An almost perfect real-world hack

http://lbrandy.com/blog/2009/08/an-almost-perfect-hack/

by lbrandy • 17 years ago

129 27 17 years ago

Just goes to show that if you make the extra effort a lot of the time things will tend to work out. This guy was extremely prepared and didn't even need the information that he gathered with an awesome day's worth of coding because the lawyers thought he wouldn't even show up!

Nice work though. Hopefully all of the work he did will help someone else save some $$ too because he said that he posted the DB online.

lbrandy• 17 years ago

Here's an addendum to my story:

I called my Dad, a lawyer, as I was walking out of the courthouse to brag that I was officially 1-0 in trial and planned on keeping it that way.

I told him that I was upset all my preparation went to waste. He said it wasn't wasted, as you've said. Basically, in these types of areas... they just try to win the cases against the unprepared, and don't even bother with the people who are prepared. He said you'd be amazed how often that simply showing up prepared is sufficient to win without a fight. (he wasn't talking about tax assessment stuff in particular, just in general low-end legal stuff).

jacquesm• 17 years ago

Your dad is absolutely right. I've been in court 4 times to date, all of those business related. Each time we were prepared to the hilt. One party didn't show, we won that one by default. The second had his case fall apart on the first day because of our evidence. #3 and #4 (both in Germany) took a little longer but we also won those.

For every one of those cases except for the 1st I'm pretty sure that it was our preparation that won the case, that plus the determination to see it through to the end. It helped that we were 'in the right' but that is definitely not always enough, you have to show that and you have to show it convincingly.

fatdog789• 17 years ago

The more prepared you are, the less likely you will go to try. I spent a week preparing to depose the opposing party -- 15 minutes before it started, he offered us close to what we sued for.

mariorz2• 17 years ago

>Just goes to show that if you make the extra effort a lot of the time things will tend to work out.

That makes no sense. His effort had no influence on how things worked out.

scott_s2• 17 years ago

Not true. The lawyers probably assumed he was prepared because he showed up, and he showed up carrying 100 pages of something.

If you're sitting on the best possible hand in Texas Hold 'Em, and you get your opponent to fold without ever having to show your hand, your hand had influence on how things worked out. Presumably, you wouldn't have been as confident and aggressive with your hand if it wasn't good.

You could, of course, bluff, but that's a risk.

apotheon• 17 years ago

It was insurance -- so it was still valuable, because the outcome wasn't known in advance.

jpwagner• 17 years ago

Great story!

eli• 17 years ago

In Long Island, most people just hire a lawyer to contest their assessment. There are law firms that do clever direct mail postcards with exactly how much you can save, and the fee is a percent of your tax savings so you can't really lose.

dan_the_welder• 17 years ago

Awesome I've installed Imacros. Perhaps I'll go and get my assessment lowered too.

edw519• 17 years ago

Hernacki's law: I am willing to do whatever it takes to get what I want.

Hernacki's corrolary: You may not have to actually do it, you just have to be willing to do it.

GavinB• 17 years ago

Don't forget to publicly demonstrate your willingness.

The willingness just makes the demonstration more believable.

huherto• 17 years ago

"Eighty percent of success is showing up". ... Woody Allen;

euroclydon• 17 years ago

I always viewed the tax value as a cheap and easy appraisal. That way, when I go to sell the home, I can at least say: "I'm not selling for less than tax value."

At pennies on the $100, I bet I'll make more from the sale by having a higher tax assessment, than I would save in annual taxes if i got it lowered.

jwhitlark• 17 years ago

Government fishing expeditions depress me. Great story, though.

If we could track change in assessed value over time, we could build up evidence for abuse...

ars• 17 years ago

He worked too hard. The website has a button that gives you a list of comparables.

Cool story though.

And I believe the alleghency county real estate tax system has recently been ruled illegal.

cema2• 17 years ago

What really amazes me is that people are amazed by this. Isn't it kind of normal? Not to scrape the web (he only had to do that because the web site did not present information in a useful manner), but to prepare for a court hearing with facts and arguments?

I know I am being naive.

Well, anyway, it worked out for him well. Congratulations!

There is one thing I wonder about though. It may not be 100% relevant for HN, but it is relevant to the extent that we live in a heavily lawyer-bound society, to coin a phrase. Would it be possible for him, or more likely his lawyer, to press a case against the silly estimation done by the district, based on the figures he was able to extract? Not having experience in the matters of law, I have no idea what the answer may be.

oz• 17 years ago

a heavily lawyer-bound society

'Litigious' is the word here.

And no, you're not the only one wondering who neurotypical people survive.

cema2• 17 years ago

I was not looking for a funny word. US is "lawyer-bound" the way a program is either computation-bound or communication-bound depending on where it engages more resources. IMHO, of course.

steveklabnik• 17 years ago

> Would it be possible for him, or more likely his lawyer, to press a case against the silly estimation done by the district, based on the figures he was able to extract?

Pittsburgh local government? Corrupt, you say? Of course not.

Now get that silly lawsuit out of my courtroom.

krakensden• 17 years ago

As an alternative to iMacros, Selenium will let you do the same thing- and you can script it from Python [or Perl, or Java, etc].

kalvin• 17 years ago

Wow, one commenter built a business from the same idea (sorry to repost a comment, but it's pretty great.):

"I have been doing the same thing since 2001. Only I live in Cook County Illinois, the second most populated county behind Orange County, California.

So my database has upwards of 1,000,000+ properties in it (residential, commercial, and industrial).

Funny thing…I took the experiment one step further. I fed every single house in the county through the algorithm, to see who else had a similar appeal case.

Lo and behold, 65% of the county was being overassessed.

So I had two choices: 1) Class action lawsuit on behalf of the county 2) Mass mailing. Gimme $25, I give you the appeal info.

I chose two, and have been mopping up ever since. If you don’t win the appeal (all public record) you get a refund."

An almost perfect real-world hack

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