Tag: corruption

NewsGuard Misinfo Watchdog: Contracts with DOD, WHO, Pfizer, Microsoft and AFT

NewsGuard is a self-appointed misinformation watchdog. It seems to be just one more way Americans are not allowed to think for themselves. Co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz claim it is the “librarian for the internet.” Set up specifically to rate online journalistic integrity, Brill states NewsGuard provides services that “explain to people something about the reliability and trustworthiness and background of those who are feeding them the news.” Eric Effron is the organization’s Editorial Director.

Brill is a Yale graduate and lawyer who has authored multiple best-selling books and was, among other things, CEO of Verified Identity Pass, Inc., the first U.S. biometric Voluntary Credentialing Program that went bankrupt in 2009. It was the parent company of CLEAR which went back online in 2010 and then went public in 2021.

According to MintPressNews, “Crovitz held a number of positions at Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, eventually becoming executive vice president of the former and the publisher of the latter before both were sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2007. He is also a board member of Business Insider, which has received over $30 million from Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos in recent years.”

Crovitz’s alliances might account for the organization’s favorable 100 ratings for WSJ and the Washington Post. He is also a contributor “to books published by the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation,” which are also favorably rated by NewsGuard.

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Katie Hobbs accused of receiving Sinaloa cartel bribes

A California-based law firm has accused Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Runbeck Election Services, and a slew of other election officials, mayors, judges, city councilman, and county supervisors in the state of receiving bribes from the Sinaloa cartel.

During a Thursday hearing before the Senate Elections and Municipal Oversight & Elections Joint Committee, the principal investigator for Harris/Thaler Law Corporation, Jacqueline Breger, presented their shocking findings, detailing how a money-laundering investigation in the midwest revealed alleged corruption in Arizona.

“In 2006, the U.S. Attorney’s Offices in Illinois, Indiana and Iowa investigated the laundering of drug cartel monies through a complex series of single-family home purchases in those states,” Breger told the committee. “By 2009, numerous real estate agents, escrow companies and title insurers had been indicted, charged and convicted of racketeering. In 2014, our office was asked to review the case files and to determine whether monies from the sales of the properties had filtered to property purchases in Arizona, specifically in Maricopa and Pima County.”

The Sinaloa cartel is notorious for being led by the infamous “El Chapo,” the Mexican drug lord whose real name is Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, who was widely considered to have been one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world before his capture in 2016.

According to the investigator, it was concluded that several real estate agents in Iowa “had set up a laundering system in Arizona and thereafter had transferred the proceeds of sales to Panamanian Corporations.”

“In 2018, Mr. Thaler discovered, incidental to another matter, a series of trust deeds evidencing that cash laundering through single family residences in Arizona was pervasive and ongoing,” Breger continued. “With that, a new investigation began with the focus being on money laundering and related racketeering activities in Maricopa County and several other Arizona counties. The Harris/Thaler office currently represents several parties directly damaged by the racketeering activities.”

In the nearly 100-page report, Breger dug into the entire investigation, naming Dawna Rae Chavez, a resident of Mesa, Arizona, and her daughter, Brittany Rae Chavez, as “principal preparers of the documents necessary to effect the racketeering enterprises.”

“To date, more than 10,000 falsified documents have been recorded with the Maricopa County Recorder. We estimate that more than 35,000 warranty deeds/trust deeds evidencing fraudulent transactions exist in the database. 11. The number of falsified notarizations exceeds 15,000.  12. Dawna and Brittany’s participation in racketeering activities also includes facilitation of bribes to public officials, tax evasion, payroll theft, bankruptcy fraud, insurance fraud, and extortion,” Breger said. 

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Bayer Admits It Paid “Millions” in HIV Infection Cases — Just Not in English

To read the English-speaking media, you’d never know that Bayer (BAYRY) just paid “tens of millions” of dollars to end a three-decade long scandal in which the company sold HIV-contaminated blood products to haemophiliacs, thousands of whom later died of AIDS.

