Nicolae Popescu's e-commerce listings were fake, but his release wasn't

Business depends upon trust, and Nicolae Popescu and others are alleged to have violated that trust:

Charges were unsealed against Romanian national Nicolae Popescu, currently a fugitive, along with five of his compatriots and one Albanian who also remain at large. U.S. law enforcement officials have issued alerts for the men through Interpol, the international police agency.

The seven are accused of putting fake listings on eBay, Cars.com, and other sites (including self-created phony sites) that purported to list cars and motorcycles.

Prosecutors say the gang secured bank transfers from victims using fake invoices purporting to be from PayPal and other online payment services.

But the real story is why Popescu is a fugitive. It turns out that he was arrested in 2010 - but released himself. Oops.

One of the ringleaders of the group captured last week, Nicolae Popescu, 'released himself' from custody and is now at large. Apparently when the initial arrests were made, the legal documents under which they were being held were set to expire at 1830 on the day of their arrest. The DIICOT prosecutors were working madly to make their claims to hold each of those arrested for 29 days further investigative period, as is typical in Romanian law, but when 6:30 PM came and went and no papers had been served against Nicolae, he asked to be released, and legally, there was nothing that could be done to stop him!

This is yet another case in which a deadline, rather than being negotiated away, actually had some sway. Therefore, Popescu is a free man today.