By Heather McLean, 14 January 2002 12:45
NEWS A website which hopes to emulate the success of Friends Reunited by putting ex-convicts in touch with their former inmates has come in for criticism from the legal community. Convicts Reunited, which started out as the creators' idea of a joke, has attracted 3,000 ex-cons who have been encouraged to look up fellow felons via the site. However, Rupert Battcock of law firm Nabarro Nathanson said the site's founders may find themselves in trouble with the law for encouraging visitors to use the site's contact service to 'plan their next bank job'. Battcock said: "It's conceivable that this site's owners could be found guilty of offences around aiding and abetting a theft, by assisting someone to set up a job." Users of the site should also be careful not to use it as a gang-forming forum. Battcock said: "The police could ask for access to the website's logs under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to see who has been emailing each other. Anyone using the site should be aware of that." According to news agency reports, creators Mike Breach and Chris Harvey are now taking the site's development seriously, after its unexpected popularity.
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