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Tag: Janet Napolitano

  • EDITORIAL: Alleged LAX Gunman And Conspiracy Theorist Paul Anthony Ciancia Becomes Author Of One Of History’s Unwanted Footnotes

    Paul Ciancia
    Paul Ciancia: Source: FBI.

    UPDATED 11:04 A.M. ET (NOV. 4, U.S.A.) Gerardo I. Hernandez, a 39-year-old Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer described as a loving husband and father and dutiful employee, gave his life for his country Friday. In an awful and unwanted footnote, he became the first TSA officer killed in the line of duty.

    Officer Hernandez thus indelibly became linked in history to figures such as Edwin C. Shanahan, the first FBI agent to die in the line of duty (1925), and William Craig, the first member of the U.S. Secret Service killed while doing his job (1902). Shanahan was murdered by a car thief wielding an automatic pistol. Craig died in a horrific collision between a streetcar and carriage while protecting President Theodore Roosevelt. Like El Salvador-born Hernandez, Craig was not born in the United States. He was born in Scotland.

    A full fact set has not yet emerged in the death of Hernandez. What is clear is that Paul Anthony Ciancia, 23, was arrested after being shot by police Friday at Los Angeles International Airport. He initially was identified by the FBI as the suspect in a shooting death and the wounding of others at the airport. On Saturday, he was charged with Murder of a Federal Officer and Violence at International Airports.

    Ciancia used a “.223 caliber M&P 15 assault rife” he’d pulled from his bag at the TSA checkpoint inside Terminal 3, the FBI said in an affidavit filed yesterday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

    Less clear is Ciancia’s full motive for making war against officers of his own country. Clues, however, are beginning to emerge.

    TSA officers flatly needed to die, according to a handwritten letter allegedly signed by Ciancia and cited in the FBI affidavit.

    The deaths at LAX would “instill fear” in the “traitorous minds” of TSA officers who survived, according to the letter cited by the FBI.

    TSA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). TSA officers guard passenger safety at LAX, one of the busiest airports in the world. Like many other facilities at which TSA officers protect passengers within the U.S. network of transportation and commerce, LAX is one of America’s great symbols of freedom.

    DHS was formed after the 9/11 terrorists hijacked four airliners and made prisoners of passengers engaged in the the simple act of pursuing their freedom. Three of the planes were used as weapons of mass destruction and deliberately flown into the World Trade Centers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. The fourth plane, intended to become another weapon of mass destruction in Washington, crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers began to understand what was happening and tried to overpower their murderous al-Qaeda hijackers.

    Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the four-pronged attack, the final minutes of their lives spent in unimaginable terror.

    Similar feelings about dying in a horrifying way were experienced by passengers and workers at LAX Friday: Ciancia, an American from New Jersey living in Los Angeles, allegedly was inside the airport with a weapon that resembled a machine gun. After hearing police bark commands to get down, passengers and workers fearing for their lives hit the floor and scrambled for cover. Some people cloistered themselves in restrooms and restaurants, torturing themselves with thoughts they’d made the wrong bet in the fog of sudden war and had corralled themselves as cattle, becoming more convenient targets for the slaughter.

    In an atmosphere of panic and perhaps fearing one or more gunmen also could be packing bombs, some people stampeded for the exits. Once outdoors, they remained fixed on the danger behind them and obliviously sprinted into traffic lanes. They could have survived the initial siege, only to have been killed by an approaching taxicab or perhaps even by a taxiing plane. Chaos breeds such tortuous fates. Events at LAX on Friday were a sort of personal 9/11 for many thousands of people, a mad dash to get out of a war zone.

    Ciancia had “five magazine clips of ammunition for his assault rifle,” the FBI said, noting that the letter specifically addressed TSA employees and painted him as a man on a mission.

    And Ciancia made what appears to be a formal declaration in the letter, in which he allegedly stated he’d made “the conscious decision to try to kill” multiple TSA employees.

    He started by firing “multiple rounds” at Hernandez, who was on duty and wearing his uniform, according to the affidavit. The officer was shot at “point blank range,” with Ciancia next moving toward an escalator.

    Upon peering back from the escalator at Hernandez and perhaps noticing movement, Ciancia “returned and shot the wounded officer again,” according to the affidavit.

    “The TSA officer was fatally wounded,” according to the affidavit.

    Ciancia then opened fire on “at least two other uniformed, on-duty TSA employees and one civilian passenger, all of whom sustained gunshot wounds,” according to the affidavit.

    A “sergeant and an officer of the Los Angeles Airport Police” shot Ciancia after pursuing him, according to the affidavit.

    As worried Americans watched CNN and other networks Friday for news about the attack, they heard Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti describing Ciancia as a man with enough ammunition to “have literally killed everyone in that terminal.”

