Jeremy Jacobs is 78 and owns the NHL’s Boston Bruins. Jeffrey Jacobs is 37 and lives in Connecticut and as far as I know does not own any professional hockey teams. They are not the same person—if you’ll notice, they spell and pronounce their first names differently. It was nearly the perfect crime.
Jacobs—the one up there, not the old rich guy—was arrested this weekend and charged with criminal impersonation, after cops from multiple precincts got together and realized he’s allegedly been trying to run a nice little scam. From The Hour:
Police said Jeffrey Jacobs, 37, lied about his identity to curry favor with a tree service company after a tree fell on his home on Drum Hill Road during a storm last year.
The tree company’s owner, who told police he was an avid Bruins fan, was enticed to come out to the home in the middle of the storm and later billed the $5,100 job to Jeremy Jacobs, the actual owner of the Bruins.
First: You can do that? Just say “bill it to this guy, who is me”?
Second: I’m not sure that tree guy is as avid a Bruins fan as he claims.
Police realized that Jacobs (again, the random dude, not the elderly billionaire) had tried this before. In November, Jacobs allegedly attempted to get out of a traffic ticket by telling the officer that he was the Bruins owner.
Jeffrey Jacobs was released on bond and has a court date of July 30, which should give him plenty of time before the start of the season for the NHL, in which I heard somewhere that he owns a team.
[The Hour]