Several baristas have been charged with offering more than extra foam on lattes and mochas they were selling at the Grab-n-Go Espresso stand in Everett, Washington. Their case calls for some clarification as to what exactly constitutes prostitution.

According to the AP, the Grab-n-Go baristas were charged with prostitution over allegations that customers paid to touch the baristas' breasts and buttocks while they made coffee drinks. A two month investigation also included reports of various levels of flashing flesh for a fee, and reports of charging customers to watch baristas lick whipped cream off of each other.

In Washington state, prostitution is defined as engaging in, agreeing to, or offering to engage in sexual conduct with another person for a fee. Sexual conduct is defined as "any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person done for the purpose of gratifying sexual desire of either party or a third party."

Despite the allegations of customers paying to see skin, it's the touching allegations, including the whipped cream licking, that would constitute prostitution. As included in Washington's definition, intimately touching someone for the gratification of a paying voyeur is prostitution.

And if local police sergeant Robert Goetz is correct, the charges may do little to stem what some locals see as a disturbing trend of coffee stands using scantily clad personnel to lure in customers.

The weekly rundown of crime stories that blur the lines between idiot and genius, justified and not so much, freedom and incarceration... you be the judge.

Not so smart to very stupid. So we've seen that assault rifles at protests where the President speaks are kosher. What about an assault rifle in the hands of a scantily clad waitress in the "Twin Peaks" restaurant parking lot, sprawled across the hood of a police cruiser for a photo-op? Not quite so cool, in the opinion of the sheriff of the Midland County (Texas) officers involved in the incident. Sheriff Painter understands someone having a drink to unwind, but "in this particular instance, people got stupid real quick... It went from not very smart to very stupid in about 30 seconds."

Get the Guns, Junior. How do you know that mommy loves you? When you're 60 and she's 80, and you're hiding from the cops in the closet of her mobile home, she'll start a shootout with her rifle and/or side arm blazing.

Like taking candy from a kid in a wheelchair and protective medical halo. According to the police report from an incident at a Dallas children's hospital, a Waco woman either intentionally hit a 13 year old boy in a wheel chair and medical halo, or she hit him inadvertently while struggling to grab a ball out of his lap. Ownership of the ball is still under debate. His visiting uncle says he brought the ball to the boy. In her words, "[m]y sister got that ball, she said like 10 o'clock that morning from a center where you can go get, like, sports balls and stuff." Apparently, the woman saw evidence of her vindication in the boy's attempt to turn the other cheek during the dispute between her and his uncle. As she put it, "[t]hen that little boy in the wheelchair with the halo over his head, I recall [him] saying, 'Just let it go, give them the ball.'"

"Time out" in Germany. A German police chief did not appreciate the way a five year old girl was playing with his son. So he drove her home "under arrest." After she allegedly flipped him the bird a few days later, he dispatched officers to her house to warn her parents that she would be charged with anti-social behavior. Those in fear of their own tikes getting sent to the clink, rest easy -- giving a police officer the finger is constitutionally protected free speech in the good old U.S. of A. (at least according to one federal court opinion).

The weekly rundown of crime stories that blur the lines between idiot and genius, justified and not so much, freedom and incarceration... you be the judge.

Live your dreams. Betty Lichtenstein just wanted to thank all the little people that made this possible. She's not a "licensed" or "trained" nurse, but she was the "Connecticut Nursing Association"'s 2008 Nurse of the Year. Just ask anyone who attended the awards dinner Betty spent $2,000 staging for the group she invented.

Judge not. Under those robes, judges are just people. They put their pants on one leg at a time, just like you and me. Sure, some judges might deflate a tire on someone's car over a parking peeve. And occasionally one might have to do a little jail time for recruiting defendants in his court as prostitutes and driving them across state lines in an RV for parties with his creepy old secret society brethren. But hey, it's not like they sit in judgment of us, right?

The intern did what? Police interns are not allowed to arrest people. Particularly if they are drunk on a Friday morning and pretending their index finger and thumb are a gun.

The weekly rundown of crime stories that blur the lines between idiot and genius, justified and not so much, freedom and incarceration... you be the judge.

Sports bars + guns + kids = trouble. Last week, we saw a scooter-jacking by a kid with a fake gun. This week, we have a skateboard-jacking by a grown man with a real gun. Cincinnati sports bar proprietor Jack Connerton does not appreciate kids cutting through his parking lot. So he robbed an 11 year old girl of her skateboard at gunpoint. She lives a half block away from the bar and has to pass by to get to the local rec center. He's now looking at a felony armed robbery charge.

And then there were none. By week's end, an entire Wisconsin love quadrangle plus one has been arrested. Last week, the male of the group showed up to a motel expecting a romantic evening with one ladyfriend. Allegedly blindfolded and waiting for a for a "rub down," he soon found out that a quiet evening this would not be. Four women (including his wife and two mistresses) allegedly tied him up, hit him, taunted him and krazy-glued his penis to his stomach. This led to four false imprisonment charges and one charge of fourth degree sexual assault. Wednesday, the man was arrested for alleged child abuse, theft, unlawful phone use, and harrassment with a death threat.

This week in tazings...

• What doesn't typically go with a baptism celebration? The police tazing grandpa and the pregnant mother of the newly baptized kids.
• It looks like an Oakland cop was using a performance enhancing taser at Wednesday's A's-Rangers game.
• And if tazing a 76 year old man driving an antique tractor in a parade is wrong, at least two Glenrock, Wyoming police officers don't want to be right.