    Americans also heard Leon Saryan, who was exercising his freedom at the airport Friday, tell of his chilling encounter with Ciancia. As reported by NBC News (italics added):

    . . . a witness said the shooter, calmly walking through the terminal with his weapon, approached him with a one-word question.

    “All he said was, ‘TSA?’ Just like that,” Leon Saryan told MSNBC.

    Saryan appears to have been permitted to survive for one reason and one reason only. He was not “TSA.”

    In Ciancia’s mind, this apparently meant that Saryan was not the enemy, meaning he was not the U.S. government or one of its employees. The young man apparently also had decided that he needed to kill federal officers in response to a perceived encroachment by the “New World Order.”

    Ciancia also referenced “fiat currency,” according to an AP report.

    The Southern Poverty Law Center, quoting a source, reported that Ciancia “also expressed antagonism toward the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its chief until she resigned in August, Janet Napolitano, the source said. Ciancia’s note called former Secretary Napolitano a ‘bull dyke’ and contained the phrase ‘FU Janet Napolitano,’ the source said.”

    The shootings occurred in Terminal 3. In mid-October, explosive devices made of dry ice were found in and around the area of Terminal 2 at LAX. Dicarlo Bennett and Miguel Angel Iniguez were arrested in that incident, which possibly was an excruciatingly mindless prank carried out by two contract workers who never got the memo that things that explode are incompatible with airport safety and the safety of millions of souls who exercise their travel freedom in the skies and at ticket counters and boarding and arrival gates on the ground.

    An actual attack allegedly carried out by Ciancia at the airport occurred just 19 days after the dry-ice incident.

    The Unwanted Footnotes Of Rogues

    In allegedly gunning down Gerardo Hernandez and wounding others, Ciancia joined Martin J. Durkin as the author of a terrible, tragic and unwanted footnote. Durkin was the car thief who shot the FBI’s Shanahan, making him the first FBI agent killed in the line of duty. Special Agent Shanhan was 27 when a Durkin bullet entered his chest and killed him.

    Although Shanahan returned fire, his death was “almost instantaneous,” the FBI said.

    Of course, what happened to Hernandez also reminded Americans of what happened to John Lennon in 1980 at the hands of Mark David Chapman, the author of Lennon’s terrible footnote: first former Beatle to die. Lennon was shot while exercising his freedom to walk in peace at his apartment building in New York City.

    And since it’s November and edging closer to the 50th anniversary (Nov. 22) of one of the greatest crimes in U.S. history, it’s hard not to recall yet-another author of an awful footnote that will live for the ages: Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic President to be elected and the first Catholic President to be assassinated. President Kennedy was killed while exercising his freedom to ride in an open convertible in Dallas. (Watch, listen, learn, remember).

    Martin Luther King Jr. left this world in 1968. The author of his terrible footnote — an assassinated winner of the Nobel Peace Prize — was James Earl Ray. King was exercising his freedom to stand on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tenn.

    Another Senseless Death In America

    TSA officers wear uniforms and badges while conducting passenger screenings, but do not carry arms and have no power of arrest. The phrase “sitting ducks” to describe the typical TSA officer was used during television coverage of the LAX events Friday, leading to questions such as this: If the officers are sitting ducks, what are the passengers? Friday’s shooting death of Hernandez in his workplace — a workplace at which the public congregates while exercising its freedom to fly — naturally has led to questions about whether TSA officers should receive training in firearms and carry guns as a means of protecting themselves and the public.

    The PP Blog has no early answers to these questions. Nor does it understand how a gunman with a high-powered rifle somehow breached LAX security in a fashion that apparently permitted him to hunt uniform-wearing federal officers for sport in full view of the traveling public.

    On this Sunday — after trying to distill all sorts of deeply disturbing information about the death of Officer Hernandez since the news broke Friday — the Blog has reached only one conclusion: Despite his lack of the power of arrest and an employment designation that likely makes him an nonpolice officer, Hernandez should be accorded full police honors, including casket watch, honor guard, funeral commander, pallbearers, flag team and firing party, if consistent with the wishes of his widow.

    It is particularly disturbing that TSA officers trying to prevent the next 9/11 and protect symbols of freedom that are the vulnerable equivalents of the toppled Twin Towers and the damaged and rebuilt/refortified Pentagon have become fodder for late-night comedians and targets of the insipid headline taunts of Matt Drudge.

    Janet Napolitano, now the president of the University of California and a former U.S. Attorney, two-term governor of Arizona and DHS Secretary, was called names that would peel paint while at DHS. The treatment she received from Drudge was a national disgrace that served to fuel animosity toward TSA officers.

