Tag: fraud

BLM’s millions unaccounted for after leaders quietly jumped ship

No one appears to have been in charge at Black Lives Matter for months. The address it lists on tax forms is wrong, and the charity’s two board members won’t say who controls its $60 million bankroll, a Washington Examiner investigation has found.

BLM’s shocking lack of transparency surrounding its finances and operations raises major legal and ethical red flags, multiple charity experts told the Washington Examiner.

“Like a giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting in the night with no captain, no discernible crew, and no clear direction,” CharityWatch Executive Director Laurie Styron said of BLM.

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Joe Biden Promoted Theranos Scam Led By Powerful Female Fraudster

Then-Vice President Joe Biden voiced support for Theranos on his behalf and that of sitting President Barack Obama referring to the company “an inspiration.” Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was convicted on four counts of fraud this week.

“You know, the president and I, as I hope we’ve demonstrated, led by the president, share your vision of a new healthcare paradigm focused on preventive care,” Biden said while meeting with Holmes in 2015.

Biden publicly endorsed Theranos, offering praise for “charging historically low prices” and making its diagnostic tools available to the public at large. The support from not only Biden but the sitting presidential administration played a key role in fundraising to support Theranos which has been valued at nine-billion dollars.

We now know that the technology that Holmes claimed would conclusively analyze and produce life-saving tests from only a few drops of blood was a sham. Some patients rushed to the emergency room after Theranos’ test informed them they were on the brink of death, only to learn they were fine after a real test was used.

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COVID crooks: The most outrageous relief fund scammers busted so far

These COVID crooks are getting a jab of justice.

Nearly $100 billion of COVID relief funds has been defrauded across the United States since the pandemic began, the Secret Service announced Tuesday, adding that there are almost 1,000 separate investigations into these startling financial frauds.

Two high profile athletes have already been cuffed for the crime: US Olympic speedskater Allison Marie Baver is accused of ripping off $10 million, as well as former New York Jets wide receiver and onetime millionaire Kenbrell Thompkins, whose damages are in the hundreds of thousands.

There have also been plenty of “average Joe” perps getting busted after spending their lavish relief dough on trivial purchases, such as flashy cars or rare, five-figure Pokémon cards (both true, real examples, sadly). Gotta catch ’em all, right?

A group of deceitful dingbats in Brooklyn were even found out after posing online with some $2 million of ill-begotten relief funds.

Read on for the most ridiculous, and egregious, COVID relief scammers that have been caught — so far.

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Portland gives $12 MILLION contract to social justice energy company headed by fraudster ex-convict

Linda Woodley, an ex-convict that has racked up millions of dollars in liens for unpaid federal and states taxes, was recently awarded an $11.5 million energy contract by the City of Portland, Oregon.

According to the The Oregonian, Woodley served time in prison for defrauding energy companies and pocketing the proceeds.

Linda Woodley is the Chief of Diversifying Energy, a community-focused nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon. According to their website, their mission is to facilitate equitable access to clean, sustainable energy and improve air quality to vulnerable populations, including low-income communities and people of color.

Information about Woodley’s criminal history can be found through a simple background check, so either the city of Portland knew about her past and they decided to award Woodley with contract anyways or they didn’t properly vette her. A six-figure penalty was even filed against Woodley just earlier this year, information that can also be easily found.

The City of Portland reportedly diverted the contact to Woodley after finding out that the original company it was awarded to had an 85 percent white workforce, The Oregonian reports. The contract supplies low-income families with heaters and coolers.

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During January 6 Hearing, Schiff Doctored Text Messages Between Mark Meadows And Rep. Jim Jordan

Not only did Schiff lie about the substance of the text message and its source, he even doctored the message and graphic that he displayed on screen during his statement. The full text message, which was forwarded to Meadows from Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on the evening of Monday, Jan. 5, was significantly longer than what Schiff read and put on screen, but Schiff erased significant portions of the text and added punctuation where there was none to give the impression that Jordan himself was tersely directing Meadows to give orders to Pence on how to handle the electoral vote certification.

The original text was written by Washington attorney and former Department of Defense Inspector General Joseph Schmitz and included an attachment of a four-page draft Word document drafted by Schmitz that detailed Schmitz’s legal reasoning for suggesting that Pence had the constitutional authority to object to the certification of electoral votes submitted by a handful of states. The piece that Schmitz had sent to Jordan was published at the website everylegal.vote the next day and even included the same “DISCUSSION DRAFT” heading and timestamp on the document that Schmitz sent to Jordan.

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Company co-founded by Nancy Pelosi’s son charged with securities fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged a company cofounded by Paul Pelosi Jr. with fraud on Wednesday after learning that two convicted criminals were running the business.

Paul Pelosi Jr., the son of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), was the president and chief operating officer of Natural Blue Resources Inc., an investment company he cofounded that focuses on “environmentally-friendly” ventures.

