Unbelievable...

What part of all that is not sleazy?

 Web sites offer fake excuses

The Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.)
Tuesday, May 29, 2007

NEWARK, N.J. - Nina Weems' first mistake was speeding.

Her second mistake was blowing off traffic court.

Her biggest mistake was thinking the Internet could solve her first two problems.

Earlier this month Weems, who lives in Newark, began a campaign apparently designed to persuade Hanover Township Municipal Court she was too disabled to show up for court, or for that matter, get behind the wheel again anytime soon. Could the court drop the whole matter, she asked.

Weems sent the court a doctor's note to support her case, a township official said. The problem was, the note was not written by the chiropractor whose name was on the letterhead. It was instead courtesy of myexcusedabsence.com, an Internet site advertising "absence notes for every occasion."

Weems paid $24.95 for the note, court officials said, and joined the ranks of scofflaw techies using the information highway to augment the age-old practice of forging excuses.

Unlike the homemade notes you faked in grade school, many Internet companies selling phony excuse software claim they can customize the excuse, occasion and doctor.

"Getting out of work or school has never been easier," touts one eBay note peddler. "Tell the boss or your teacher that you had Ebola, leprosy or flesh eating disease. ... As a bonus you get a program that will automatically create fake (doctor's) name ... so you don't have to rack your brain."

That item had the "buy it now" price of just $3. Not only did Weems cheat, it appears she overpaid.

For the $24.95 charged by myexcusedabsence.com, the site brags that it can offer doctor, dentist, funeral or emergency room notes for missing school, work and jury duty or a combination thereof.

The Web site suggests using a fake doctor's note to duck jury duty and a fake jury-duty note to duck work. Dozens of Web sites offer variations on the fake absence note, ranging in price from $3 to $25.

One site even offers fake medical charts.

There is no question of a market. A survey by Careerbuilders.com, an online job site, found that last year, nearly one-third of all U.S. employees faked illness to miss work and 27 percent of employers said they fired workers for calling in sick without a legitimate reason.

Forged doctor's notes are so rampant on college campuses that some professors now announce at the beginning of the semester that the validity of all notes will be confirmed.

Using computer-generated fake notes to avoid jury duty is "a new one on us," said Winnie Comfort, spokeswoman for the New Jersey Administrative Office of the Courts.

"I was flabbergasted when I looked online," Comfort said, adding that courts will verify absence excuses. Faking an excuse qualifies as contempt of court, she said, for which a judge may impose a fine or jail time.

The municipal court judge is still considering whether to file contempt charges or additional court fees against Weems. She originally faced a $190 fine for speeding on Route 24, said Hanover Deputy Court Administrator Tammy Baird, who uncovered Weems' bogus note.

"There was something that just didn't look quite right about it," Baird said. "What I don't understand is why she bothered. It was just a speeding ticket."

Baird called Wayne Bass, the Maplewood, N.J., chiropractor listed on the letterhead, "and asked me if this was one of my patients," said Bass, a sole practitioner who set up office only about a year ago. "It creeped me out that somebody I never met claimed I was her doctor."

Bass said the court sent him a copy of the forged excuse and "it looked nothing like my real office stationery. Then the woman claimed someone else in my office treated her, but there isn't anybody else in my office, just me."

Bass said he felt targeted "because I'm new in the business." But he talked to a friend in human resources for public employees in Manhattan who told him "this happens all the time in the city," where fake excuses are a growth industry.

Weems could not be reached for comment.