UPDATED 8:33 P.M. EDT U.S.A. There must be some long faces at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Secret Service today. That’s because two federal agents once assigned to a Task Force investigating the illicit Silk Road marketplace have been charged with federal crimes.
Carl M. Force, 46, of Baltimore, was a DEA special agent who earned a salary of about $150,000 a year, according to a criminal complaint. He was charged with wire fraud, theft of government property, money laundering and conflict of interest.
Shaun W. Bridges, 32, of Laurel, Md., was a special agent for the Secret Service. He was charged with wire fraud and money laundering. His salary was not revealed. He was a member of the Secret Service’s Electronic Crimes Task Force.
The law-enforcement community recoils at this type of thing, because it engenders mistrust and erodes public confidence in the police. Agents who read the narrative in the criminal complaint filed by a special agent for the IRS Criminal Investigations unit are simply going to wince.
One specific allegation against Force is that he sought to extort $250,000 from a subject under investigation by posing as a different person known as “Death From Above.”
Silk Road was the criminal marketplace allegedly operated by Ross Ulbricht, also known as “Dread Pirate Roberts.” Ulbricht was the target of Force’s extortion plot, according to the complaint.
The alleged extortionate scam? Posing as a killer and telling Ulbricht — already under investigation by Force in his official capacity — that he’d be permitted to live and would not be ratted out if he agreed to turn over a quarter of a million dollars.
Force also posed as “French Maid,” allegedly mining cash from Ulbricht by telling him he could keep him informed about the government’s Silk Road probe.
While these things were going on, Force allegedly was communicating with Ulbricht as “bop,” his official undercover name.
Force, a 15-year DEA veteran, allegedly infiltrated Silk Road in his official capacity as an undercover agent. Here is part of what the Justice Department said today (italics/carriage returns added):
According to the complaint, Force was a DEA agent assigned to investigate the Silk Road marketplace. During the investigation, Force engaged in certain authorized undercover operations by, among other things, communicating online with “Dread Pirate Roberts” (Ulbricht), the target of his investigation.
The complaint alleges, however, that Force then, without authority, developed additional online personas and engaged in a broad range of illegal activities calculated to bring him personal financial gain. In doing so, the complaint alleges, Force used fake online personas, and engaged in complex Bitcoin transactions to steal from the government and the targets of the investigation. Specifically, Force allegedly solicited and received digital currency as part of the investigation, but failed to report his receipt of the funds, and instead transferred the currency to his personal account.
In one such transaction, Force allegedly sold information about the government’s investigation to the target of the investigation. The complaint also alleges that Force invested in and worked for a digital currency exchange company while still working for the DEA, and that he directed the company to freeze a customer’s account with no legal basis to do so, then transferred the customer’s funds to his personal account. Further, Force allegedly sent an unauthorized Justice Department subpoena to an online payment service directing that it unfreeze his personal account.
The “digital currency exchange company” at which Force was moonlighting as a “de facto compliance officer” while on the DEA payroll was CoinMKT. He also was a CoinMKT investor — apparently with funds he’d stolen — and even permitted his name and likeness to be used in CoinMKT materials.
Rancid criminality also was alleged against Bridges, a six-year Secret Service veteran. From the Justice Department (italics added):
Bridges allegedly diverted to his personal account over $800,000 in digital currency that he gained control of during the Silk Road investigation. The complaint alleges that Bridges placed the assets into an account at Mt. Gox, the now-defunct digital currency exchange in Japan. He then allegedly wired funds into one of his personal investment accounts in the United States mere days before he sought a $2.1 million seizure warrant for Mt. Gox’s accounts.
BULLETIN: (UPDATED 4:38 P.M. EDT U.S.A.) A federal grand jury in the Western District of Washington has returned a superseding indictment against AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming.
It is the second superseding indictment against Leaming. The first was filed in 2012.
The new indictment was returned yesterday, a day after the White House and the Justice Department referenced “sovereign citizens” in a policy announcement that pointed to an FBI site that defined “sovereign citizens” as “anti-government extremists who believe that even though they physically reside in this country, they are separate or ‘sovereign’ from the United States. As a result, they believe they don’t have to answer to any government authority, including courts, taxing entities, motor vehicle departments, or law enforcement.”