Ironically, Bayer’s new haemophilia iPhone app got some coverage, as did Bayer’s haemophilia research grant to the University of Florida. But you have to pick through the French and Italian news media to find out that Bayer is finally writing checks to people who got AIDS because, in the 1980s, the Cutter Biological unit of Bayer ignored federal law to recruit prisoners, intravenous drug users, and high-risk gay men as donors of the blood Cutter then used to make Factor VIII and IX, the clotting product that haemophiliacs need in order to not bleed to death. Agence France Press reported (via a Google translation):

The German group Bayer and three other labs will pay tens of millions of euros to hemophiliacs who accused them of having sold in the 1980s blood products contaminated with HIV, a source close to the deal told AFP.

The figure of tens of millions of euros in compensation “is not totally wrong,” she added. Bayer and the U.S. company Baxter are the two main parties to the agreement, she said.

A company spokesperson said:

However, “the company accepts no responsibility” in this case, and “continues to insist it has always acted responsibly and ethically.”

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FBI Gone Wild: Internal memos chronicle years of drunk driving, lost weapons and other misconduct

Scores of FBI employees have been caught over the last five years engaging in unethical and illegal conduct such as driving drunk, stealing property, assaulting a child, mishandling classified documents, and losing their service weapons — but they often escaped being fired, according to internal disciplinary files provided to Just The News. 

One agent left a highly lethal M4 carbine unsecured in his government car during a Starbucks run and had the weapon stolen, but even he received only a two-week suspension despite violating the bureau’s protocols for weapons storage, the records show.

“Although there was a lockbox in the trunk for storage of weapons and sensitive items,” the agent chose to store the rifle bag behind the car’s front passenger seat, one report shows. “While Employee was in the Starbucks, the Bucar was burglarized. The rear passenger, rear driver, and tailgate windows were broken, and the rifle bag containing the M4 was stolen.” 

Sexual misconduct was also rampant in the reports dating to 2017, including inappropriate affairs with felons in prison, confidential sources and subordinate employees. The sexual transgressions, however, often resulted in firings, unlike the drunk driving and lost weapons offenses.

Typically emailed to all Bureau employees each calendar quarter, the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) reports provided to Just the News by a whistleblower afford an unprecedented look into the breadth of misconduct among the FBI’s workforce of 35,000, including agents, intel analysts, lab scientists and crime scene technicians.

You can read all of the reports here.

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Black Hand – A Match Made in Hell

At the height of the Cold War, in a country experiencing the final throes of a post-war economic boom, one strange man went on to play a central role in a scandal that brought down the British government. In a master class of how to get away with grand espionage, Hod Dibben coasted through danger seemingly without any fear. The night clubs of London, which have been the focus of our attention so far, are all under new ownership after a series of tragic deaths of their previous owners and hostesses. As always, with anything Horace Dibben did during this period, elite sex parties and sadomasochistic orgies were a key part of what would eventually develop into the Profumo Affair.

Constance Capes and the Mysterious Mr. Atherley

Stella Marie Capes was born on 9 May 1941 in Sheffield, Yorkshire, to an unmarried mother, Constance Capes. Although she was born Stella Marie Capes, the name she chose to use most often before she met Hod Dibben was Mariella Capes. To understand why “Mariella” Capes went by so many different names—including Mariella Novotny and Henrietta Chapman— it is worth revisiting a little-known anecdote concerning her mother, Constance Capes. 

Mariella’s mother was born in Grimsby in 1903 and was involved in a very curious and well-documented case in 1927 concerning a man who had also used multiple identities. Constance was twenty-four-years-old when she went to work as a secretary for a fascinating fraudster named Mr. Reginald Winterburn Atherley. She was described in a Daily Mirror article dated 5 October 1927 as a “pretty North-country typist” with the article describing how she had “several strange experiences while she was acting as Mr. Atherley’s secretary at the Four Winds caravan in Thirsk.” Constance Capes described in her own words what occurred when she arrived in Thirsk after corresponding with Mr. Atherley: 

“The salary he proposed was small, but he said he would give me shares in his business. I knew that Four Winds was a caravan, but I did not know it was his permanent head-quarters. After I had worked four days with Mr. Atherley at the Four Winds I felt compelled to leave.

