Richard Heene gets jail time
Image from Flickr.
I don’t know how it happened, but the day Richard Heene pulled the Balloon Boy prank, everyone in the U.S. heard about it. For hours, “balloon boy,” “Falcon Heene,” “boy in spacecraft” and other various related phrases were the only ones people were typing into their Google search bars.
Richard Heene wanted publicity and attention, and that is exactly what he got. Now, on the day of the Balloon Boy sentencing, his fame continues. First, he was famous for being the father of a lost boy, one who might have been floating away in a huge balloon. Then he was famous because it was discovered he was a con artist who had staged the whole thing while his son safely hid in the attic for hours. Now he is famous for getting a sentence of 90 days in jail and four years of supervised probation.
A special kind of jail sentence
Of course, Richard Heene and his wife — who did not get off scot-free — have to pay all kinds of fines and bills from the city. They won’t be able to pay them off with short term loans for bad credit, either. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000.
Richard Heene will spend 30 days straight in jail, and for the remaining 60 days he will be allowed to go on work release. That means he’ll leave jail for work in the morning, then go back to jail to sleep at night and on the weekends. Can you imagine doing that for two months? If not, make sure you don’t elaborate your kids in any elaborate hoaxes and get caught.
Mayumi Heene’s sentence
Though Richard Heene pleaded with the judge not to send his wife to jail, his wish was not granted. Mayumi Heene was sentenced to 20 days in jail. Luckily for their kids, she won’t have to serve her jail time until Richard Heene has completed his.
Though Richard Heene did achieve fame thanks to the Balloon Boy hoax, he will not be allowed to reap any financial benefit from it for at least four years. Both Mayumi and Richard Heene will undergo four years of supervised probation, and the judge clarified:
“The terms and conditions will be that Mr. Heene is in fact prohibited from receiving any form of financial benefit — whether it be media, a book, an article he writes — anything of that kind that stems from this incident.”