Leaming is 57. His alleged onetime business colleague David Carroll Stephenson, 57, also is named in the superseding indictment. The indictment formally accuses Leaming of filing false liens against a federal judge, two former federal prosecutors and a U.S. Secret Service agent who had roles in the ASD Ponzi case. The liens were filed in August 2010 and November 2010, according to the indictment.
Meanwhile, the indictment accuses Leaming and Stephenson of filing false liens against two U.S. prison officials in July 2011.
Leaming, meanwhile, was further accused of harboring two federal fugitives in 2010 and of being a felon in possession of six firearms.
At the same time, the indictment accuses Leaming of passing a bogus “Bonded Promissory Note” for $1 million in March 2008, in a bid to defraud the United States.
Leaming and Stephenson are being held at the SeaTac federal detention center near Seattle.
ASD was a $119 million Ponzi scheme brought down by the Secret Service in August 2008. Leaming reportedly was performing legal work for some ASD members, even though he is not an attorney.
Leaming was arrested in Spanaway, Wash., by an FBI terrorism Task Force in November 2011. He has been jailed since then. Stephenson already was serving a federal sentence for a tax crime when Leaming was arrested.
Leaming has an existing federal felony conviction for piloting an aircraft without a license.
BULLETIN:Thanh-Viet “Jeremy” Cao, the California Ponzi schemer and purported “sovereign citizen” who was sentenced in May to 30 years in federal prison for the Ponzi caper, now has been sentenced to an additional 41 months for a Nevada crime in which he filed false liens for hundreds of millions of dollars against government officials.
Under investigation by the U.S. Secret Service, the Justice Department, the SEC and the IRS, Cao reacted by filing 22 false liens against against “SEC attorneys, U.S. District Court Judges, U.S. District Court Magistrate Judges, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, Assistant U.S. Attorneys, USSS special agents and special agents of the IRS,” the Justice Department said.
Cao pleaded guilty to six counts of filing false liens in which he listed the federal officials as “debtors,” prosecutors said.
It was not immediately clear if Cao’s sentence in the liens case will run concurrently or consecutively to the 30-year sentence in the Ponzi case. In May, U.S. Attorney Laura E. Duffy of the Southern District of California described Cao as a “financial predator.”
The Ponzi scheme sentence was among the longest in the history of Southern California, and investigators said Cao kept his victims in a state of terror by telling them he knew people who previously had “chopped up” a baby in front of the baby’s parents, and then killed the baby’s mother,” prosecutors said.
As part of his liens fraud, Cao developed a “hit list” in which he promised to obtain certain personal information of government offcials “so he could ruin them financially,” prosecutors said.
Combined with corporation records and documents such as news releases, this post on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum raises questions about whether AdViewGlobal, an autosurf with close ties to AdSurfDaily, was part of an elaborate penny-stock scheme and money-laundering conduit that consumed the EWalletPlus payment processor and left AVG members holding the bag.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Longtime readers of the PP Blog will recall that the purported AdSurfDaily (ASD) spinoff known as AdViewGlobal (AVG) and some of its members engaged in particularly bizarre behavior in May 2009. The absurdities included announcing (and then unannouncing) a puported deal with a new offshore wire facilitator, announcing (and then unannouncing) a new website with purported new services and claiming the upstart company was healthy enough not only to pay out 250 percent matching bonuses to members and 200 percent matching bonuses to recruiters, but also to pay out multilevel downline commissions and purported surfing income of up to 8 percent a day.
Just two months earlier — in March 2009 — AVG suddenly announced its account at an unspecified bank had been suspended and that its chief executive officer had resigned. The firm bizarrely added that CEO Gary Talbert would not leave the company altogether. Rather, Talbert would remain in the accounting department.
