A federal judge in New York has dismissed a breach-of-contract lawsuit brought by a woman who claimed The Center for Investigative Reporting forged her signature in an interview release.
Citing fabricated allegations and the rejected testimony of a handwriting analyst, U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff ruled in a published opinion that the plaintiff, Erica Almeciga, “perpetrated a fraud on the Court by pressing critical and serious allegations that she knew to be false.”
Rakoff ruled that there was no proof of Almeciga’s allegation that producers forged her signature giving them permission to broadcast her on-camera interview in a documentary on Los Zetas, a notoriously violent Mexico-based drug trafficking group. He also found that producer Bruce Livesey and co-producer Josiah Hooper did not promise to protect her identity.
Rakoff wrote in his ruling that the testimony of handwriting analyst Wendy Carlson was “too problematic.” He also questioned the overall credibility of handwriting analysis.
“It is hardly surprising that Carlson’s expert report reads more like a series of subjective observations than a scientific analysis,” Rakoff wrote. “For decades, the forensic document examiner community has essentially said to courts, ‘Trust us.’ And many courts have. But that does not make what the examiners do science.”
Almeciga sued CIR after she appeared in a 2013 documentary, “I was a Hitman for Miguel Treviño.” The documentary included an interview with her former romantic partner, Rosalio Reta, and his role as a teenage assassin for the Zetas cartel. Reta is serving a decadeslong prison sentence in Woodville, Texas.
Almeciga claimed that she was humiliated and later faced threats because of her appearance in the documentary, which aired on CIR’s YouTube channel and the Spanish-language network Univision. Rakoff wrote that Almeciga “is not a remotely credible witness and her allegations collapse under scrutiny.”
Rakoff cited her use of social media to promote her involvement in the documentary around the time of the broadcast. He also highlighted that Almeciga did not raise concerns until nearly a year after the documentary aired. She claimed that she was not responsible for the post on Twitter, asserting that her account had been hacked – a claim Rakoff described as dubious.
Andrew Becker can be reached at abecker@cironline.org. Follow him on Twitter: @ABeckerCIR.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Republish Our Content
Thanks for your interest in republishing a story from Reveal. As a nonprofit newsroom, we want to share our work with as many people as possible. You are free to embed our audio and video content and republish any written story for free under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license and will indemnify our content as long as you strictly follow these guidelines:
-
Do not change the story. Do not edit our material, except only to reflect changes in time and location. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
-
Please credit us early in the coverage. Our reporter(s) must be bylined. We prefer the following format: By Will Evans, Reveal.
-
If republishing our stories, please also include this language at the end of the story: “This story was produced by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization. Learn more at revealnews.org and subscribe to the Reveal podcast, produced with PRX, at revealnews.org/podcast.”
-
Include all links from the story, and please link to us at https://www.revealnews.org.
PHOTOS
-
You can republish Reveal photos only if you run them in or alongside the stories with which they originally appeared and do not change them.
-
If you want to run a photo apart from that story, please request specific permission to license by contacting Digital Engagement Producer Sarah Mirk, smirk@revealnews.org. Reveal often uses photos we purchase from Getty and The Associated Press; those are not available for republication.
DATA
-
If you want to republish Reveal graphics or data, please contact Data Editor Soo Oh, soh@revealnews.org.
IN GENERAL
-
We do not compensate anyone who republishes our work. You also cannot sell our material separately or syndicate it.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, please contact Sarah Mirk, smirk@revealnews.org.
-
If you plan to republish our content, you must notify us republish@revealnews.org or email Sarah Mirk, smirk@revealnews.org.
-
If we send you a request to remove our content from your website, you must agree to do so immediately.
-
Please note, we will not provide indemnification if you are located or publishing outside the United States, but you may contact us to obtain a license and indemnification on a case-by-case basis.
If you have any other questions, please contact us at republish@revealnews.org.