In the first place, it seemed a little too much to expect a typist to work by day, and sometimes by night, in a caravan situated in a field far from town. When I had been at Four Winds two days a curious incident occurred which made me doubtful. It was on Sunday, September 18 when Mr. Atherley came to my lodgings and told me that he had seriously injured a man with his car. He urged me to return to the caravan, which I did. At the Four Winds he got me to type a letter to a woman in Southport stating that Mr. Winterburn was dying, and if she wished to send him a message it would be delivered to him on regaining consciousness.

I then received the amazing request to sign the letter as Mr. Winterburn’s private secretary. (I must explain that Mr. Atherley sometimes called himself Mr. Winterburn. On the Tuesday he astonished me by asking me to sign most of his letters for him. I told him that I could not put my name to some of his correspondence, and remarked that I thought I had better leave. In consequence of this I left his service the same day. Of course, I received no salary, but I was really glad to be away from Four Winds. Although I was in need of a job, I think I acted for the best in leaving, and I am sure every typist would have done the same.” 

Constance Capes had had her first run-in with a conman at the Four Winds caravan and it garnered her a lot of attention. The curious case of Mr Winterburn Atherley and the Four Winds caravan received a lot of coverage in the Daily Mirror, so much so that Atherley complained to the newspaper via his solicitors that the reports about him were both libellous and defamatory. But it was not only a lone typist, Constance Capes, who was standing up for the truth, as there had been a number of fraudulent incidents involving the illusive Mr. Atherley, including with Captain Denis Ewart Bernard Kingston Shipwright, a former-MP who took it upon himself to confront the conman on a station platform, with the conversation being described as both “heated and futile.”

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SEC Charges Mormon Church For Concealing $32 Billion Portfolio

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged an investment arm of the Mormon church for disclosure failures and misstated filings.

Ensign Peak, a nonprofit entity operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints, agreed to pay a $4 million penalty for failing to file forms that would have disclosed the church’s equity investments, and instead filing forms for shell companies that concealed the Church’s portfolio – as well as misstated Ensign Peak’s control over investment decisions, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The church, which requires its members give 10% of their income in the form of tithing, itself agreed to pay a $1 million penalty, according to the SEC.

The SEC’s order finds that, from 1997 through 2019, Ensign Peak failed to file Forms 13F, the forms on which investment managers are required to disclose the value of certain securities they manage. According to the order, the Church was concerned that disclosure of its portfolio, which by 2018 grew to approximately $32 billion, would lead to negative consequences. To obscure the amount of the Church’s portfolio, and with the Church’s knowledge and approval, Ensign Peak created thirteen shell LLCs, ostensibly with locations throughout the U.S., and filed Forms 13F in the names of these LLCs rather than in Ensign Peak’s name. The order finds that Ensign Peak maintained investment discretion over all relevant securities, that it controlled the shell companies, and that it directed nominee “business managers,” most of whom were employed by the Church, to sign the Commission filings. The shell LLCs’ Forms 13F misstated, among other things, that the LLCs had sole investment and voting discretion over the securities. In reality, the SEC’s order finds, Ensign Peak retained control over all investment and voting decisions. -SEC

“We allege that the LDS Church’s investment manager, with the Church’s knowledge, went to great lengths to avoid disclosing the Church’s investments, depriving the Commission and the investing public of accurate market information,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “The requirement to file timely and accurate information on Forms 13F applies to all institutional investment managers, including non-profit and charitable organizations.”

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Bad Quotes of Some Bad Presidents

Presidents’ Day is just around the corner. Should we celebrate?

People who love liberty and live in a free society don’t bow down and worship politicians. We understand that politicians wield power, to be sure, but we also know they still put their pants on one leg at a time. As President Reagan once put it, “America is a nation that has a government, not the other way around.”

The best of America’s presidents worked to keep the peace and our liberties. They didn’t view the Constitution as public window-dressing while they undermined it inside the store. The worst ones expanded power in Washington, burdening future generations with dubious programs, bureaucracy, taxes, debt, and foreign adventurism. The truly good ones are few and far between.