    It is one thing to criticize public officials, agencies and employees; it is quite another to subject them to hysterical ridicule. Far too many Americans have been conditioned to believe the TSA consists of gropers and malingerers eager to carry out orders from their Orwellian controllers in Washington.

    Officer Gerardo I. Hernandez was exercising his freedom to be employed and not be harassed — let alone murdered — at his workplace. But this is no ordinary case of workplace violence. No, it is a case in which a self-appointed soldier went hunting for the officer and others like him.

    Hernandez met his awful fate Friday on a beautiful day in Los Angeles, which had served up a day not unlike the one experienced in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. He appears to have been murdered by a lone-wolf domestic terrorist who preemptively sought to paint himself a patriot and great defender of freedom.

    The most deeply disturbing thing about the alleged word choices of Ciancia — the rants against federal employees, “fiat currency,” the Federal Reserve and the “New World Order” — is the striking similarity to rants and conspiracy theories that often appear on the Ponzi boards by other self-styled defenders of freedom.

    Ciancia would have been a perfect recruit in that utterly corrupt universe, a young malcontent in search of an intellectually lazy philosophy that reimagines organized fraud as a noble way to make a living while reimagining federal agents as the bad guys who deserve to suffer.

    With Ciancia, the intellectual and emotional detachment appears to have become so complete that he licensed himself to kill federal agents, create widows and widowers and alter the psychological trajectories of children and thousands of other innocents — all while hijacking the blanket of patriotism and pretending he was a soldier for freedom.

    Rest in Peace, Officer Hernandez.

  • FRIDAY HYIP ODDITIES: (1) Spammer Swipes PP Blog Graphic, Uses It In Bid To Promote LibertyReserve; (2) Other Spammers Target JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid Threads; (3) ‘MoneyMakingBrain’ Calls Blog ‘BIG Idiot’ And ‘Deceptive Unethical Lowlife’

    Here is an imponderable: Is there any ceiling to the absurdities in the HYIP sphere and the destructive force it exercises around the web?

    On Wednesday, the PP Blog received repeated spams from U.S.-based IPs. The spammer used the handle “invest liberty reserve” and targeted two threads, including this one about JSS Tripler 2, a purported “program” that purportedly based its name on JSS Tripler. JSS Tripler is a purported element of JustBeenPaid, an “opportunity” purportedly operated by Frederick Mann that claims it pays a return of 60 percent a month.

    Liberty Reserve is an “offshore” payment processor favored by HYIP schemes, including JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid. Wednesday’s spam bids used purported email addresses at AOL and Hotmail.

    One of the Wednesday spams featured a graphic swiped from PonziNews, once a sister site to the PP Blog. The spammer attempted to use the stolen graphic in his posting bid on the PP Blog.

    It was not the first time the Blog’s graphics had been used in a nefarious way online. On Dec. 12, 2010 — in commemoration of its 1,000th post — the PP Blog recounted a July 2010 story that its Breaking News graphic had been swiped and placed inside a promotion for Data Network Affiliates.

    DNA was a scam associated with huckster Phil Piccolo. The “opportunity”  traded on the names of Oprah Winfrey and Donald Trump and advertised a nonexistent cell-phone plan of unlimited talk and text for $10 a month, an offshore “resorts” scheme and a “mortgage-reduction” scheme — all while tying itself to Christianity, the  U.S. AMBER Alert system of locating abducted children and a purported bid to end world poverty.

    It’s worth noting that some JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid promoters also traded on Winfrey’s name.

    In the same December 2010 commemoration post, the Blog reported that Janet Napolitano, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, had been called names that would peel paint when DHS announced that Walmart had joined the “If you see something, say something” terrorism-awareness campaign. Meanwhile, the Blog reported that some online-fraud schemes had evolved to victimize participants by the tens of thousands — numbers America’s largest sports stadiums could not accommodate.

    The PP Blog no longer owns the PonziNews domain. The Blog suspended publication of the site in 2010, after thieves who used international IPs stole the domain’s content verbatim and posted it on other sites they controlled that had a higher Page Rank than Ponzi News.

    In short, the net effect of the theft was that the PP Blog was being used to create “free” content for thieves who intercepted the traffic of PonziNews. Such piracy schemes are hurting the publishing industry.

    In a separate spam bid on Wednesday, a would-be poster suggesting he represented an HYIP ranking site targeted this PP Blog thread on strange claims associated with “MoneyMakingBrain” in the context of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid.

    The would-be poster purporting to represent the HYIP ranking site complained that the Blog had used the term “HYIP” in the linked story above “21 times” without explaining the meaning of the term.

    “Nice writing job!” the would-be poster jabbed. He provided no comment on the substance of the story.