The SEC charged four individuals with fraud, including former New Mexico Gov. Toney Anaya, and suspended trading in the company’s stock. Pelosi owned over 10 million shares in the company in 2009.

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The Co-Founder Of The Fact-Checking Site Snopes Was Writing Plagiarized Articles Under A Fake Name

David Mikkelson, the co-founder of the fact-checking website Snopes, has long presented himself as the arbiter of truth online, a bulwark in the fight against rumors and fake news. But he has been lying to the site’s tens of millions of readers: A BuzzFeed News investigation has found that between 2015 and 2019, Mikkelson wrote and published dozens of articles containing material plagiarized from news outlets such as the Guardian and the LA Times.

After inquiries from BuzzFeed News, Snopes conducted an internal review and confirmed that under a pseudonym, the Snopes byline, and his own name, Mikkelson wrote and published 54 articles with plagiarized material. The articles include such topics as same-sex marriage licenses and the death of musician David Bowie.

Snopes VP of Editorial and Managing Editor Doreen Marchionni suspended Mikkelson from editorial duties pending “a comprehensive internal investigation.” He remains an officer and a 50% shareholder of the company.

“Our internal research so far has found a total of 54 stories Mikkelson published that used appropriated material, including all of the stories Buzzfeed shared with us,” Marchionni and Snopes Chief Operating Officer Vinny Green said in a statement.

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Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

Health research is based on trust. Health professionals and journal editors reading the results of a clinical trial assume that the trial happened and that the results were honestly reported. But about 20% of the time, said Ben Mol, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Monash Health, they would be wrong. As I’ve been concerned about research fraud for 40 years, I wasn’t that surprised as many would be by this figure, but it led me to think that the time may have come to stop assuming that research actually happened and is honestly reported, and assume that the research is fraudulent until there is some evidence to support it having happened and been honestly reported. The Cochrane Collaboration, which purveys “trusted information,” has now taken a step in that direction.

As he described in a webinar last week, Ian Roberts, professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, began to have doubts about the honest reporting of trials after a colleague asked if he knew that his systematic review showing the mannitol halved death from head injury was based on trials that had never happened. He didn’t, but he set about investigating the trials and confirmed that they hadn’t ever happened. They all had a lead author who purported to come from an institution that didn’t exist and who killed himself a few years later. The trials were all published in prestigious neurosurgery journals and had multiple co-authors. None of the co-authors had contributed patients to the trials, and some didn’t know that they were co-authors until after the trials were published. When Roberts contacted one of the journals the editor responded that “I wouldn’t trust the data.” Why, Roberts wondered, did he publish the trial? None of the trials have been retracted.

Later Roberts, who headed one of the Cochrane groups, did a systematic review of colloids versus crystalloids only to discover again that many of the trials that were included in the review could not be trusted. He is now sceptical about all systematic reviews, particularly those that are mostly reviews of multiple small trials. He compared the original idea of systematic reviews as searching for diamonds, knowledge that was available if brought together in systematic reviews; now he thinks of systematic reviewing as searching through rubbish. He proposed that small, single centre trials should be discarded, not combined in systematic reviews.

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Half Of Pandemic Unemployment Funds May Have Been Stolen

As much as half of the unemployment benefits paid by the US government over the past year may have been stolen through fraud, with the bulk ultimately ending up outside the country – likely into the hands of foreign crime syndicates in China, Nigeria, Russia and elsewhere, according to Axios‘ Felix Salmon.

According to some estimates, unemployment fraud during the pandemic could ‘easily reach $400 billion,’ as states weren’t prepared for the unprecedented wave of unemployment claims.

States knew that fraud was inevitable, but opted to rush money out to people with minimal oversight, as opposed to laboriously vetting each application.

According to Blake Hall, CEO of ID.me – a fraud prevention service, America has lost over $400 billion to fraudulent claims, with as much as 50% of all unemployment payments possibly being stolen.

Of that, up to 70% of the money stolen by impostors ultimately left the country according to Haywood Talcove, CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, who ways “These groups are definitely backed by the state.”

The rest of the money was likely stolen by street gangs domestically, who have made up a greater share of the fraud in recent months.

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Biden Caught Fake Driving — Someone Else Is Steering Vehicle — It Was All a Stunt!

78-year-old Joe Biden traveled to Dearborn, Michigan on Tuesday to visit the Ford Rouge Electric Vehicle Center.

Biden promoted his highly unpopular $2 trillion infrastructure bill that has nothing to do with the infrastructure that includes $174 billion to develop electric vehicles.

At one point Joe Biden repeated the lie that his “great grandpop” was a coal miner.

Biden also tripped over his tongue and jumbled his words.

Following his speech, the declining septuagenarian was put in an electric vehicle where he pretended to be driving.
This was all a show by his handlers to make Joe Biden look like he’s in charge.

Here is the interior of an electric Ford F-150 Pickup Truck.

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