Talk:John Ruffo

Creating a New Article

As white collar crime is really my forte, and this particular gentleman did steal 350 Million and has been on the run for over a decade now, I thought I would try my hand at creating this article. I encourage any and all help as I am still relatively new here. In 2013 the show "American Greed, The Fugitives" did a profile on Ruffo http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3893202/ and he is periodically mentioned on AMW. The US Marshal's Service has been after him for a very long time, with few leads. --Supaflyrobby (talk) 00:31, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Removal of Abagnale from see also section

comment copied from user talk:DESiegel#Removal of Avagnale from Ruffo article for response here.

First off, thank you so much for taking a look at the article. Second, I am not understanding your rationale for removal of the See Also. They are both notorious bank fraud and confidence criminals, both are from NYC, both successfully defrauded banks for millions, and both have proven quite elusive to capture by law enforcement. Granted that Avagnale has much higher stock in terms of celebrity status because of a book, a film, a musical etc, but from a law enforcement perspective (and in terms of an article about their criminal past), it makes no difference. Both white collar perps with a similar MO. Thoughts? --Supaflyrobby (talk) 16:43, 30 August 2015 (UTC) end copied comment

IMO, Supaflyrobby, the MOs were really not that similar. Frank Abagnale stole from from many different banks, from airlines, from motels, from retail stores, and from many other institutions, usually stealing a comparatively small amount in each transaction. He stole by writing bad checks, and later by forging checks or creating fake checks and other documents, and by assuming fictitious characters and persuading people to accept him as being who he claimed to be. Ruffo is accused of basically a single scam, conducted over a much shorter period, and involving a much larger sum of money. The See Also link could lead a reader to think that Ruffo and Abagnale were associated in some way, which is not the case. Or that their crimes were very similar, which is also not the case. A category is the proper way to associate articles that have a characteristic in common in common such as these two, rather than a direct link. That is my view. DES ^(talk) 17:12, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Indeed both articles are already in Category:Confidence tricksters. That should be a sufficient link, I think. DES ^(talk) 17:17, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

DES After giving the matter some thought, I can agree with that. I was being broad, and I certainly do not want to confuse the reader. Also, my apologies for the confusion on the talk page, as I am still getting the hang of this place from an editing perspective. The problem I was running into, as to See Also, is the selection of White-collar criminals here is fairly slim, with the exception of the high profile ones (mostly the Securities fraud folks) that the media goes bonkers over. My question to you as a person who has been here for awhile is what is the threshold, other than obviously WP:RS ? The commission of a crime alone is obviously not always notable, but what does a criminal need to do to make the cut? It would appear that murderers get most of the spotlight here, but there is far more to crime than simply Homicide. I will post this to WP:CRIMEPROJ also, but a perspective from someone that does not always deal with crime articles would be nice. Cheers.

--Supaflyrobby (talk) 17:51, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Supaflyrobby, no problem. I copied the comment here so that any other interested editors could read it, and so it would stay with the article.

There are several relevant policies in creating articles about people primarily known for their criminal actions. notability must be established for any article, and many crimes and criminals are simply not individually notable. Then there is WP:BLP, WP:BLPCRIME, and WP:BLP1E. Between them, these policies and guidelines mean that such an article will exist only about a fairly high-profile criminal. DES ^(talk) 20:14, 30 August 2015 (UTC)