    On RealScam.com yesterday, “MoneyMakingBrain” — who’d emailed threats repeatedly to the PP Blog on Feb. 29 — described the Blog as a “BIG idiot,” a “chicken,” a “deceptive unethical lowlife,” the user of “NONFACTUAL” sources and other names.

    Because of the emailed threats and “MoneyMakingBrain’s” subsequent ban from the PP Blog, the Blog will not engage with MoneyMakingBrain on RealScam.com, an antiscam forum that concerns itself with mass-marketing fraud and occasionally has been subjected itself to threats and menacing communications.

    “MoneyMakingBrain” has advanced various conspiracy theories about RealScam.com, the PP Blog and and some of their common posters.

    What he has not done is explain what his purported “due diligence” into the JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid “program” entailed or how purported operator Frederick Mann could pay an annualized return between 48 and 73 times higher than the purported “returns” of Bernard Madoff.

    Yesterday on RealScam, “MoneyMakingBrain” asserted that he has “recently read [about the PP Blog] on some scams forum, that he is a very deceptive reporter, well, that doesn’t surprise the MMB at all.”

    It is possible that “MoneyMakingBrain” is referring to this September 2009 thread on Scam.com. The thread was started by a PP Blog poster known as “little joe” who’d been banned for harassment. The poster, who later was banned from Scam.com, claimed the PP Blog would be “scrambling to put out fires” from multiple IPs.

    The threats and intimidation campaign from “little joe” began after the summer 2009 collapses of AdViewGlobal (AVG) and Ad-Ventures4U (ADV4U), both of which claimed an ability to provide preposterous returns in the wake of the government seizure of tens of millions of dollars in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case.

    Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, has described himself as a promoter for both ASD and ADV4U.

    On Aug. 18, 2009, antiscam commentators on the PP Blog were called “idiots” and the PP Blog itself was asked by an ADV4U promoter whether the author was a “fag.” After launching his ad hominem attacks against the PP Blog and its posters, the ADv4U pitchman asserted he was a  longtime businessman and that criticism about ADV4U on the PP Blog was about “as unprofessional as it gets people.”

    “I’m out of here.You bunch of idiots make me sick!!!” the poster railed.

    ADV4U ceased member payouts about 10 days later.

    Less than a year later — in May 2010 — Professor James Byrne, an expert hired by the U.S. government to assess the alleged HYIP Ponzi scheme of Nicholas Smirnow of Pathway To Prosperity — observed that HYIPs were not “noted for their internal consistency.”

    One of the inconsistencies that became part of the ADV4U story was the assertion by the “defender” that he was a longtime, professional businessman — while the same “defender” asked the PP Blog if he was a “fag” and declared ADV4U critics who questioned a purported payout rate of 1 percent a day “idiots.”

    Both assertions occurred a year after the U.S. Secret Service brought Ponzi allegations against ASD, whose payout scheme was similar to ADV4U’s.

     

  • BULLETIN: Already Under Scrutiny, JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid May Be Using ‘Regional Reps’ To Increase Ponzi Reach Over National Borders

    Redacted screen shot of "regional representatives" claim today on the website of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid.

    BULLETIN: The PP Blog has learned that JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid is publishing a page in which it advertises the availability of “regional representatives” in various parts of the world, including Italy.

    On Jan. 23, CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, took action against certain JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid affiliaties. Despite the CONSOB action, JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid is openly advertising that it has at least two affiliates who speak Italian and that the affiliates are available to “assist you with ALL aspects of the program IN YOUR LANGUAGE.”

    The page also touts the native-language talents of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid affiliates to assist members in Hong Hong, Taiwan, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States (to assist people who speak English or Japanese), Germany, Lithuania, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Poland, Portugal, Latvia, France, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Spain.

    JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid described its outreach via regional reps as “AMAZING!”

    “The people on this page have been thoroughly trained in all the workings of JustBeenPaid’s programs, and are happy to assist you TODAY!” the murky entity crowed.

    In a Feb. 23 conference call, Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, declined to say precisely where the “opportunity” itself was located.

    JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, Mann asserted to an audience of Americans and at least one person who claimed to be a resident of Canada, was “not located in any specific part of the world.

    “We’re all over the planet,” he said, speaking with an English accent that appeared to be native to South Africa.

    The assertion led to questions about whether Mann was running the “program” in a fashion reminiscent of a sort of small-scale Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). BCCI deliberately structured itself in murky fashion to ward off oversight by regulators. Its collapse created one of the great business scandals of the 1990s, prompting the Wall Street Journal (Europe) to observe that BCCI had been set up to be “offshore everywhere.”

    BCCI’s collapse also triggered Congressional probes in the United States, along with both civil and criminal prosecutions.

    The CONSOB probe in Italy, which the agency announced nearly six weeks ago, was not referenced on the “representatives” page on the JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid website.

