A violent street con clearly picked the wrong international crime fighting team to mess with.
Career shake-down-artist Louis Parson will spend the next 20 years in prison thanks to an angry Manhattan judge and the feisty commander of the Swedish Navy’s forces in Afghanistan — who refused to fork over $40 to Parson outside Penn Station two years ago, leading to the thug’s arrest.
“Luckily, we had a person from one of our allies, Sweden — a military officer — who was able to be here and able to stop this” by coming back to New York to testify, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lewis Stone said of the tourist who will likely be Parson’s last victim, Lt. Commander Peter Palm.
“New York City’s economy depends on the tourist trade, and to the extent that it’s a city of scam artists, it hurts each and every one of us,” the judge said.
Parson had taken the stand a year ago to claim that he was never violent, even while admittedly shaking down hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tourists in his career — typically by bumping into his victims on the sidewalk, dropping a bag of water-filled vodka bottles and demanding reimbursement.
But Commander Palm, 50, of Stockholm, wouldn’t have any of it — even when the scammer pulled a big carpet knife from his pocket and started shouting, “I’m going to have to f— you up over this!” Two undercover cops who’d been trailing Parson quickly moved in for the arrest.
Parson had begged for mercy from the judge, apologizing “for my immaturity,” and his defense lawyer had noted that a sentence of 25- to-life, which prosecutors asked for, was more in line for murderers and rapists.
But assistant district attorney Christopher Ryan noted that Palm — who is now a four-time violent felon — “is the reason we have maximum sentences.”
“He is a career criminal,” Ryan said. “As far as anyone can tell, this is all Mr. Parson has ever done.
“Mr. Parson is a dinosaur,” the prosecutor added. “He is stil lliving in the ’70s and ’80s, when scam artists and people of his ilk wandered around New York scamming tourists and citizens.”