Just a month earlier, Talbert, also a former ASD executive, had been introduced in an AVG conference call by Terralynn Hoy, an ASD member and moderator of the pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum and an emerging forum for the AVG autosurf. The introduction occurred in February 2009 after weeks of assertions by AVG that there were no ties between itself and ASD. The introduction was preceded by a bizarre announcement in late January of 2009 by AVG that the appearance of its graphics on an ASD-controlled webroom was an “operational coincidence.” The person making that announcement on AVG’s behalf was Chuck Osmin, a former ASD employee.
AVG’s websites ultimately disappeared. Members claimed AVG was owned by George and Judy Harris, and at least one of the AVG websites identified George Harris as an AVG trustee. George Harris, described in court filings as the head of ASD’s purported real-estate division, is the stepson of Andy Bowdoin and the son of Bowdoin’s wife, Edna Faye Bowdoin.
It later proved to be the case that May 2009 — the same month in which AVG was reimagining itself as one of the world’s leading advertising and communications firms while at once announcing and unannouncing key bits of purported news — was the same month the grand jury that indicted ASD President Andy Bowdoin had convened.
The PP Blog is reporting today that records strongly suggest AVG was a cog in a larger fraud — one that somehow married the AVG autosurf to a penny-stock scheme with a purported arm in the “oil” businesses and a branch that owned an Arizona payment processor known as EWalletPlus that later collapsed.
Here, now, our Special Report . . .
Is stock manipulation in multiple venues part of the bigger picture of the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme? Out of the clear blue sky in the fall of 2008 — as ASD awaited a critical court ruling in the Ponzi forfeiture case against the assets of President Andy Bowdoin — ASD claimed it expected a $200 million revenue infusion from Praebius Communications, a penny-stock firm that did not disclose audited sales figures.
But the Praebius announcement, which ASD later withdrew without explaining why, may not be the firm’s only tie to a penny-stock company.
A May 2009 post on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum is adding to lingering questions about whether AdViewGlobal — an autosurf with close ties to ASD — was part of an elaborate penny-stock scheme and money-laundering conduit involving multiple companies, domestic and offshore venues and individuals with ties to ASD.
On May 5, 2009, a MoneyMakerGroup poster who used the handle of “IMCanadian” claimed he (or she) had received autosurfing payouts totaling $1,300 from AdViewGlobal (AVG) on unspecified dates. The payments, according to the post, were routed through SolidTrustPay (STP), a Canadian payment processor.
The MoneyMakerGroup post potentially provides a glimpse into how fraudulent securities businesses may layer themselves to confuse both investors and authorities. The post cites two different email addresses as the sources of STP payments from the AVG scheme. Although the email addresses purportedly were used by AVG to cause STP to issue AVG autosurf payouts, neither of the addresses used a domain name owned by AVG. Instead, they used Yahoo and Gmail addresses.
AVG, according to records, could have chosen to use email addresses that corresponded to its own domain names. The firm owned at least two namesake domains before it suspended member cashouts in June 2009: ADVGlobal.com and AdViewGlobal.com.
But relying on free email providers such as Yahoo and Google was not the sole oddity associated with AVG, a firm an early promoter predicted would become a “1 Billion Dollar Company [before the] end of 2009.”
“Most if not all of your leaders are joining,” the promoter flatly counseled on a forum known as FreeLunchRoom on Dec. 23, 2008, two days before Christmas.
The MoneyMakerGroup posts that followed cited not only the Yahoo and Gmail payout addresses, but also two different STP usernames from which AVG payouts to “IMCanadian” purportedly originated. Absent in both usernames was any reference to AVG itself.
Like AVG, ASD also used STP, according to records. In August 2008, the U.S. Secret Service alleged that ASD had wired “several million dollars” to STP just prior to the seizure of tens of millions of dollars from the personal bank accounts of ASD President Andy Bowdoin.
A payment of $200 for AdViewGlobal earnings was received through STP from an STP user who used the acronym “avg” as part of a yahoo.com email address, but did not use an AVG domain, according to the MoneyMakerGroup post. The STP username linked to the AVG payout was “karveck,” not AdViewGlobal or AVG, according to the post.
An AVG payment for $1,100, meanwhile, had come from an STP member who used the words “tmscorp” and “usa” — along with the abbreviation “llc” as part of a Gmail address, according to the post. The STP username for the payout was “tmscorp,” not AdViewGlobal or AVG, according to the post.