    Incongruously, the “representatives” page included a link to an “agreement” page in which JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid registrants and/or prospects were informed they must affirm “that I am not an employee or official of any government agency, nor am I acting on behalf of or collecting information for or on behalf of any government agency.”

    Moreover, the registrants and/or prospects were informed they must affirm “that I am not an employee, by contract or otherwise, of any media or research company, and I am not reading any of the JBP pages in order to collect information for someone else.”

    The collapsed Legis HYIP published similar terms. (More on the Legisi prosecution below.)

    How long the JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid regional reps have been in place was not immediately clear. Also unclear was whether each of the reps had a physical presence in the respective countries or were using the Internet to reach over borders and perform customer service and recruit downlines in the respective nations.

    The U.S. government and other governments of the world have become increasingly concerned about cross-border fraud. Yesterday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, met with top officials in Canada to discuss the problem.

    Perhaps aghast over JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid developments, a poster on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum declared today that having regional reps for JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid is an “insane idea.”

    “Forget about the matrix spots and payouts,” the MoneyMakerGroup poster wrote today. “[W]hy is 200,000 + members not enough and why arent (sic) we off the radar and private and not opening ourselves up to potential problems ? Regional reps is an insane idea, Im (sic) sorry but the admin needs to protect us and wakeup (sic) to the reality that you cant (sic) get this huge and expect nothing bad to happen.”

    The poster did not explain his apparent belief that JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid had a duty to go “private” and to get “off the radar” of regulators. Nor did he say precisely what constituted something “bad.”

    HYIPs have been the subject of both civil and criminal litigation in various jurisdictions.

    It is common for HYIP purveyors to tout purported “offshore” operating venues and to claim such venues insulate an “opportunity” from prosecution. It also is common for HYIPs to announce they are “private” programs and therefore not subject to government oversight. At the same time, it is common for HYIPs to try to structure a Terms of Service or Member Agreement that purports either that the “opportunity” is not selling securities or is not subject to regulatory oversight.

    Some HYIPs, including JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, have preemptively denied they are Ponzi schemes.

    JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid purports to pay a daily return of 2 percent. On an annualized basis, the sum is between 48 and 73 times the purported returns of imprisoned Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff. It is EIGHT times the daily return touted by Gregory McKnight, who pleaded guilty last month in federal court in the Eastern District of Michigan for his operation of the Legisi HYIP scheme.

    The purported returns of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid are somewhat on par with the returns of Nicholas Smirnow of the alleged Pathway To Prosperity HYIP Ponzi scheme. Smirnow is listed as “Wanted” by INTERPOL.

    On Feb. 27, the PP Blog reported that a website linked to Mann displayed videos of Francis Schaeffer Cox, an American and purported “sovereign citizen” under indictment in Alaska in an alleged murder plot against public officials.

    Separately, a YouTube promo for JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid dated yesterday asserted that “[a]ll you have to do is wait for your money to increase!!!”

    A Blog post dated today, meanwhile, makes this assertion (italics added):

    “The JSS Tripler new site is one month old. It has been a month of phenomenal growth, but it’s nothing compared to what’s in the future. Some ‘Big Things’ are on the horizon that will enable many of the members to become millionaires, some could even become billionaires.”

    Neither the March 3 Blog post nor the March 2 YouTube video referenced the CONSOB probe.

    In 2008, AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin asserted that ASD had a plan to create 100,000 millionaires in three years. On Dec. 1, 2010, the U.S. government announced that Bowdoin had been indicted on Ponzi-related charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities.

    About 16 days later — on Dec. 17, 2010 — U.S. federal prosecutors announced they had filed forfeiture litigation against at least two ASD affiliates. One of the alleged affiliates was purported ASD “trainer” Erma Seabaugh.

    Seabaugh also was an affiliate of an enterprise known as Ad-Ventures4U (ADV4u), which crashed in 2009 amid allegations that its operator had been threatened by members.

    In web promos, Mann has described himself as a promoter for both ASD and ADV4U. Some affiliates have described him as a “genius,” the same description accorded Bowdoin before the August 2008 raid on ASD headquarters by the U.S. Secret Service.

    After the event — and facing both civil prosecution and a criminal investigation — Bowdoin told ASD members that the raid was the work of “Satan.”

    It is a descriptor completely contrary to the typical view Americans have of the Secret Service, which has the twin duties of protecting the nation’s financial infrastructure and the life of the President of the United States.

    Most Americans believe the Secret Service consists of heroes who place themselves in harm’s way every day to keep the United States safe, doing everything from making sure U.S. grandparents have safe places to deposit their Social Security checks to making sure that the President is well-protected and accessible to the American people.

    Kenneth Wayne Leaming, an ASD member and purported “sovereign citizen,” allegedly filed a bogus lien against the Secret Service agent who led the ASD investigation in 2008, the FBI said in November 2011 court filings.

