Tag: corruption

Texas AG Paxton sues EPIC City developers after probe finds alleged fraud, misleading Muslim-only marketing

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit on Friday against the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC), Community Capital Partners (CCP) and several associated leaders, accusing them of running an illegal securities and land development scheme tied to a proposed 400-acre community known as “EPIC City.”

The lawsuit, filed in Collin County, follows a monthslong investigation and a referral from the Texas State Securities Board. The state alleges the defendants raised tens of millions of dollars while violating securities laws, misleading investors about the project’s nature and location, and misrepresenting how funds would be used.

“The leaders behind EPIC City have engaged in a radical plot to destroy hundreds of acres of beautiful Texas land and line their own pockets,” Paxton said. “I will relentlessly bring the full force of the law against anyone who thinks they can ignore the rules and hurt Texans.”

According to the Verified Petition, CCP sold investment interests for $40,000 to $80,000, despite failing to register the securities or qualify for federal exemptions. 

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US waste in Afghanistan revealed

The US lost up to $29 billion to mismanagement and misconduct during its occupation of Afghanistan, all while pursuing unrealistic goals in the country, according to a new report from a government watchdog.

Released on Wednesday, the report concludes a 17-year investigation by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), which identified 1,327 instances of waste, fraud, and abuse totaling $26-29.2 billion, most of it lost through inefficiencies and improper use of assets. Fraud accounted for around 2% of the total and abuse for 4%. The watchdog noted that more than $4.6 billion of taxpayer money could have been saved.

America’s “20-year mission to build a stable, democratic” Afghanistan was a failure, undermined from the start by unrealistic expectations and compounded by corruption and misuse of public funds, SIGAR said. According to the watchdog, Afghanistan should serve as a cautionary tale, warning policymakers that any future reconstruction effort of similar scale must acknowledge the risk of failure from the start.

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“Widespread Misconduct”: Trump Admin Orders All Beneficiaries Of Nation’s Largest DEI Program To Surrender Financial Records

The Daily Wire has learned that the Small Business Administration has ordered all 4,300 firms in its 8(a) “socially disadvantaged” program, which receive no-bid federal contracts, to turn over their financial records, including general ledgers, bank statements, payroll files, subcontracting agreements, and other internal documents, by January 5 or face removal from the program.

SBA’s crackdown on one of Washington’s oldest DEI initiatives follows mounting evidence that some 8(a) firms have become a major pipeline for fraud, pass-through schemes, and artificially inflated contract costs.

Late last month, Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and the investigative journalist who broke the Clinton Cash corruption story, published a report exposing the cronyism and corruption inside the 8(a) program, where pass-through firms handed bidless contracts on silver platters while quietly outsourcing the real work to major consulting companies.

“For years, DC insiders have exploited a federal DEI contracting program that provides windfalls to Beltway elites. This open secret isn’t about helping the downtrodden; it’s about bagging no-bid paydays. The SBA’s 8(a) program is long overdue for reform,” Schweizer wrote on X.

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Disgraceful: Duchess Meghan Accused of Stealing $1,700 Dress from Photoshoot, Using the ‘Archiving’ of Her Royal Clothing as the Excuse

Former C-list actress Meghan Markle — more commonly known as the henpecking wife of England’s Prince Harry — has been accused of stealing a nearly $1,700 designer gown she wore for a 2022 magazine photo shoot.

The accusations surfaced after Markle was spotted wearing the one-shoulder, emerald-green Galvan dress in her latest self-aggrandizing Netflix special.

Markle “took the dress from the shoot without asking,” a source told Page Six.

The carpet-bagging “Duchess of Sussex” first wore the gown for a Variety magazine cover shoot three years ago.

Apparently, Markle has a habit of taking expensive clothes without paying for them.

Markle reportedly did not return “a lot of stuff” after she “wore it in a very high-profile photo shoot,” Vanity Fair contributing writer Vanessa Grigoriadis said in 2024.

“What’s shocking about hearing these kinds of alleged stories is that somebody who is living in a $15 million-plus mansion in Montecito, who’s just had $100 million deals, would care enough to take home some jewelry and clothes from a photoshoot that she can clearly afford,” Grigoriadis said, per Page Six.

