Kim Williams: Source: Kaufman County Sheriff’s Office.
BULLETIN: Kim Williams, the wife of a former local Justice of the Peace, is listed as an inmate at the Kaufman County Jail in Texas on charges of capital murder in the shooting deaths of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland, his wife Cynthia McLelland — and Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse.
McClelland’s office had prosecuted Eric Williams, the husband of Kim Williams, on theft charges.
Kim Williams, 46, is being held on $10 million surety bond, according to the jail docket.
Eric Williams, 46, has been jailed since April 13 on charges of making a terroristic threat. His wife has implicated him in the shooting deaths, according to an affidavit filed by the Kaufman County Sheriff’s Office.
BULLETIN: (UPDATED 2:06 P.M. EDT) The FBI and the U.S. Secret Service are investigating a letter sent to President Obama that “preliminarily tested positive for ricin,” the FBI says.
Ricin is a deadly poison. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., also reportedly was sent a letter that preliminarily tested positive for ricin.
The President has been briefed on the letters, White House Spokesman Jay Carney said minutes ago. Earlier, the FBI said “[t]here is no indication of a connection to the attack in Boston.”
At least two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday. The bombs killed three people, including an eight-year-old boy, and injured dozens. Some of those injured suffered the loss of limbs.
This is the FBI statement in full (italics added):
A second letter containing a granular substance that preliminarily tested positive for ricin was received at an offsite mail screening facility. The envelope, addressed to the President, was immediately quarantined by U.S. Secret Service personnel, and a coordinated investigation with the FBI was initiated. It is important to note that operations at the White House have not been affected as a result of the investigation.
Additionally, filters at a second government mail screening facility preliminarily tested positive for ricin this morning. Mail from that facility is being tested.
Any time suspicious powder is located in a mail facility, field tests are conducted. The field and other preliminary tests can produce inconsistent results. Any time field tests indicate the possibility of a biological agent, the material is sent to an accredited laboratory for further analysis. Only a full analysis performed at an accredited laboratory can determine the presence of a biological agent such as ricin. Those tests are currently being conducted and generally take 24 to 48 hours.
The investigation into these letters remains ongoing, and more letters may still be received. There is no indication of a connection to the attack in Boston.
The U.S. Capitol Police said that an investigation is under way into the the letter allegedly sent to Wicker, although the agency did not identify the Senator by name. Here is a statement, dated yesterday, by the Capitol Police (italics added):
Washington, D.C. — Earlier today the United States Capitol Police (USCP) was notified by the Senate mail handling facility that it received an envelope containing a white granular substance. The envelope was immediately quarantined by the facility’s personnel and USCP HAZMAT responded to the scene. Preliminary tests indicate the substance found was Ricin.
The material is being forwarded to an accredited laboratory for further analysis.
The USCP is partnering with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate this incident. This is an ongoing investigation.
This is a controlled event at an off-site facility. Operations at the Capitol Complex have not been affected as a result of the preliminary investigation.
We will continue to keep our stakeholders apprised of any new information as it develops.
UPDATE 2:06 P.M. CNN is reporting that the letters read, “To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance.”
And, according to CNN, the letters were signed, “I am KC and I approve this message.”
The alleged signature on the letters are reminiscent of disclaimers on political ads in the United States.
The state of Idaho says the Profitable Sunrise “program” used investors in the state to recruit other investors.
UPDATED 9:44 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Add Idaho to the list of U.S. states and provinces in Canada that have issued Investor Alerts or cease-and-desist orders against the Profitable Sunrise HYIP “program.”
And because Profitable Sunrise also was in the business of recruiting pitchmen to sell unregistered securities in addition to offering preposterous returns, Idaho’s Department of Finance noted that the pitchmen could have exposure.
“Those investors who receive compensation for soliciting other investors may themselves be subject to the licensing and anti-fraud provisions of state and federal securities laws,” said Gavin Gee, director of the Finance Department.
Regulatory filings in Colorado say that Profitable Sunrise was pitched in part through classified-advertising sites.
One ad for the “program” in South Dakota claimed this: “Finally we have the bomb.”
In court filings on April 4, the SEC said Profitable Sunrise pitchmen may have pushed the “program” without even knowing for whom they were working.
“Profitable Sunrise operates for the benefit of unknown individuals and/or organizations doing businesses through companies formed in the Czech Republic and using bank accounts in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, and China, among other places,” the SEC alleged.
Tens of millions of dollars may have been directed to Profitable Sunrise, the SEC said.
URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: There are multiple reports of explosions at the Boston Marathon, with accompanying reports of injuries.
U.S. television networks have interrupted regularly scheduled programming to bring breaking news. The situation is fluid. The cause is not yet known . . .