    Leaming also allegedly filed bogus liens against a federal judge and three federal prosecutors involved in the ASD case, according to court filings by the FBI. He is jailed near Seattle awaiting trial on those charges, along with charges of filing false liens against other public officials, concealing two federal fugitives wanted in a home-business caper in Arkansas, being a felon in possession of firearms and uttering a bogus “Bonded Primissory Note” for $1 million.

    Court filings suggest Leaming was conducting financial research on John Roberts, the chief justice of the United States and the head judge of the U.S. Supreme Court, while hatching a scheme to serve papers on Roberts through a school attended by the distinguished jurist’s children.

  • URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: Deputy U.S. Marshal Shot And Killed In West Virginia Attack; 2 Others Wounded; Assailant Killed By Return Gunfire

    BULLETIN: A deputy U.S. marshal was shot and killed this morning while serving an arrest warrant in a drug case at a home in Elkins, W. Va., a law-enforcement official said.

    Two other deputy marshals were wounded in the attack. Their conditions were not immediately known. Charles E. Smith, the alleged assailant, reportedly was killed by return fire from law enforcement.

    Smith, 50, used a shotgun in his attack on the marshals, officials said.

    The attack on the marshals in West Virginia followed by a day an attack on two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Mexico.

    Special Agent Jaime Zapata was shot and killed in the attack, and a second ICE agent was wounded by gunfire. The agents were assigned to ICE’s attaché office in Mexico City, and were ambushed while driving between Monterrey, Mexico, and Mexico City, officials said.

    ICE is an agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

    “[A]ny act of violence against our ICE personnel — or any DHS personnel — is an attack against all those who serve our nation and put their lives at risk for our safety,” said DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.

    Elkins, a city of about 7,000 in North Central West Virginia, is about 163 miles south of Pittsburgh, Pa.

  • LETTER TO READERS: Reflections On 1,000 PP Blog Posts, The Lionization Of Fools And An Unprecedented Crime Wave That Threatens National Security And Is Filling Stadiums With Victims

    Dear Readers,

    This is actually Post No. 1,007 since the PP Blog switched to the WordPress platform two years ago this month. We’d hoped to commemorate our 1,000th WordPress post in the actual 1,000th post, but missed the chance because of Breaking News concerning the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force’s Operation Broken Trust.

    The PP Blog's Breaking News graphic was stolen and used in a promotion for Data Network Affiliates (DNA) earlier this year. DNA, which purports to be in the business of helping the AMBER Alert prohram rescue abducted children, now apparently has morphed into a company known as OWOW, which has instructed members to advertise a secret cure for cancer.

    Several hours after we reported that the Task Force now was counting investment-fraud victims by the tens of thousands and noting that even deaf people had been targeted in massive scams, we reported that Walmart had joined the “If you see something, say something” terrorism-awareness campaign operated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

    Walmart was instantly and savagely pilloried on YouTube, apparently for holding the view that DHS deserved private-sector help in its work to keep America safe. On. Dec. 6, when the PP Blog first observed the DHS video on YouTube announcing the Walmart partnership, the video had received only 310 views. That number now has shot up to 289,657. YouTube posters called DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano names that could peel paint. We’ll leave it at that, except to say that scores of Americans appear to have emerged as kneejerk critics and appear unwilling to view America’s economic well-being within the lens of national security.

    Indeed, how safe is America — and the world at large — if fraud victims are being counted in numbers that would fill stadiums and vast sums of wealth are being consumed and disappearing down ratholes? In the Task Force announcement, Attorney General Eric Holder said that, since Aug. 16 alone, cases investigated by the Task Force have uncovered losses of more than $10.4 billion. The schemes affected at least 120,000 victims.

    The victims’ count in just this relatively small cluster of cases is more than enough to fill the Rose Bowl in Pasadena or Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, America’s largest college-football stadium.

    Just prior to our Operation Broken Trust post — in Post No. 999 — we reported that the AdPayDaily autosurf, which has promoters and members in common with both AdSurfDaily and AdViewGlobal, was showing signs of collapse. Flash forward to Post No. 1,002: In this post, we reported that a New York Internet Marketer had been arrested by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service for cyberstalking.

    Vitaly Borker apparently believed it prudent to use the Internet to threaten to rape women who had received what investigators described as bogus and inferior-quality goods from him. A fair reading of the complaint against Borker shows that he used the same type of gutter language directed at Napolitano on YouTube — you know, for her apparent High Crime of asking Walmart shoppers to be aware of their surroundings in the Age of Terrorism.

