URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: (3rd update 9:15 p.m. EDT U.S.A.) Alleged Zeek Rewards operator Paul R. Burks has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Charlotte, N.C., on charges of wire and mail fraud, wire- and mail-fraud conspiracy and tax-fraud conspiracy.
Burks, 67, of Lexington, N.C., is the third Zeek figure to be charged criminally.
On the tax front, the grand jury charged that Zeek Rewards, the MLM arm, and Zeekler, the penny-auction arm, failed to file corporate tax returns. So did Rex Venture Group LLC, the parent company.
Burks and “others” caused fraudulent 1099 forms to be issued for the 2011 tax year, which caused victim-investors to file false tax returns that reported “phantom” and “fictional ” income. Burks “engaged attorneys and tax professionals to legitimize the issuance of the 1099s,” the indictment alleged.
Meanwhile, the grand jury alleged, “Burks and others paid themselves large salaries and other payments from victim-investors’ funds and did not keep accurate and complete records of the payments.”
And, the indictment alleged, Burks and other used multiple bank accounts and offshore payment processors “to deposit funds from victim-investors and to make Ponzi payments” to them.
BULLETIN: In a follow-up to July’s “Operation Orion,” federal authorities in Brazil today conducted more TelexFree-related raids based on evidence uncovered during the first raids.
A statement in Portuguese by Receita Federal — the Brazilian equivalent of the IRS — said it was aided by Brazilan federal police (Polícia Federal) and federal prosecutors (Ministério Público Federal). TelexFree is known as Ympactus in Brazil.
Search warrants were executed and assets were seized, according to the statement.
Here is the entire Receita Federal statement (italics added):
Operação ORION: Receita Federal combate esquema de pirâmide financeira no Espírito Santo
A Receita Federal do Brasil (RFB), a Polícia Federal (PF) e o Ministério Público Federal (MPF) deflagram nesta sexta-feira (24 de outubro de 2014) uma segunda fase da “Operação ORION”, com o objetivo de combater fraudes envolvendo a prática de pirâmide financeira promovida por empresas sediadas no Espírito Santo.
O pedido de medidas cautelares adicionais decorre da obtenção de diversos documentos e do surgimento de novas informações durante a operação ORION, deflagrada em 24 de julho de 2014.
As ações ocorrem nos municípios de Vitória e Vila Velha, onde estão sendo cumpridos quatro mandados de busca e apreensão na sede de uma empresa e em três residências de envolvidos. Além dos Mandados de Busca, foi autorizado o sequestro de valores e de bens imóveis.
Participam da operação 12 servidores da Receita Federal e 20 policiais federais.
A operação realiza-se como mais um esforço para combater um esquema de investimento conhecido como pirâmide financeira que se sustenta a partir da cobrança de taxas de adesão de divulgadores de um serviço de telefonia. A rede construída pelas empresas não condiciona os ganhos dos divulgadores à venda ou revenda dos serviços de telefonia, mas principalmente à angariação de novas adesões à rede, o que torna o esquema lucrativo somente para os membros que figuram no topo da pirâmide. O número de divulgadores prejudicados com a ação das empresas já ultrapassa um milhão de pessoas.
A empresa está sendo investigada por diversos órgãos públicos no Brasil e no exterior. Em junho de 2013, a Justiça Estadual do Acre determinou a vedação de novos cadastros de divulgadores e indisponibilidade de todos os bens dos sócios de uma das empresas.
Há indícios do cometimento de crimes tributários na atuação dos divulgadores, crime contra a economia popular, com suposta formação de pirâmide, estelionato e crime de induzimento à especulação.
U.S. authorities have called TelexFree a billion-dollar Ponzi- and pyramid scheme. Some TelexFree members have alleged that TelexFree engaged in racketeering.
Four uniformed New York City police officers were ambushed yesterday afternoon by a murderous man wielding an 18.5-in. hatchet. The sneak attack occurred a day after the sneak attack on Canada’s Parliament in which a duteous sentry standing watch over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the War Memorial in Ottawa was shot and killed.
In the New York incident, one officer presumptively was brutally cleaved in the head, another in the arm. Both are hospitalized. The two other officers reportedly shot the attacker dead. A bystander exercising the freedom to be out in public reportedly was hit by a stray bullet. All four officers are rookies. They were posing for a picture when attacked, according to reports.
This, friends, is what anarchy looks like in freeze frame. It can happen in a matter of seconds. The danger is that it can be copy-catted in random locations. At least for now, whether a hardware-store hatchet served as a cheap substitute for the swords of ISIS is just another imponderable.
As an official matter, terrorism has neither been ruled in nor ruled out in the New York attack. When a man swinging a hatchet like a baseball bat goes after patrol cops on the streets of Queens in broad daylight, however, it’s hard to see it as anything other than an attack on U.S. society itself.
New York, of course, was a target of grandiose terrorists who caused airliners to crash into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, destroying both human and brick-and-mortar symbols of freedom and Democracy. The hatchet attack suggests New York City and other cities now may need to be on the lookout for terrorists (officially designated or otherwise) who are less grandiose in choice of weaponry and their instant aims, but equally committed to destroying the symbols of order and the guardians of that order — in this case, four cops on the beat.
Video of the incident appears to show the attacker could have carved up a civilian on the sidewalk, but darted around him and headed straight for the people wearing badges. But before you get the notion that the hatchet man was interested in giving the pedestrian an even break and didn’t hold him accountable for grievances, remember that the 9/11 attackers also sought to aim planes at the U.S. Capitol or the White House and ultimately struck the Pentagon.
Despite the fact he thankfully was left physically unharmed, the New York pedestrian nevertheless counts as a casualty: By attacking the cops, the hatchet man was attacking the pedestrian by proxy, just as the American people were attacked by proxy on 9/11 through attacks on the symbols of commerce and freedom itself and the Canadian people were attacked by proxy in this week’s attack against the soldier and Parliament.
We’re sitting here this morning remembering that Eric Frein, who allegedly ambushed cops at their home barracks in Pennsylvania under cover of darkness last month, is still on the lam.
Regardless of the varied corrupt ideologies and the tortured psychologies or malignant philosophies of the attackers, all of these attacks are attacks against the keepers of freedom and the people who benefit from that freedom. That some of the attackers chose over-the-counter weapons rather than hijacked airliners matters only in terms of the instant body count and the size of the headline font. The mind-set is the same, even if the official casualty list includes fewer names.
It’s terrorism at a variety-store discount, the same thing the world observed at the 2013 Boston Marathon. But in New York City yesterday, it was a garden hatchet, not a pressure cooker.
