I don't see how this particular case is any more or less significant than what you find in College Park every day or on any college campus, for that matter." [...]



"I never saw this type of case unless it was somehow connected to terrorists or illegal immigrants," said Steven H. Levin, a former assistant U.S. attorney under Rosenstein who's now in private practice in Baltimore. [...]



Kupferberg described Michaels as an unsophisticated, straight-A student throughout both high school and college who, as a university junior, has already earned enough credits to graduate.



He's a member of a biofuels group dedicated to solving the energy crisis, according to online records; is a triple major (accounting, finance and economics) according to a university spokesperson; and he won a scholarship this school year from the Ernst & Young Education Excellence Fund.



"This kid is extraordinary," said Kupferberg, who was hired by Michaels' parents. "His background is exemplary and virtually unblemished." Getting around idiotic government laws is a public service. This young man has the exact type of entrepreneurial spirit from which the greatest in humanity are made of, this could be the next Mark Zuckerberg, yet our stupid government would rather he be rotting in a cage.