    We next reported on a 54-year prison sentence handed down to a former Indiana pastor who duped Christian investors in a Ponzi scheme. After that, we reported that a company that once did business with Steve Renner’s Cash Cards International had been implicated in a massive Forex scheme that affected at least 800 investors.

    Renner was the operator of the INetGlobal autosurf, which the U.S. Secret Service said in February was operating a Ponzi scheme affecting thousands of people, including victims of Chinese descent who may have limited ability to understand English. The Secret Service said an undercover agent had been introduced to INetGlobal by an AdSurfDaily member.

    On Dec. 8, we reported that a Maryland man had been arrested after the FBI intercepted his plot to detonate a car bomb at a military-recruitment center. A similar plot had been unmasked by the FBI in Portand, Ore., on the day after Thanksgiving. It was aimed at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony, meaning it was aimed at children and families.

    Here is one way to look at the alleged Thanksgiving plot: The arrest was announced on Nov. 26. By Dec. 6, crackpots were flooding YouTube with paint-peeling comments about Napolitano and the terrorism-awareness campaign. Two days after that, on Dec. 8, a man was arrested in the Maryland plot. He allegedly also talked about blowing up Andrews Air Force Base, which happens to be the home base of Air Force One, which happens to be the aircraft used by the President of the United States.

    We haven’t even written about Wikileaks and the arrest in Britian of Julian Assange. Wikileaks’ sympathizers reacted by bringing DDoS attacks, apparently based on the belief that the best way to show support for Assange was to send out an army of bots to disrupt the websites of businesses that did not support Assange.

    By week’s end, Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, were surrounded by a mob unhappy about the skyrocketing costs of getting a college education in the United Kingdom. Civility, it seems, can be cast out the door in a country minute and replaced by the taunts of a mob.

    Yesterday, as we again sought to commemorate our 1,000 post, word arrived about the apparent suicide of Bernard Madoff’s son on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest.

    There is no doubt — none whatsoever — that Ponzi = Pain. There also is no doubt that the Internet has ushered in an era of unprecedented, mass-produced, viral crime. Criminals have been aided in their nefarious pursuits by crackpots who employ no editorial filters and simply create or repeat lies that institutionalize crime as an occupation and even celebrate it.

    At the precise moment in time in which Americans and other citizens of the world could benefit most from serious words and serious research backing those words, some of the world’s great publishing companies are struggling to make ends meet. Print circulation is down. Journalists are losing jobs. Designers and salespeople are losing jobs.

    The switch to electronic publishing platforms has been accompanied by piracy, wanton theft and trademark infringement that further erodes the value of words and intellectual property, undermines the economy and adds to concerns about national and international security. People, including well-intentioned people, simply copy-and-paste entire editorial wells from one site to another. The public becomes confused about the original source of material, which often is shoe-horned to fit a specific agenda.

    If former President Bill Clinton, for example, hands out an award for commitment to the environment, it gets spun by alleged scammers as an endorsement of their company. Images of Walmart, Warren Buffet, Donald Trump and Oprah Winfrey frequently are used in promos for multilevel-marketing (MLM) and direct-sales companies to which they have no ties.

    Earlier this year, the PP Blog’s Breaking News graphic was stolen by a member of Data Network Affiliates (DNA), an MLM company that routinely targets promos at Christians and, among other things, has claimed it is helping the AMBER Alert program rescue abducted children. DNA now apparently has morphed into a company known as OWOW, which is asking members to suggest that a product known as TurboMune cures cancer.

    For months, members of an MLM company known as MPB Today have helped themselves to Walmart’s name and branding materials, claiming that a $200, one-time purchase can result in free groceries and gasoline for life. One MPB Today member apparently believed it prudent to drive business to the firm by depicting the President of the United States and the U.S. Secretary of State, a former member of Walmart’s board of directors, as Nazis.

    This is not “freedom,” as the scammers would have you believe; it is theft and piracy on the high electronic seas, plain and simple. It also often is the case that this specific brand of theft also gets mixed with appeals to faith, meaning the scammers are seeking to pluck heartstrings and separate Believers from their money.

    There simply is no way that any government or branch of government can be at all places at all times. Although it is fashionable to describe efforts to battle crime in the Age of the Internet and the Age of Terrorism as an effort by Big Brother to assign each individual citizen his or her own bureaucrat to bring commerce and freedom to a screeching halt, such opinions often are simple rants that lack any real-world context.

    Within hours of the PP Blog’s publication of a story about the alleged Portland plot, the Blog was bizarrely assailed by an MLM aficionado for DNA/OWOW as a tool for Israel. Michael Chertoff, a former federal judge, federal prosecutor and DHS secretary, was described as a “suspect” in the 9/11 attacks, which the poster blamed on Israel while calling Chertoff an Israeli scum bag.