The Boston Marathon is held each year on Patriot’s Day and is one of the most famous foot races in the world.
UPDATE: APPROX. 4:10 P.M. The Boston Police Department, via Twitter, is reporting at least 23 injured and two dead.
UPDATE: APPROX. 4:18 P.M. NBC News, via Twitter, is reporting that “Small homemade bomb is preliminary cause of explosion at Boston Marathon, law enforcement officials tell NBC News.”
UPDATE: APPROX. 4:50 P.M. On NBC, Massachussets Gov. Deval Patrick described today’s events at the marathon as an “attack.”
UPDATE APPROX 5 P.M. The Associated Press is reporting that “cellphone service has been shut down in the Boston area to prevent any potential remote detonations of explosives.” The report quotes “a law enforcement official.”
UPDATED 9:11 P.M. EDT (APRIL 17, U.S.A.) Some Profitable Sunrise investors wired money to entities in Australia and Panama, according to new filings in the SEC’s pyramid-scheme and fraud case.
The new filings, dated today, identify those entities as Technocash Limited of Sydney and Trackford Business Corp. of Panama City. Earlier filings named four other entities that the SEC says received funds from Profitable Sunrise investors: Melland Company SRO of the Czech Republic; Color Shock SRO of the Czech Republic; Solutions Company SRO of the Czech Republic; and Fortuna-K SRO of the Czech Republic.
Melland, Color Shock, Solutions and Fortuna-K all have been named relief defendants. How the SEC intends to proceed against Technocash and Trackford was not immediately clear today. Various state regulators in the United States have said that Profitable Sunrise traded on Bible verse.
Profitable Sunrise operated as Inter Reef LTD through a “mail drop” in England, and its director, Agnes Jouaneau, “is a resident of the Seychelles. She is director of several dozen other UK companies,” according to court filings.
“Having heard from witnesses, examined documents, considered the legal precedents and the arguments of counsel, the Court finds that the SEC has established a prima facie case that Inter Reef violated Sections 5(a), 5(c), and 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 (‘Securities Act’) [15 U.S.C. §§ 77e(a), 77e(c), and 77q(a)], Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (‘Exchange Act’) [15 U.S.C. § 78j(b)], and Exchange Act Rule 10b-5 [17 C.F.R. § 240.10b-5],” wrote U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Thrash Jr.
Thrash has approved a preliminary injunction and continued an asset freeze in the Profitable Sunrise case.
A proceeding was held in open court today, according to the new filings. At that 20-minute proceeding, “no one” appeared for Profitable Sunrise or the relief defendants.
Evidence entered by the SEC, according to Thrash, supports findings that Profitable Sunrise:
“offered a series of passive investments with low minimum investments claiming to pay interest rates varying between 1.6 percent and 2.7 percent per business day . . .”
Sold “securities” as defined under federal securities law . . .
“failed to register those securities with the SEC, and no exemption from registration has been proven . . .”
Sold “unregistered securities through misrepresentations and omissions of material fact” and that the sale of those securities “constitutes a device, scheme and artifice to defraud.”
A minute entry from today’s proceeding before Thash suggests that the SEC has deposed Profitable Sunrise pitchman Anthony M. Infante of Florida and that at least a portion of his deposition was read into the record today.
The FBI has a photo of Scott London, left, accepting cash in an insider-trading sting. Source: “Exhibit A” from FBI criminal complaint filed today against London.
BULLETIN: (UPDATED 4:44 P.M. EDT U.S.A.) The SEC has gone to federal court in the Central District of California, accusing a former KPMG “lead partner” and auditor of KPMG’s Herbalife account of insider trading by providing nonpublic information on Herbalife and other companies to a golfing buddy.
Scott London, 50, of Agoura Hills, Calif., was fired last week by KPMG. He now stands formally accused of passing information unlawfully to Bryan Shaw, who also has been charged. Shaw, 52, lives in Lake Sherwood, Calif., and operates a jewelry business in Encino, the SEC said.
The men met at a country club and became close friends, the SEC charged.
London has claimed he wanted to help Shaw because Shaw’s business was struggling, the SEC said.
At a minimum, however, London’s alleged misdeeds have resulted in civil and criminal liability for himself, while creating a PR crisis for KPMG. At the same time, it put KPMG client Herbalife in the awkward position of having to explain why its stock stopped trading briefly Tuesday morning while its auditor was handling fallout from London’s actions and why it suddenly had no auditor.
At 2:58 p.m. EDT today, Herbalife’s stock was showing a gain of 3.68 percent. The company said on Tuesday that KPMG had resigned its account after “it had concluded it was not independent because of alleged insider trading in Herbalife’s securities by one of KPMG’s former partners.”
