In the game I'm currently running, one of the players is playing what is currently a 'normal' character, in that said PC isn't a runner, but your average Jane. The player wanted to roleplay the 'straight person driven to 'running' experience, a'la Samuel Verner. The basic idea ATM is that the PC's boss, a 2-bit manager who shall be known as W, gets into an argument with his wife and kills her. W had also attempted to take on the PC as a mistress, but was rejected. Now, he wants to try to frame the PC for his wife's murder.

The thing is, I'm not 100% sure on how to go about doing this. I was orginally going to have the homicide that did happen be accidental, and spur of the moment, but if a particularly good idea requires the death to be premeditated I can change details.

If this were SR4, you could frame by circumstantial evidence that a person was there by having that person's commlink's ID be recorded in the vicinity (something easily obtained by a hacker as the typical average Jane will have their commlink in public mode almost 24/7). Off hand I'm not sure if that's possible with SR5's matrix layout & all since the necessary things no longer exist.

Trace DNA evidence is also a viable option, provided there's a logical excuse how the boss could have earlier obtained a DNA sample.

Being brief as on my phone.
Cops in SR do not care about justice. They care about wrapping the case up with as little effort as possible.
Give them a motive (crazy chick wanted to have an affair with me and got mad when I turned her down), provide circumstantial evidence (bash in the door so it looks like someone broke in), then apply bribes as needed.

Circumstantial evidence, eh? I suppose that could work. Also, yes this is in SR4, so planting comm ID could help too.

I figured a bribe might be involved, ditto corrupt cops. The story doesn't make as much sense though. Jane is approached by W, so she kills W's wife? But there's at least enough there to work with. Thanks.

Being that he's her boss its also not hard for him to get her fingerprints or a scan of her biometrics, with enough money he can easily get some fake hands using her fingerprints & place her fingerprints at the scene, perhaps even a faked video from a decker with some faked Biometrics (depending on how far he wants to go) spoofed on a household cctv (assuming he has such) after that, the boss can take a blunt object to the back of his head & swear he saw her & she knocked him out before he could call the police. all of this combination, for probably less than 50k nuyen, most cops will take that & a small bribe as plenty to arrest her on.

Pro-tip:

Lone Star is a privately owned security service. They don't actually enforce the law. Makes it muuuch easier to "frame" someone.

Added extra, W accuses Jane coming on to him and when he refused killed his wife. Opportunity & motive, even if it's a lie.

That is what I was trying to say. Phones are awkward to write on at times.

Eventually it will come down to his word against hers, & his will have some faked evidence backing it,

FYI- for added bonus, in her interrogation (should it come to that) pull out a fabricated recording of her coming onto him, should be a simple matter for a decent decker to make assuming he has enough sound bites of the PC speaking, which if they work together could be very easy.

I'm certain that somewhere there's a shadowrun crew who do this sort of thing as their primary specialty. Framing and discrediting the competition is a big part of corporate politics, after all.

This one's so minor that they'd probably give the guy a discount.

Discount?

HAH!

That's a good one, FD. C'mon, who's your Fixer? Clearly he likes you, because he's been slipping you the good stuff!

Well, just say it's at a discount. After all, how's this guy going to know the going rate for a frame up?

this sort of work is often done for the Corps & if you're doin corp work you better be rippin them for all they got chummer. Honestly in game terms, for a Decker to do all they have to do it'd maybe take a day. W would have to do the majority of his own legwork getting the basic necessities after that its just piecing it all together. a few dozen Edit rolls & its all done.

for a full run, a Solid face could get fingerprints, DNA & with a solid set of questions thought out in advance, probably a full phonetic alphabet on recording in one go, if the DNA was unavailable, a solid B&E extraction into her home could get the DNA pretty simply, After that its just a matter of getting all the info to the decker & getting the base CCTV footage to the decker & let him work his magic, but with the number of rolls needed, you'd want a very good Decker to get it to pass immediate inspection.

I would say that splicing together a fake conversation would require a special skill.

A magician could help by casting a multi sensory illusion with lots of successes, and then recording that. The magician should be given ample time to listen to the target talk at length about a variety of things, and in various emotional states.

I think the forgery skill covers it. Not really a common skill for runners to have themselves, but most runner teams will know someone with the skill and gear.

You should not need Forgery to pull this off (though you COULD use it). Some good Sound Equipment and a decent computer, and you don't even need hacking for the recordings at all. A Computer skill is all that is needed. I mean really, do you think that Mixing Music/Splicing Digital Films requires Forgery? It will take some finesse, of course, and a Forgery skill could possibly make it even more believable, but I do not really think that it would be necessry for most things. Now, if you expect it to go through high-end forensics, then yeah, maybe, but it is not real likely, especially if, once the piece has been created, it is burned to new media whole cloth.

There used to be some interesting rules (from Shadowbeat) on faking evidence. Worth the read, if you have it.

That's what I was thinking. Something like audio, forensics, computers. I would try to find a very trustworthy contact who's a recording expert.

You definitely want a Recording specialist. Though a High-End Forensics analysis is probably not likely.

that's what the bribes are for, you are essentially handing whoever investigates all the information they need on a silver platter (naturally you let them find most of it in their proper methods) the recording you show them. You naturally thought you should record her coming onto you at some point to avoid the potential sexual harassment charges that could arise.

Indeed... Those pesky administrators always covering their butts.