    As noted above, when Janet Napolitano announced a simple partnership with Walmart to encourage citizens to be aware of their surroundings, she encountered vicious name-calling — and it all happened during the same week yet-another bombing plot was unmasked, the Task Force was noting that America’s largest stadiums were not large enough to accommodate recent victims of financial fraud, DDoS attacks were aimed at companies deemed by third parties to be unfriendly to Wikileaks and the future king of England and his wife were surrounded by an angry mob.

    Even if one is willing to assume that Wikileaks seeks to serve a higher, noble purpose, directing DDoS attacks at businesses and government sites hardly helps Assange elicit sympathy or understanding. He lost an important round in the PR war last week, as did the unthinking crowd that assailed Napolitano and the mob that heckled Prince Charles and the Duchess.

    The lionization of crackpots of all stripes is rapidly emerging as a dangerous, unintended consequence of the Internet — as are all the tortured claims that MLM products treat or cure cancer, create vast sums of wealth for ordinary participants and the tortured claim that appropriating the names of Walmart and Winfrey and Trump and Buffet and Clinton is just another word for freedom.

    Far from promoting freedom, the crackpots and criminals are promoting anarchy. They do not seek to compete in either a free marketplace of commerce or a free marketplace of ideas. Rather, they seek to commit crimes on a global scale and to fill entire stadiums with victims — even as would-be terrorists speculate about throwing cocktail bombs into military-recruitment centers and shooting soldiers and staff as they flee the flames through the doors.

    In Portland, meanwhile, the idea was to kill wide-eyed children contemplating the miracles of Christmas and Santa Claus with a fireball that also would consume their parents.

    We conclude this 1,000 post commemoration with a simple thought: Death and taxes are not the only two certainties of life. It is equally certain that law enforcement needs the proactive participation of the public more than ever. It is one thing to direct reasonable criticism at agencies and public officials; it is quite another to cheer against the people who are responding to unprecedented security challenges while trying to make sure the stadiums fill up with football fans, not victims.

  • Walmart Joins ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ Terrorism-Awareness Campaign Operated By Department Of Homeland Security; Agency Takes Message To The Heartland As Critics Post Rants On YouTube

    DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.

    It has become kneejerk sport to deride Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano as “Big Sis.”

    Today the attacks on Napolitano turned even more caustic, with the announcement by both DHS and Walmart that Walmart had joined the DHS-operated “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign.

    Walmart issued a news release today saying it was proud to become part of the campaign, linking its announcement to a 44-second DHS video that will begin playing in 588 Walmart stores across the United States in the coming weeks .

    “Homeland security starts with hometown security, and each of us plays a critical role in keeping our country and communities safe,” said Napolitano. “I applaud Walmart for joining the ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ campaign. This partnership will help millions of shoppers across the nation identify and report indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats to law enforcement authorities.”

    Snarky, vile comments were posted on the DHS YouTube site in response to the video — some of the sort that made the “Big Sis” slam seem almost like a compliment.

    Walmart, though, is not alone in backing the campaign.

    Other DHS partners in the campaign include Mall of America, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, Amtrak, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, sports and general aviation industries and state and local fusion centers across the country.

    Walmart’s announcement that it had joined the campaign occurs against the backdrop of a recent terrorist plot targeted at a community Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore. The plot, which was detected by the FBI, was scheduled to be carried out on “Black Friday.”

    “Black Friday” is the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, and has become a day filled with heavy retail shopping and community events. The suspect in the foiled Portland attack allegedly told the FBI that the plot would be less apt to be detected because the city was not front-and-center on law enforcement’s antiterrorism radar screens.

    “. . . it’s in Oregon; and Oregon, like, you know, nobody ever thinks about it,” the FBI quoted the Portland suspect as saying.

    There also have been bizarre events this year in which Walmart’s name was appropriated by members of murky multilevel-marketing businesses. Members of MLM programs known as Narc That Car/Crowd Sourcing International and Data Network Affiliates/OWOW instructed prospects to take photos of the license plates of cars parked at Walmart and other large retail stores.

    The plate numbers purportedly were to be entered into databases controlled by the MLM firms as a means of helping law enforcement and the AMBER Alert program rescue abducted children. No evidence has surfaced that either of the MLM firms has any tie to the AMBER Alert program, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

    Meanwhile, bizarre promos for an MLM program known as MPB Today routinely used Walmart or its branding materials as backdrops for a purported program that suggested a one-time, $200 purchase from MPB Today could lead to free groceries for life.

    One of the promos painted President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as Nazis. Another urged MPB Today affiliates who were not fans of Walmart to lay down their pipe bombs.

    In its news release announcing it had joined the “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign, Walmart urged customers to support the program, but did not say precisely why it had made the decison to become to first national retailer to partner with DHS.