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Was The J6 “Insurrection” A Government-Sponsored Seditious Conspiracy?

Cold Case Heats Up

“[The current FBI] was competent at cracking the case; [Christopher Wray’s] was competent at corruption and obstructing it.”

– Mike Benz

Do you have any idea what tapestry of corruption and crime is attached to the little thread of the J6 / DNC / RNC pipe bomber suspect arrested yesterday by the FBI? Consider this: suspect Brian Cole, Jr., is alive and probably talking, unlike, say, Jeffrey Epstein and Thomas Matthew Crooks in other matters of public interest. Let’s hope he is under FBI protection in custody, lest something. . . say. . . happen to him.

As of early this morning, the country knows next to nothing else about Cole and what he was up to the night of Jan. 5, 2021.

The FBI has not even said how he is employed. But his photo shows a young man dressed for office work. . . he lives in a nice house in the DC suburbs of Virginia. . .and you might infer that he is, possibly, a federal government worker. Oh, and the FBI was unable to catch him through the whole four years of “Joe Biden?”

You can suppose at this point that the story of that four-year botched investigation will be a way bigger thing than the pipe bomber’s little prank itself.

It probably leads to the story of wholesale corruption in Christopher Wray’s FBI, and even more consequentially, to the realization that the so-called J6, 2021 “insurrection” was a government op from top to bottom, aimed at eradicating Trump and Trumpism.

First, what was supposed to happen in a joint session of Congress that day?

Answer: certification of electoral college votes in the 2020 election. What else was liable to happen that day? Answer: under the Electoral Count Act of 1887 (3 U.S.C. §§ 5–6, 15–18) — as amended, and by the rules laid out in the U.S. Constitution (Article II and the 12th Amendment) — objections to several states’ slates of electors were expected to be entertained, triggering debate and possible rejection of those states’ electors on the basis that the votes were not “lawfully certified” (under 3 U.S.C. § 6), or not “regularly given” (meaning the vote was marred by fraud, corruption, or violence). Any state’s electoral votes could be rejected if both the House and Senate voted by simple majority, after up to two hours of separate debate.

At mid-day, objections meeting the written requirement (one House member + one Senator) were filed for Arizona and Pennsylvania. The objection to the Arizona vote (Rep. Paul Gosar + Sen. Ted Cruz) was the first scheduled to be debated shortly after 1:00 p.m. It was not allowed to happen. Instead, Congress evacuated the chamber. When Congress returned at 8:00 p.m., votes objecting to Arizona and Pennsylvania slates failed and no others were taken up. Senators who previously had committed to debating the votes of several other swing states demurred, citing the breach of demonstrators into the Capitol. The full tally concluded at 3:44 in the morning, Jan 7, “Joe Biden” and Kamala Harris were certified as winners of the 2020 election.

Here are some things to know about the pipe bomb subplot in the J-6 story.

Kamala Harris, vice president-elect, still a sitting Senator (CA), was not in the chamber for the certification process. She arrived at the DNC headquarters some blocks away from the Capitol by motorcade at 11:30 a.m. and stayed until she was evacuated from the DNC at 1:14 p.m. Couple of questions about that? 1) did she not want to be present in the chamber at the momentous instant that her election as veep was certified? 2) Did she not have a duty to be present for voting on any of the procedure? Weird, a little bit. She has never explained what she was doing at the DNC that day.

Kamala Harris was in the DNC building when the pipe bomb was discovered there, around 1:07 p.m. The pipe bomb at the RNC had been discovered some 20 minutes prior, and it was the discovery of that bomb, at 12:44 p.m. that prompted the evacuation of the joint House / Senate session in Congress, not any breach of the Capitol building, which did not occur until 2:13, p.m., more than an hour later.

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What did Ilhan Omar know about the $1B welfare fraud case in her Minnesota district?

US Rep. Ilhan Omar’s close ties to the $1 billion welfare scam in her Minnesota congressional district are being uncovered.