Ten days after the claims appeared on MoneyMakerGroup, the grand jury that indicted ASD President Andy Bowdoin in the District of Columbia was sworn in, according to records. The swearing in occurred just 11 days after the Obama administration announced a crackdown on offshore fraud schemes. On the same day Obama himself spoke about the crackdown — May 4, 2009 — AVG announced it had secured a new offshore wire facilitator in the aftermath of the purported suspension of AVG’s bank account in March 2009. Research by the PP Blog suggests that AVG sought to route money to itself by using a Florida shell company that had sought the services of an offshore firm later banned by the National Futures Association.
The seal on the Bowdoin indictment was lifted on Nov. 23, 2010, during a period in which some ASD members were discouraging others from filing remissions claims in the ASD forfeiture case brought by federal prosecutors and the U.S. Secret Service in August 2008.
Bowdoin was arrested in Florida on Dec. 1, 2010. He faces an upcoming trial on allegations of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities for his operation of ASD. AVG’s name does not appear in the indictment.
The Operative Word: ‘Murky’
Much remains murky about the degree of connectivity among ASD, AVG, STP, Karveck, TMS Corp and EWalletPlus. It is known that ASD and AVG had members and promoters in common. Both firms used STP to process payments, but it remains far from clear how many STP accounts the companies and their executives or insiders controlled and how much money generated in the ASD scheme remained in offshore accounts that later could be tapped to channel money to AVG.
ASD and AVG are known to have turned to members and moderators of the now-defunct Surf’s Up forum to sanitize the respective schemes. The surf firms, according to AVG, also shared at least two of the same employees: Chuck Osmin and Gary Talbert.
Some ASD members have claimed Bowdoin was a silent partner in AVG and fronted the money to acquire EWalletPlus, AVG’s purported in-house payment processor. If the assertion that Bowdoin provided money to buy EWalletPlus is true, it may mean that the deal was heavily layered to shield Bowdoin from being identified as the funding source and that AVG had more than one silent partner.
Karveck and TMS Corp used multiple versions of their names, a potential indicator of money-laundering — i.e., a bid to dupe banks into warehousing fraud-scheme proceeds. Karveck, for example, has been referred to as just plain Karveck, but also Karveck International. Records show that at least three versions of the TMS Corp. name exist: TMS Corp., TMS Association and TMS Corp. USA LLC.
TMS Corp. USA LLC is listed in Nevada and Arizona records as using ASD’s address in Quincy, Fla. Its manager is listed as Talbert, the former executive at both ASD and AVG.
Each of the TMS firms appears to have a tie to EWalletPlus, which once shared the same server in Panama with AVG. Despite serving pages from Panama, AVG purported to be based in Uruguay and to enjoy U.S. Constitutional protections even though it was operating offshore. Making the situation even murkier is that a penny-stock company known as Vana Blue Inc. claimed in 2008 to own TMS Corp., the parent company of the EWalletPlus web portal, and to have have acquired Karveck International in February 2009.
The claims came in the form of news releases — and news releases are common tools in penny-stock frauds.
AVG formally launched in February 2009, a year after VanaBlue claimed ownership in a news release of TMS Corp. and EWalletPlus and months after the seizure of Bowdoin’s assets in August 2008. Prior to the seizure, Bowdoin ventured to Costa Rica and Panama, according to court filings by the Secret Service.
The purpose of the Bowdoin trip, according to the Secret Service, was to to incorporate ASD Cash Generator — a replacement autosurf for a Bowdoin surf that had collapsed in 2007 — and an entity known known as La Sorta Trading outside of U.S. jurisdiction. The agency made the claim on Feb. 26, 2009, less than a month after the formal launch of AVG and during the same period in which AVG reportedly had met with a convicted securities felon and announced the formation of a purported offshore “private association.”
Also in February 2009, Vana Blue declared Karveck International a “newly acquired asset” that had produced $1.8 million in revenue in January 2009. Karveck was described as a company that “specializes in internet advertising and promotion in a search engine and ad clicking type environment.”