Actually they're paid to enforce the law where they have a police service contract - which means they have to keep an eye on resolution rates, crime rates and the like. Of course being a prvate, for-profit service, they'll tend go first for easy and high-visibility cases (and probably won't min fobbing a given crime on some poor sod they suspect is innocent but let them close the file - especially if they expect that the perpetrator won't do an encore, wether because profling hints at a non-repeat offender or they know he's gone)

Alternately if you don't want to fake evidence, you fake 'botched clean up'. In this case you explain the fact that there isn't any footage of the person you're framing by deleting 'suspicious' chunks of data, you scrub contact lists, etc. But you do it in a way that suggests tampering, and suggested the framee did it (the tampering).

Actually trying to bribe the first guy on the scene can be iffy, you still get a few honest hold-outs who are dead ended to flatfooting the beat for being too honest/not enough on the take and while they hate their job (but can't retire because ex-cop is even more unhealthy) they still do what they can and are just as likely to bust you for trying to slip them a bribe.

If you are wanting 'special consideration' in any investigation you would want the Department of Investigative Booking & Scheduling or as those in the know call it: the Department of Intentional Bribes for Services (or D.I.B.S.).

Here the allocation of resources for an investigation are determined and authorized as well as directing the course of an investigation. Imagine Bean Counters with Guns and more than a little corrupt.

Rather than bust them, the Parent Corp put these entrepreneur legal weasels to work and have them channelling those bribes into corporate slush funds.

What you thought the Captain/other high ups of a precinct directs all the investigating? To a degree, but all funding for this has to come from on high and the D.I.B.S. have final say on how much of the corporate budget gets to be used for said work.

Want Vice to harass a particular joyhouse or leave it alone? Or have an investigation buried under quadruplicate forms? These are the guys you want to get to know.

I can't help but thinking that now forged image and audio tracks can be faked so perfectly by anyone for at least three decades, at some point the trick will have become so overused that law enforcement agency, juries and the audience will stop believing in them.

Well, after ten years of CSI-like shows, juries now require as much as they expect super-scientific evidence and impossible image enhancements. So I guess it depends on what the media teach people to believe. I wonder if the people from the smearing campaign & blackmailing department have the authority to ask screenwriters of the fictional entertainment department not to overuse footage forgery in their stories or at least have the good guys always detect them, to keep the audience gullible enough.

Also remember that Alter Memory is a Thing. If the person you're framing says "it wasn't me!" you can turn around and tell the authorities, "well obviously she had her memories messed wtih, I hear that's illegal."

And the thing is, it is.

And there's no way to prove (or disprove) that it happened.

Indeed...

I'd guess it can be even easier.
Does the future suspect have an alibi? If not, and you've got time to get wheels into motion, try a double.
This double can get you any footage you need, and in times of Physical Mask and biosculpting, it's not too difficult, but it is reasonably rare and hard to get. Pair that with the doctored footage mentioned in all of the above and the case gets closed way fast. Really, in 2073, "guilty" is probably just "enough effort put into it".
My character's group went over certain ideas when trying to get someone to do our bidding. Sadly, we could neither break his alibi nor get him to do something stupid. Hey, we even pulled his shrink's files of him and still came up empty. In the end, we went to straight up threats. On a side note, those can work in a way like bribes do.

Is the character joining an existing team?

What was the team doing before she joined?

Framing someone for a murder, perhaps?






-k

She shot at the boss, missed, and hit the wife? Or car bomb, or whatever.




One for the price of two?

You know, if we are talking about having a boss set up an employee in a company, and it's just to create a good in-game reason for a random ordinary citizen to turn into a shadowrunner, why go with murder? Why not just set the PC character up to take the fall in an embezzlement scam or something? Make the PC look like she's been "stealing" from the company or forging signatures or something. It's still illegal, it will lead to getting fired, and it can still send the person to jail and provide a future criminal record. If the potential jailtime is long enough, and the income is gone, there's your perfect excuse for disappearing into the shadows. Plus you have a potential plothook for getting back at the former boss, and possibly trying to clear the PC's name.

If it have to be a murder the PC gets framed for, a Shadowrunner Mage with a Physical Mask who is seen walking/sneaking past an external security cam with a changed time setting, could provide plenty of evidence that the PC was on site at the time of the murder. Combined with a small bit of physical evidence, it ought to be enough to get the PC set up with an arrest warrent and a potential future home on Death Row for murder.

It's important to remember that the "police" are Lone Star, not the courts. The courts are the same guys with the same rules as right now. So, the Star might be willing to arrest her based on BS evidence, but getting ADA Dana Oaks to prosecute a questionable case is less likely, and getting a conviction is even less so. Especially if she has ANY money to hire a lawyer. And the cops will always suspect the husband, so he's going to need an airtight alibi before they even begin to look at any other theory.

I appreciate the advice, but it's been several months since I needed peoples input on this. I've already run the session this thread helped fill out.

You're a touch late to the party, dude.

Standard employee screening for...chronic VITAS-related gene syndrome. What, are you doubting the company?


That is actually how Corporation justifies the customary ultraviolence PCs engage in without instant execution (or more precisely, the part of the ultraviolence they are not simply licensed to do ): Every child can fake completely convincing CCTV footage, therefore its evidence value is close to zero.

Not doubting it at all. I said logical and you came up with logical. It'd be up to the lawyers to debate whether or not it's legal.

Damn, didn't see this was a necro thread...


Lawyers? What do you think this is, a system where employees have rights? You might have the right to leave, but even that is subject to terms and conditions

Even after I already called out that it was necro'ed? Should I be concerned for you, Sengir?

Well, there's a card game where there's a vampire with his name...

My god, you're right! Grab your torch and pitchforks, it's open season on all bloodsuckers!

Baron Sengir has flying, good luck getting up here

Time to break out the megastaker. This baby can stake vampires hiding behind engine blocks at a thousand paces. Fly all you want.

It also works on non-vampires.

Yea, I must have done a search or something and this came up. Sorry about that.