So whoever it was who decided we should have a Presidents’ Day in February, I can assure you it wasn’t me. I’d prefer to celebrate an Entrepreneurs’ Day. Or an Inventors’ Day. Or, of course, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. If I had my way, we’d have a Capital Day too.

America’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, regarded government employment with a healthy wariness. In a 1799 letter, he warned, “Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.” Twelve years later in another letter, he said, “I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.”

Presidents’ Day, fortunately, is still welcomed by most Americans more as a day off work than a day to glorify presidents—even Washington and Lincoln, whose birthdays were “consolidated” into the holiday in the first place. But there’s still too much presidential glorifying that goes on for my tastes. In the spirit of Jeffersonian skepticism, my way of noting the holiday this year is to offer five of the many bad things some bad presidents said.

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Who Corrupted a Top FBI Spyhunter?

IN THE FINAL days of the Cold War, a young diplomat arrived at the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco. Agents in the FBI’s San Francisco field office kept a close eye on the personnel coming and going from the consulate. The six-story building in one of the city’s toniest neighborhoods long served as a hub of espionage activity. The newly-arrived Soviet diplomat in his twenties, Evgeny Fokin, soon raised suspicions that he was a KGB officer operating under diplomatic cover on his first overseas posting. “I do remember he was an intelligence officer. He was KGB at the time,” says Rick Smith, a retired veteran of the FBI’s counterintelligence squad in San Francisco.

Three decades later, that young diplomat is now at the center of another spy story. This one involves Charles McGonigal, a former senior FBI counterintelligence officer who was indicted last month for taking money illegally from Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch with ties to the Kremlin and Russian intelligence services. Fokin was the mysterious “Agent-1” described in court papers, an executive working for Deripaska who slowly corrupted the veteran FBI agent over a three-year period, according to sources and documents reviewed by Rolling Stone.

Arrested last month, McGonigal faces federal charges in New York of violating federal sanctions laws that prohibited him from taking money from Deripaska and laundering those ill-gotten gains. He is also accused in a separate case filed in Washington, D.C., of accepting nearly a quarter of a million dollars in secret payments from a former Albanian intelligence officer, including $80,000 that was handed over gangland-style in a car parked outside a New York City restaurant. “His arrest is a sorry day for the FBI,” a retired senior FBI official tells Rolling Stone. “The bureau has taken a beating the last few years with Trump and others attacking it. His arrest is all we need.” 

The damage to the bureau may go deeper than previously understood. In 2020, McGonigal took part in an Atlantic Council panel discussion titled “How Did Russia’s Security Services Capture the Kremlin?” A better question might be: Did Russia’s security services compromise a top FBI counterintelligence agent, here in America? How was one of the FBI’s top spyhunters so easily ensnared? “And how exposed is the FBI, given that it was Fokin, a suspected Russian spy, who snared him?”

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FBI whistleblower resigns from bureau, warns Congress about dangers of case ‘quota system’

An FBI whistleblower has divulged to Congress that the bureau has created a case quota system that can incentivize agents to pursue frivolous cases or delay action on real crimes to attain statistical goals.

Steve Friend, a special agent and former SWAT team member who blew the whistle on alleged civil liberties violations in the Jan. 6 investigation, told Just the News on Thursday that he resigned from the bureau this week and gave the House Judiciary Committee an extensive interview detailing his concerns about the politicization of criminal cases and the growing manipulation of investigations to attain statistical and budget goals.

Friend said he made the decision to leave the bureau after he had been denied a paycheck for 150 straight days as his security clearance was placed under review after he made protected whistleblower disclosures. The denial of pay, he said, came even though he was never accused formally of any wrongdoing or subjected to any formal disciplinary action.

“The FBI had weaponized the security clearance revocation process in order to essentially try to wait me out financially,” he said in an interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast. “You know, I was in a position where I had some personal savings and was able to survive. But at the end of the day, you know, I’m a married father of two small children. I have to support my family.”

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