Omar (D-Minn.) held parties at one of the key restaurants named in the fraud, knew one of its now-convicted owners, and one of her own staffers has also been convicted — both for stealing millions. 

Omar even introduced the bill that led to $250 million in fraud. Yet she claims to have been completely unaware of it. 

“[Rep. Omar] knew who these people were. People she personally knew were making tens of millions of dollars in this program,” claimed Bill Glahn, a policy fellow with the Minnesota-based Center of the American Experiment, to The Post. 

“She had been inside the [Safari] facility on numerous occasions and couldn’t put 2 and 2 together? Either she’s terminally naive, or knew and didn’t care,” Glahn added.

Around $250 million was handed out by the Minnesota government to provide meals to schoolchildren during the pandemic from 2020 onward.

Instead, it was pocketed by corrupt business owners, including Salim Ahmed Said. He’s the co-owner of Safari Restaurant, where Omar held her 2018 congressional victory party.

Said was found guilty in August of stealing over $12 million for serving 3.9 million “phantom” meals during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

He blew much of the money on a $2 million Minneapolis mansion and a $9,000-a-month shopping habit at Nordstrom, according to prosecutors.

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Top Obama DEA Official Charged With Laundering Money For Mexican Drug Cartel

A former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official appointed as deputy chief of the Office of Financial Operations during the Obama administration – and who still holds a security clearance – was indicted on Friday on charges of agreeing to launder $12 million for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) – which was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization in February of this year.

Paul Campo, who oversaw the FBI’s money laundering operations and resigned in January 2016 ahead of Trump’s inauguration, laundered around $750,000 for the cartel by converting cash into cryptocurrency, and agreed to launder far more – totaling over $12 million, according to the indictment. 

Campo’s hoome was raided by federal agents on Thursday.

Campo also provided a payment for around 220 kilos of cocaine on the understanding that the drugs had been imported into the USA, the indictment further states. 

He was able to do this after spending 25 years at the DEA, rising to a high-level position which he used to sell himself to CJNG as someone who could; 

  • give inside information on DEA operations
  • help them move drug money
  • help them avoid detection
  • and even advise on narcotics logistics

In late 2024, Campo, along with a friend Robert Sensi, began conspiring with an undercover government source they believed was with the cartel. They allegedly discussed using drones packed with C-4 explosives for CJNG operation. When the undercover agent asked what they could do with the drones, Campo allegedly said “We put explosives and we just send it over there,” adding that six kilos of C-4 would be enough to blow up “the whole fucking…” [sentence trails off]

Campo also allegedly told the undercover source that, because of his past work inside DEA’s intelligence and financial units, he still had “connections” within the agency and could advise CJNG on how to evade detection. According to the indictment, he portrayed himself as someone who understood DEA investigative patterns, internal targeting systems, and the vulnerabilities of U.S. financial controls.

Both Campo and Sensi allegedly assured the undercover officer that they could convert cartel cash into cryptocurrency in a way that would appear legitimate, billing themselves as specialists capable of “getting money back” for clients whose assets had been seized by law enforcement.

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Outrage as Kash Patel orders elite FBI unit to taxi his girlfriend’s drunk friend around Nashville

FBI Director Kash Patel is under fire for allegedly yelling at his girlfriend’s security detail, demanding they drive home one of her drunk friends. 

In an extraordinary privilege, Alexis Wilkins, the director’s Nashville-based country music singer girlfriend, has her own security team consisting of elite local SWAT agents.

Multiple sources are now telling MS NOW that Wilkins ordered her agents to escort her inebriated friend home at least twice, with one occasion in the spring.

Not wanting to alter their protection plan for Wilkins, the agents pushed back. 

In one instance, however, Patel called the security team leader and demanded that they listen to his girlfriend’s orders, the sources revealed. 

Wilkins angrily responded to the allegations on Friday, taking aim at intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian.

‘Ken’s three sources: the voices in his head,’ the 27-year-old wrote.

‘Nice try, Ken. Let’s try something even remotely believable next time instead of some party girl trope that’s lame and verifiably false.’

The FBI also denied the claims. 

‘This is made up and did not happen,’ FBI spokesman Ben Williamson said. 