The weekly rundown of crime stories that blur the lines between idiot and genius, justified and not so much, freedom and incarceration... you be the judge.

Taking the law into your own hands. What happens when a fake cop pulls over a real cop? The fake one gets arrested. What happens when you use big lights attached to your Beamer to make other drivers think you're a cop and pull out of the way. If one of them is a real cop, you'll likely get arrested.

Taking the trash into your own hands. A Pittsburg area trash vigilante has been cited by the cops... for littering. His attempts to clean up the Greenfield section of town (known as The Run) involved gathering up debris and trash strewn on the street and putting it into piles for the city to collect. The city didn't like that so much. They prefer that he organize his cleanups with the city and use city approved bags. "I'm 62 years old and down with cancer," he said. "How much do they expect me to do for free?"

"We're going to play a game. I'm going to take your scooter." An 11 year old in Cincinnati took a fancy to the scooters being ridden by a couple of other kids at the park. So he scooter-jacked them with a fake gun (unsuccessfully). Unfortunately, in juvie there are no scooters.

Companies using shady marketing practices to sell shady auto warranties can add one more example of consumer outrage to their collection: "terrorist threats" that have landed an Ohio man in the clink.

Recently, our sister blog discussed a class action filed against alleged auto warranty scammers. And there is also the Federal Trade Commission suit against auto warranty robocallers.

But for Charles Papenfus, the auto warranty scams that have irritated many of us became personal. After receiving junk mail informing him that the warranty on his family's 1996 Ford was about to expire, he called the company (which looks to be TXEN Partners, doing business under the name Service Protection Direct). Papenfus' issue was that the car hadn't had a warranty in years.

In fact, the company had already been accused by the Better Business Bureau of sending out fliers falsely claiming that recipients' warranties were about to expire. Then Ohio's Attorney General sued them over it, ending in a settlement -- with one condition being that they refer to expiring warranties only when they have a good faith belief it's true.

So one can understand Mr. Papenfus' ire at receiving yet another flier about his non-existent warranty expiring.

When someone from the company returned his call, things went down hill.

Four members of the "Tran Organization" were sentenced for a high tech scheme in which they cheated casinos across the U.S. and Canada. So far, 29 members of the group have pleaded guilty to cheating a combined total of 25 casinos.

How'd they do it? Some sort of Hollywood break-in caper? A card counting savant?

Not really -- just some high tech card cheating. As explained in a Department of Justice press release, the group employed hidden transmitters and card predicting software in a mission impossible version of the "false shuffle." This led to big wins at blackjack and mini-baccarat tables in casino after casino.

After Bernie Madoff received a 150-year sentence for his role in one of the largest fraud schemes in history one might have figured that, in light of the publicity and mass-public outrage that arguably fueled the sentence, it would be a while before we saw something similar. Or, at least, if there wasn't a serial criminal of some sort involved. Well so much for that notion, the DOJ today announced that a former Memphis cop got nailed with a sentence of life plus 255 years.

There was no murder involved either. All that Arthur Sease IV had to do to beat Madoff's already-staggering punishment was, apparently, conspire with other Memphis cops to rob drug dealers of their drugs, only to resell those drugs themselves. Now that is an entrepreneureal spirit! According to the release, the government proved Sease was linked to 15 separate robberies, but he actually got convicted on a total of 44 counts of civil rights, narcotics, robbery, and firearms offenses. One FBI agent noted "The sentence is extraordinary in that it is one of the longest ever imposed for civil rights violations which did not involve a victim's death".

For more than 50 years, Doris Payne operated as one of the smoothest jewel thieves we'll ever know. Any smoother and we'd likely never have known of her work. Yesterday, in a Palo Alto, California court, however, she pleaded guilty to the theft of a $30,000 diamond ring from a local Nieman Marcus. Her plans after she gets out? Get together with Halle Berry, who is slated to play Miss Payne in a movie about her life.

As reported by the San Jose Mercury News, Miss Payne pleaded guilty to grand larceny for lifting the ring from Nieman Marcus in 2005. She got a two year sentence, which appears likely to be reduced due to time served and good behavior.

According to a 2005 AP portrait of Miss Payne, her methods remained the same since she began "acquiring" precious jewels in her 20's. Peruse advertisements for posh jewels, fly to the store offering them, go in well dressed and ready to spin any number of tales about why she was shopping for diamonds, try on one piece, then another -- no wait, those other earrings -- let them know she may come back after thinking it over, and voila -- she's off into an awaiting cab with a smile (and the day's most valuable piece of jewelry in her pocket).

No threats, no violence, no breaking jewelry cases. Just simple charm, a soft southern style, amiable and knowledgeable chit-chat, and some high end jewelry sleight of hand. She's been dubbed the "Grandmother Thief," however that name hardly does justice to her methods or how prolific she's been.

Will States Implement Suggested Standards?

Prison rape has sometimes been viewed as an "inevitable feature of confinement", but a report from the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission makes clear that the problem is actually a pervasive blight on the justice system, one "with life-altering consequences for victims." Indeed, survey results suggest that over 60,000 inmates across the nation were sexually abused in a 12-month period. Perhaps just as alarmingly, more prisoners reported abuse by staff than abuse by other prisoners!

The report's summary had the following 9 key findings, noting the urgent need for action: