Eideard

Preet Bharara and Ray Kelly
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Five active and three retired officers of the New York Police Department are among 12 people charged Tuesday with conspiring to transport and distribute firearms and stolen goods…

“A group of crime fighters took to moonlighting as criminals,” Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a press conference.

The defendants are charged in an alleged conspiracy to transport and distribute untraceable firearms across state lines. and conspiracy to transport supposedly stolen and counterfeit goods including cigarettes from Virginia and slot machines from Atlantic City, New Jersey…

The current or former NYPD officers charged are William Masso, Eddie Goris, Ali Oklu, Gary Oritz, and John Mahony, all active-duty officers in Brooklyn; Joseph Trischitta and Marco Venezia, who were active-duty NYPD officers at the time of the alleged crimes but are now retired; and Richard Melnik, a retired NYPD officer. Also charged, federal authorities said, are Anthony Santiago, a New York City Department of Sanitation police officer; David Kanwisher, a New Jersey corrections officer; and Michael Gee and Eric Gomer, who court documents list as “associates” of Santiago…

Prosecutors said that while the defendants all believed the items they transported were stolen; they had in fact been provided by the FBI. The firearms were never a danger to the public, authorities said, as they had been rendered inoperable.

“These crimes are without question, reprehensible — particularly conspiring to import untraceable guns and assault rifles into New York,” said Janice K. Fedarcyk, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York division. “The public trusts the police not only to enforce the law, but to obey it. These crimes, as alleged in the complaint, do nothing but undermine public trust and confidence in law enforcement.”

You got that right.

We’re fortunate to have someone like Preet Bharara operating in New York, nowadays. Seems like I get to note his name in a crime-busting case every couple of months.

FBI Asst Director Shawn Henry, Eric Holder and Kathleen Sebelius behind him
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The U.S. government on Thursday charged 111 doctors, nurses and other defendants with Medicare crime schemes that exceeded $225 million in false billings, the largest health care fraud crackdown so far.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the charges in the latest of a series of cases brought by the Obama administration…

Medicare reform represented a key part of the sweeping year-old health care law championed by Democratic President Barack Obama, but opposed by many Republicans in Congress.

The latest charges covered defendants in nine cities. In addition to arrests, law enforcement agents also executed 16 search warrants.

The defendants were charged with various crimes, including conspiracy to defraud the Medicare program, false claims, kickbacks and money laundering, administration officials said.

They said the alleged schemes involved various medical treatments, tests and services, such as home health care, physical and occupational therapy and medical equipment…

A top FBI official, Shawn Henry, said 2,600 health care fraud cases were under investigation and that organized crime groups have been increasingly linked to the alleged schemes.

Sebelius said $4 billion was recovered last year, and the government’s Medicare Fraud Strike Force was recently expanded to nine cities, with the addition of Dallas and Chicago.

Go get ‘em! Throw a couple of insurance companies into the meatgrinder while you’re at it.

They deserve to be sorted out for their role in inflating healthcare costs. They could care less about phony costs when they know American taxpayers get stuck with the bill regardless of legitimacy.

Anonymous defectors

The Church of Scientology…the controversial and secretive group – whose celebrity backers include the actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta – has effectively been accused of enslaving members.

FBI agents are said to have interviewed defectors across the US about the techniques used by church leaders to control members’ lives and track down those who attempt to leave.

The leader of the church, David Miscavige – who was best man at Cruise’s wedding in 2006 – is accused of repeated violence towards staff and members, which he has denied…

The claims were made in an extensive investigation into the church by Lawrence Wright, a highly-respected and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, in the New Yorker magazine…

Wright reports that Valerie Venegas and Tricia Whitehill, agents from the FBI’s office in Los Angeles devoted to fighting human trafficking, have been investigating the group.

RTFA – these allegations have been around for a spell. I don’t know if the Scientology crowd is more or less repressive than any other American weirdo religion. The target demographic ain’t anyone who lives in my neighborhood.

Philosophical idealism was taken to absurd ends when he tried to prove the drawing of a radio could be made to work as well as the real deal!

A former commodities trader threatened to torture his regulator until he would “beg to be killed”, according to court documents.

Vincent McCrudden, founder of Alnbri Asset Management, was arrested in New York last month and charged with drawing up an “execution list” of more than 40 employees of the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and other agencies.

Details of one threatening email McCrudden wrote to Dan Driscoll, chief operating officer of the National Futures Association, have now been released in court papers. McCrudden said he had hired “professionals” to torture and kill Driscoll. “They have things they will do to you that will make you beg to be killed, shot, anything to get away from the pain,” he wrote. “And the great thing is, you will be the first, but not the last.”

According to his website, McCrudden is a former professional football player and a 25-year Wall Street veteran. The CFTC filed a civil enforcement lawsuit filed against McCrudden in December, according to prosecutors, who also say that McCrudden has been the subject of various enforcement or disciplinary proceedings over several years.

McCrudden’s website says he has spent “the past 13 years and counting combating a colluded government attempt to discredit and harass” him.

“As a twice survivor of the WTC [World Trade Centre] bombings, Mr McCrudden knows all too well what the Government can do in the ‘name of public interest’…

“Wake up my fellow citizens and middle class and go look into the mirror, because you my friends are the face of the new Al Qaeda! Civil disobedience can be a start for justice. Its [sic] us (middle class) against them (Government officials and the Bourgeosie [sic]). Start acting now before its [sic] too late!” the website states.

Should run this killer klown for Congress. He’d be the perfect KoolAid Party candidate.

U.S. police arrested 17 people and broke up a gun running network that sought to funnel more than 700 firearms including high-powered Kalashnikov rifles to Mexico drug cartels.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, said police arrested 17 suspects in a multi-agency operation across the Phoenix valley on Tuesday. Three other suspects remained at large.

The operation…dismantled a network buying weapons for Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel, investigators said. “We strongly believe we took down the entire organization from top to bottom that operated out of the Phoenix area,” said William Newell, special agent in charge of the ATF’s Phoenix field division…

Arizona straddles a lucrative and heavily trafficked smuggling corridor. Organized criminal networks haul drugs and illegal immigrants north, and spirit guns and cash profits south to Mexico.

The 53-count indictment alleged that from September 2009 to December last year the defendants conspired to purchase hundreds of guns, including Kalashnikov rifles, a weapon of choice for cartel enforcers in Mexico.

It’s the weapon of choice for military-style operations worldwide.

Criminal indictments handed down in the case charged defendants with crimes including conspiracy to obtain a firearm for drug trafficking offense, and making false statements in connection with the acquisition of firearms.

A conviction for conspiracy carries a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison, while making a false statement, five years…

The gun bust comes a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa in Mexico, and restated the United States’ support for Calderon’s drive to crush the cartels.

Clinton acknowledged the role the vast U.S. demand for illegal drugs and the flow of U.S. weapons south across the border to drug smugglers were major contributors to the violence.

Acknowledged, eh? Well, that accomplishes a lot doesn’t it.

Paranoid nutballs and their NRA allies may whine all the way to the next Tuscon-style crime scene; but, the traffic in weapons needs to be as thoroughly regulated as public safety demands. It doesn’t matter if the motivation is sport or safety – though the number of murdered spouses is daunting – fear of what follows is why we get to vote. Someone writes a lousy regulation, throw the bum out.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Former House of Representatives Republican Leader Tom DeLay was sentenced to three years in prison on Monday after a jury found him guilty of money laundering and conspiracy.

Senior Judge Pat Priest sentenced DeLay, 63, to a five-year sentence for money laundering and three years for conspiracy for a scheme to illegally funnel money to Republican Texas candidates in 2002.

The judge allowed DeLay to serve 10 years probation in lieu of the five-year term, but ordered him to serve the three-year term with no probation.

Due to a potentially lengthy appeals process, it could be years before DeLay serves time, prosecutor Gary Cobb said.

Golly. There’s a surprise. The judicial system helping keep a pol out of prison.

DeLay, dubbed “The Hammer” for his hard-driving style, was found guilty on November 24 of conspiring to illegally funnel $190,000 in corporate campaign donations to Republican candidates for the Texas Legislature in the 2002 elections…

“Corporate contributions are illegal in Texas, and you can’t give them to candidates directly and you can’t give them to candidates indirectly,” Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg said.

Republican hacks and their Supreme Court flunkies are working hard to change that, nationwide.

Now, where the crap did Dad put Texas?

Flocks of birds falling en masse from the sky in Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky and even Sweden is strange, but these mysterious mass deaths don’t hold a candle to the “Kentucky Meat Shower” of 1876 when it comes to avian oddities.

“Flesh Descending in a Shower. An Astounding Phenomenon in Kentucky – Fresh Meat Like Mutton or Venison Falling From A Clear Sky,” read the headline in the New York Times on March 10, 1876.

A second Times article the next day provided more detail on the strange occurrence.

“Mrs. Crouch, of Olympian Springs, Ky., was employed in the open air and under a particular clear sky, in the celebration of those mysterious rites by which the housewife transmutes scraps of meat, bones and effete overshoes into soap,” it said. “Suddenly, there descended upon her a gentle shower of meat.”

For a couple of minutes, it continued, big pieces of meat, three or four inches square, fell all over Mrs. Crouch’s yard. The meat “appeared to be perfectly fresh.”

The incident was corroborated for the New York Times by two sources – one Mr. Harrison Gill “whose veracity is unquestionable” and a correspondent of the Louisville Commercial newspaper…

After examining several specimens of meat, one scientist determined what fell out of the sky was in fact of “animal origin” (apparently he didn’t trust the taste buds of the locals). Therefore “the Kentucky shower was a veritable ‘meat’ shower.” Beyond that, he admitted that he had no explanation.

However, he relayed the most popular local theory: a large pack of buzzards must have flown over the area after having eaten some dead horses, then one of the buzzards disgorged himself and the others followed suit, (as is their custom, according to the journal).

The scientist reported that similar occurrences with buzzards had been known to happen in the past, so “it would seem that the whole matter is capable of reasonable and simple explanation, and we may expect to hear of similar downfalls in other localities.”

If you add the religious fervor of some vegans to the festering sump of bible-thumping True Believers, you probably could come up with a revival movement to counter the KoolAid Party.

The planned overthrow of the United States government ended rather prosaically this fall, with a giant pile of mashed-up trucks in a muddy scrap yard a mile or so off the Interstate.

The crew at Alter Metal Recycling has been piling up the old trucks since the summer and sending them to Alabama, for melting down and reincarnation as everything from cars to washers and dryers.

The process is pretty standard, said Troy Brooks, the yard supervisor. But these trucks were a little different…

In certain circles in the mid-’90s, among those inclined to keep an eye out for black helicopters, they were more than just rumors. To them, the presence of 700 military-looking trucks bearing Soviet-bloc markings in a weed-strewn lot north of Gulfport was clear proof of a United Nations-brokered plan to take over the United States.

The specific outlines of such a plot were rather vague. But conspiracy-cult radio shows and right-wing fringe newsletters delivered somber reports about the vehicles, speaking of armored tanks and secret roads and the role of the vehicles in the establishment of a New World Order…

The apparent threat to national security was broadcast so far and wide that one night in 1994 Timothy J. McVeigh himself broke into the yard to examine the vehicles firsthand. He went away disappointed.

But the real tale behind the trucks, as is often the case, turns out to be more interesting than the conspiracy.

RTFA. A cautionary tale of one after another business scheme falling apart. Little forethought, less expertise, get-rich-quick schemes spinning from Germany’s reunification and more.

In the end, the vehicles mostly sat unwanted in the lot beside Highway 49, next to the Friendly Pawn Shop and across the way from a discount liquor store. The conspiracy theories dwindled, as did the visits by customs officials.

The rusting accelerated after Hurricane Katrina, and for various reasons, including a civil court judgment, the expiration of a trade license and the fact that nobody was interested in rust-covered trucks, Mr. Chawafaty decided to scrap them.

Frank Koval – participant in portions of the schemes – learned about their impending demise by reading about it in the newspaper like anyone else.

He laughed about the episode – failed business schemes, absurd conspiracy theories, all ending up as so much scrap to be melted down and recast as something useful. One can only hope as much ever results from future meltdowns of the Republican Tea Parties.

A Travis County jury today found former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay guilty of political money laundering charges relating to a corporate money swap in the 2002 elections.

The verdict came down five years after DeLay was forced to step down as the second most powerful Republican in the U.S. House. The charges also led DeLay to resign from his Sugar Land congressional seat in 2006.

DeLay was accused of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. On the conspiracy charge, DeLay faces a sentence of two to 20 years in prison and five to 99 years or life in prison on the money laundering count…

At the center of the case against DeLay was an exchange of $190,000 in corporate donations to TRMPAC for an equal amount of money donated by individuals to the Republican National Committee. The RNC money was given to seven Texas candidates specified by TRMPAC.

Corporate money cannot be used in candidate campaigns in Texas.

Not that it’s a problem any longer in national elections – thanks to the Republican/Roberts Supreme Court.

Still, it’s nice to a little corruption recognized for the slime and crime that it is.

NASA’s former chief of staff has pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge stemming from a $600,000 contract awarded by the space agency to Mississippi State University, a client of his consulting firm.

Courtney Stadd, NASA’s chief of staff and White House liaison from 2001 to 2003, pleaded guilty to one conspiracy charge in a nine-count indictment in federal court in Gulfport, said Sheila Wilbanks, a U.S. attorney’s office spokeswoman.

He faces up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000 at sentencing…Wilbanks said.

Stadd was indicted in December 2009 on charges that included conspiracy, false statements, false claims, obstructing a grand jury and fraud. He had faced 55 years if convicted of all counts…Don’t you love plea deals?

Prosecutors say Stadd conspired with Liam Sarsfield, NASA’s former chief deputy engineer in Washington. Sarsfield pleaded guilty in November to one charge against him: acts affecting a personal financial interest. Sarsfield controlled a $1.5 million fund and designed contracts that wouldn’t have to be put out for bid.

A Republican favorite: no-bid contracts. That’s how Bush and Cheney ran the whole Iraq War.

He steered them where he wanted them to go, including to Mississippi State and a company in Ohio, prosecutors said, netting himself about $270,000 in illegal profits.

Stadd began conspiring with Sarsfield in 2004 to direct the $600,000 contract to MSU, which then subcontracted $450,000 to Stadd’s consulting business, Capitol Solutions, prosecutors said. The consulting firm allegedly paid Sarsfield $87,752 on that contract…

Stadd already had been convicted of an ethics violation for steering a different contract for almost $10 million to the university. He was sentenced last year to three years’ probation in that case.

Stadd was Bush’s appointee to lead the transition in NASA for his administration and oversight. Well done, George.