Among the SEC’s alarming allegations is that Shaw paid London “at least $50,000 in cash that was usually delivered in bags outside of his Encino, Calif. jewelry store.”
For good measure, the SEC alleged, Shaw also provided London “an expensive Rolex watch as well as other jewelry, meals, and tickets to entertainment events.”
“London was honored with the highest trust of public companies, and he crassly betrayed that trust for bags of cash and a Rolex,” said George S. Canellos, acting director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.
Using information provided by London, Shaw made more “more than $1.2 million in illicit profits trading ahead of earnings or merger announcements,” the SEC said.
And, the SEC said, London has been charged criminally. (See photo above from FBI criminal complaint filed today against London, who is charged with criminal conspiracy to commit securities fraud through insider trading. Link to the complaint is in the Comments thread below.)
On at least one occasion, “London disclosed nonpublic information in the presence of others during a golf outing,” the SEC charged.
“Prior to public announcements, Shaw received material non-public information from London about numerous earnings announcements and releases of financial results for Herbalife, Skechers [USA Inc.] and Deckers [Outdoor Corp.],” the SEC charged.
Shaw “grossed profits of more than $714,000 from trading based on confidential financial data about Herbalife, Skechers, and Deckers,” the SEC alleged.
But the abuse didn’t stop there, the SEC alleged.
London “also gained access to inside information about impending mergers involving two former KPMG clients – RSC Holdings [Inc.] and Pacific Capital [Bancorp],” the SEC alleged. “London tipped Shaw with the confidential details. Shaw made nearly $192,000 by purchasing RSC Holdings stock the day before its Dec. 15, 2011, merger announcement. He made more than $365,000 in illicit profits from his well-timed purchase of Pacific Capital securities prior to a merger announcement on March 9, 2012.”
“As a leader at a major accounting firm, London’s conduct was an egregious violation of his ethical and professional duties,” said Michele Wein Layne, director of the SEC’s Los Angeles Regional Office.
“KPMG advised the Company it resigned as Herbalife’s independent accountant solely due to the impairment of KPMG’s independence resulting from its now former partner’s alleged unlawful activities and not for any reason related to Herbalife’s financial statements, its accounting practices, the integrity of Herbalife’s management or for any other reason,” Herbalife said on Tuesday.
Herbalife has been the subject of a battle between titans Carl Icahn, who is bullish on the company, and Bill Ackman, who claims Herbalife is a pyramid scheme. On its website, Herbalife denies it is either a pyramid scheme or a Ponzi scheme.
Joe Borg of the Alabama Securities Commission. From: WSFA news report.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Alabama was one of the first U.S. states to take action against the Profitable Sunrise HYIP “program,” issuing both an Investor Alert and a cease-and-desist order last month. The C&D lists two alleged “agents” of Profitable Sunrise, demonstrating that a “program” can create problems for pitchmen, perhaps even as the “program” operators make a getaway or disappear into the darkest corners of the Internet.
Profitable Sunrise had at least five purported investment plans, including one dubbed the “Long Haul” that promised a payout of 2.7 percent a day.
Whether the bizarrely named “Long Haul” plan was a deliberate taunt at regulators and possibly even the pitchmen who helped the scheme gain a head of steam remains unclear.
Listed as agents in the Alabama order were Melton McClanahan and AdamYork. “An investigation of the company’s actions revealed that the men allegedly promoted at least five different ‘investment plans’ through a website used to promote Profitable Sunrise investment program and disseminate information to potential investors regarding the company’s various investment opportunities,” the Alabama Securities Commission said in the order.
Also listed in the order were purported Profitable Sunrise operators Roman Novak and Radoslav Novak. In a complaint last week, the SEC said that “Profitable Sunrise operates for the benefit of unknown individuals and/or organizations doing businesses through companies formed in the Czech Republic and using bank accounts in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, and China, among other places.”
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Joe Borg of the Alabama Securities Commission (ASC) has dealt with massive fraud schemes that traded on faith, including the Greater Ministries International Church caper in the 1990s that led to criminal convictions against five individuals.
Back in 1999, ASC and the Ohio Division of Securities filed a joint complaint in federal court in Florida to shut GMI down. The purported “opportunity” took in more than $550 million by touting “divinely-inspired investments in the foreign currency market and gold, silver and diamond mines in Africa and the Caribbean,” ASC said at the time.
Harvey Douglas Goff, the Utah man who engaged in a bizarre hectoring campaign against public officials at the local, state and federal levels, has been sentenced to 36 months in federal prison and ordered to stay away from “sovereign citizen” groups for three years after his release.
Goff is expected to begin his prison sentence by May 30, after being permitted to self-surrender. He pleaded guilty in December to obstruction of justice.