In a follow-up statement on X, Williamson added: ‘I went and checked with everyone involved – Alexis (who doesn’t even drink), the Director, the Detail, and more – all of whom said it didn’t happen.’

Wilkins has frequently travelled with Patel, 45, on the director’s $60 million government jet – one he has to take because of his high-profile intelligence job. 

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The Shadow War: How LA County’s Power Brokers Ousted Sheriff Alex Villanueva to Bury Their Corruption Scandals

Los Angeles County has always run on power, proximity, and the kind of insider privilege that never appears on a balance sheet. But over the last four years, the mask has slipped.

The coordinated takedown of former Sheriff Alex Villanueva wasn’t a matter of reform, ideology, or even public safety. It was a political survival mission, a shadow war waged by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and their well-funded network of nonprofits, consultants, and operatives who needed Villanueva out of the way before his investigations dragged them into the sunlight.

The truth is brutally simple: Villanueva became a threat the moment he started pulling the threads that held LA County’s corruption tapestry together.

Today, as new scandals erupt across homelessness funding, ARPA distributions, and county contracting, the motive behind his removal has never been clearer. They didn’t defeat Villanueva because he failed. They defeated him because he got too close.

The unraveling started in October 2021, when Villanueva publicly accused the Board of Supervisors of operating like a continuing criminal enterprise and urged the FBI to investigate.

It wasn’t hyperbole; it was a direct shot at the county’s ruling class and their multimillion-dollar political machine. What followed was the kind of coordinated response that only happens when power brokers feel the walls closing in.

Villanueva’s internal Public Corruption Unit had already begun connecting dots between county contracts, campaign donors, political appointees, and no-bid deals quietly awarded to friends of the Board. One of those threads led straight to Supervisor Sheila Kuehl and her close ally Patti Giggans, whose nonprofit, Peace Over Violence, won an eyebrow-raising series of sole-source contracts to operate a transit hotline that produced more invoices than meaningful data. LASD investigators executed warrants in September 2022, and the political establishment erupted in outrage, accusing Villanueva of retaliation rather than acknowledging the substance of the allegations. It was the moment the fight went from backstage maneuvering to open warfare.

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Full Metal Retard: Walz Rolls Out Taxpayer-Funded Paid Leave For Illegals

Less than one week after the NY Times (of all rags) torched Minnesota governor Tim Walz over a massive and sprawling fraud scandal involving Somalians that federal prosecutors say siphoned over $1 billion from the state’s social safety net programs, Walz is opening yet another avenue for fraud – giving taxpayer-funded leave illegal immigrants.

Under the Minnesota Paid Family and Medical Leave Program which Walz signed into law ahead of its Jan. 1 start date, “undocumented workers” will receive benefits, according to the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce’s FAQ page. 

The program provides payments to Minnesota residents who need time away from work for “serious health” reasons, or to take care of a family member – be it an infant or an ill relative, the Washington Examiner reports. What’s more, if an individual qualifies for both medical and family leave, they can “double dip” – getting taxpayer funds for a total of 20 weeks or 5.5 months, each year. These receiving benefits can also “top off” paid leave by using paid time off (PTO), sick days, and vacation hours in addition to their leave of absence. 

Program beneficiaries will receive between 55% and 90% of their regular wages while on paid leave – up to a maximum amount of $5,692 per month. 

“Are people going to abuse the program?” Walz replied when questioned on Tuesday at an event about potential fraud. “How disrespectful to people to assume that ailing Minnesotans are scamming. That’s what I hear from [critics] all the time. I trust Minnesotans.”

“I believe they know you’re not gonna get rich, and it’s not your full salary. You’re not gonna scam and take time off,” Walz continued. 

Meanwhile, Walz continues to downplay growing concerns after a $1 billion fraud was uncovered by City Journal, in which Somali immigrants were stealing welfare funds and funneling the money home to Somalia. 

The fraud involved a series of schemes that federal authorities say took root over the past five years, many centered within Minnesota’s Somali diaspora, where individuals established companies that billed state agencies for services that were never performed. Prosecutors say 59 people have been convicted across various cases so far, in three separate plots.

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