{"id":452981,"date":"2026-09-04T05:22:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T05:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/452981\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T05:22:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T05:22:13","slug":"lawyer-says-bpd-warning-about-men-at-crash-scenes-fits-description-of-cappers-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/452981\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawyer says BPD warning about men at crash scenes fits description of ‘cappers’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bakersfield police are warning drivers not to share personal or insurance information with two men<\/a> who have been spotted at several crash scenes.<\/p>\n

Police identified the men as Jean Pierre Jara Lopez and Gianfranco Lopez. Officers said the two claim they are collecting driver information for insurance purposes, but police said they leave the scene when officers arrive.<\/p>\n

Authorities said it is best never to give personal information at a crash scene to a random person or someone posing as an agent.<\/p>\n

People who follow crash scenes and seek personal information from those involved are many times \u201ccappers,\u201d who try to get paid by a lawyer for the information. Chris Hagan of Chain, Cohn, Clark said that was his first thought when he saw the recent Bakersfield police warning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will say that it just wreaks of capping. They have no reason to be responding to accident scenes and asking people for personal information, other than to take that information and to sell it to another lawyer,\u201d Hagan said.<\/p>\n

Hagan said the practice is against the law. California Penal Code 646.6 makes it a misdemeanor to knowingly and directly solicit an injured person, or someone acting for them, to sell or allow use of photographs from the accident that caused the injury or death.<\/p>\n

Hagan, who has been practicing law for 23 years, said there is not much policing of it and he has never seen a lawyer prosecuted for it.<\/p>\n

He also pointed to what he described as an extreme case involving John Castellano, who is being accused of driving a Lamborghini in Nevada with a large wad of cash, telling crash victims he can help them and posting it on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, listen, I mean, as lawyers, despite what people may think of us, there are certain ethical boundaries that we have to operate within, OK? And our ethical rules provide that we, as lawyers, we cannot directly go out and solicit people for business, OK? Nor can we pay people to go out and solicit business directly from accident victims for us,\u201d Hagan said.<\/p>\n

Hagan said he was angry about people who do this in Bakersfield.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese people that are hiring cappers out there, No. 1, they\u2019re not from town. There\u2019s all these carpet-bagging L.A. Lawyers that are coming up here and that\u2019s what they\u2019re doing in our community. And 2, I\u2019m just going to tell the people watching this news story, these are not lawyers you want to work with,\u201d Hagan said.<\/p>\n

Bakersfield police urged anyone who comes across the two men to call 661-327-7111.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bakersfield police are warning drivers not to share personal or insurance information with two men who have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152],"class_list":["post-452981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}