U.S. District Judge David Nuffer sentenced Goff Monday, ordering three years’ supervised release in addition to the prison term.
Among other things, Goff was accused of filing a false lien that sought $53 trillion. He also was accused of asserting that a “judge had provided him with tens of millions of dollars in cash in ‘suspicious’ transactions,” federal prosecutors said.
“Sovereign citizens” have been known to try to intimidate public officials or turn the tables on them by submitting fraudulent reports to the IRS.
As part of a plea agreement, Goff “admitted that between April and July of 2010 he endeavored to obstruct and influence the administration of justice in U.S. Tax Court,” federal prosecutors said. “He admitted that he repeatedly filed false and fictitious forms in a national database.”
Some of Goff’s legal woes began after a traffic stop by police in Ogden. Goff retaliated by filing false liens for extraordinary sums, prosecutors said.
At one point, prosecutors said, Goff claimed “diplomatic immunity.”
It was not immediately clear whether the spammer was a bot. What is clear is that the would-be poster used the identity of “telexfree” and sought to plant links to a YouTube video that appears to be selling “leads” for TelexFree and other MLMs. The spams used a gmail address that (in part) included this phrase: “LoBuzcy.”
On March 31 (Easter Sunday), the PP Blog reported that an apparent Telexfree boat-shark was seeking to recruit members of the collapsed Profitable Sunrise “program”:
The SEC later said Profitable Sunrise was an international pyramid scheme.
Now, someone appears to be trying to ride on the PP Blog’s bandwidth to drive traffic to a third-party leads provider for the TelexFree “program.”
This is one of those days that MLM just makes people want to vomit. The would-be spammer sought to use both flattery and derision to drive traffic to the YouTube video for the purported TelexFree “leads”:
Example of flattery: “Excellent write-up. I definitely love this website. Thanks!” the spammer wrote.
Example of derision: “The next time I read a blog, Hopefully it doesn’t disappoint me as much as this one,” the spammer wrote.
More background: On Feb. 15, BehindMLM.com reported that TelexFree was under criminal investigation in Brazil.
So, what we have here is either a bot or a human being serial-spamming the PP Blog for a leads “program” that:
Apparently doesn’t care if TelexFree is under criminal investigation if there is money to be made.
Apparently doesn’t care that TelexFree is being pitched to Profitable Sunrise victims.
Apparently doesn’t care that the first story targeted in the spam campaign was about the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme as investigated by the U.S. Secret Service.
Apparently believes that it is entitled to ride on bandwidth provided by Google and the PP Blog because there is money to be made through a purported MLM “leads” program for a company under criminal investigation.
Shares of MLM company Herbalife were halted this morning after its auditor — KPMG — issued a statement yesterday that it was informed “late last week” that “the partner in charge of KPMG’s audit practice in our Los Angeles business unit was involved in providing non-public client information to a third party, who then used that information in stock trades involving several West Coast companies.”
KPMG did not specifically mention Herbalife in its statement. Nor did the auditing firm say who informed it that its “partner in charge” was involved in chicanery. KPMG did, however, say that it had fired the partner and was “resigning” two clients.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Herbalife shares were “halted minutes after the opening bell due to news pending.”
Separately, the New York Times is reporting that Herbalife “is poised to disclose on Tuesday that KPMG will have to resign as the company’s auditor.”
That disclosure now has occurred — and trading in Herbalife shares has resumed.
Herbalife said this morning in a statement that KPMG wallked away from the company after stating “it had concluded it was not independent because of alleged insider trading in Herbalife’s securities by one of KPMG’s former partners.”
That former partner was the KPMG engagement partner on Herbalife’s audit until April 5, Herbalife said.
“KPMG advised the Company it resigned as Herbalife’s independent accountant solely due to the impairment of KPMG’s independence resulting from its now former partner’s alleged unlawful activities and not for any reason related to Herbalife’s financial statements, its accounting practices, the integrity of Herbalife’s management or for any other reason,” Herbalife said.
Herbalife has been the subject of a battle between titans Carl Icahn, who is bullish on the company, and Bill Ackman, who claims Herbalife is a pyramid scheme. On its website, Herbalife denies it is either a pyramid scheme or a Ponzi scheme.
“As our first woman Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher succeeded against all the odds, and the real thing about Margaret Thatcher is that she didn’t just lead our country, she saved our country. I believe she’ll go down as the greatest British peacetime Prime Minister.”
U.S. President Barack Obama described Thatcher as “one of the great champions of freedom and liberty.”
America, he said in a statement, “has lost a true friend.”
“Here in America, many of us will never forget her standing shoulder to shoulder with President Reagan, reminding the world that we are not simply carried along by the currents of history—we can shape them with moral conviction, unyielding courage and iron will,” Obama said.