Mysteriously, however, VanaBlue disowned Karveck International just six months later — in August 2009. What Vana Blue initially had described in February as a completed acquisition of Karveck International was redescribed in August as deal that had fallen through as a result of “further due diligence.”
“Vana Blue was unable to complete this transaction but is in the final stages of negotiation with an oil company to continue its plans of acquisitions,” Vana Blue claimed on Aug. 17, 2009.
During the month of August 2009, ASD’s Bowdoin announced in court filings that he was “negotiating” with federal prosecutors. The August 2009 negotiations, which collapsed by mid-September of the same year, marked at least the second time that Bowdoin or his legal team claimed that the ASD patriarch was seeking to find a way to settle the ASD forfeiture case.
Bowdoin’s negotiations pleading appeared on the docket of U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer on Aug. 4, 2009. Thirteen days later — on Aug. 17, 2009 — Vana Blue announced on Business Wire that its acquisition of Karveck International — a deal it described in February 2009 as completed — had fallen through.
Vana Blue claimed in the same announcement it was proceeding on a deal for an oil company despite its sudden loss of Karveck International.
Earlier this year, a source told the PP Blog that she provided $5,000 to her sponsor — and that the sponsor converted her money to cashier’s checks made payable to TMS Association, one of the “TMS” companies records suggest was tied to both AVG and EWalletPlus. The woman told the Blog that she believed she was a victim of the ASD scheme.
On Dec. 21 2010, just 20 days after Bowdoin was indicted, an email that appeared to have originated with an AVG member began to circulate among ASD members.
The email accused members of ASD who were participating in the remissions program established by the Justice Department and the Secret Service of signing their “morals and soul away” and supporting “innocent peoples lives being destroyed.”
In a possible bid to intimidate ASD members, the email further claimed that an unspecified “back lash” would occur against any ASD member who participated in the claims program.
Last month ASD members who filed approved claims forms received back 100 percent of the money they had directed at ASD. The remissions payments were funded by money seized by the Secret Service in the ASD Ponzi case.
Although its is believed the government also has opened a probe into the affairs of AVG, prosecutors have made only veiled references to AVG in court filings in the ASD case.
A Washington state man sentenced in the 1990s to 46 months in federal prison for possessing a pipe bomb now has become the subject of a tax investigation.
A civil case filed Thursday in Seattle against John Lloyd Kirk accuses him of pushing a “redemption” tax scheme. At least 31 of Kirk’s customers sought fraudulent tax refunds totaling about $8 million, the Justice Department said.
Kirk, 70, of Des Moines, Wash., has been identified by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as a “sovereign citizen” and member of an extremist group known as the “Little Shell Pembina Band.”
Kenneth Wayne Leaming, an emerging figure in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme story, also has been identified by ADL as a sovereign citizen and member of the Little Shell Pembina Band. Leaming lists an address in Spanaway, Wash. In 2010, he sought unsuccessfully to sue the United States for the apparent sum of more than $29 TRILLION for its actions in the ASD case. The sum sought in the lawsuit was more than twice the U.S. Gross Domestic Product in 2009.
ASD President Andy Bowdoin was indicted last year on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities. ASD is known to have sovereign citizens and tax-deniers in its ranks, and Bowdoin was accused of operating a Ponzi scheme that gathered at least $110 million.
Leaming’s history also includes the filing of bogus liens against government officials and a Franciscan hospital in Washington state, according to records. Like Kirk, he has purported to practice tribal law.
An ADL website publishes brief profiles of both Leaming and Kirk on the same page.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit against Kirk does not reference ASD. Kirk was accused of hatching a redemption scheme individually and through two entities: Indian Nations Advocate Law Office and The Kirk of Yahh Hava.
“Kirk purports to be a member of good standing of the Tulalip Tribal Bar and allowed to
practice law before its tribal court although he is not an attorney,” the Justice Department alleged.
In a redemption scheme, customers typically are told that the government maintains “secret” accounts for U.S. citizens and that the accounts contain vast sums of money that can be accessed and used to retire debts. Another form of the redemption theory holds that individuals can “draw” on their secret accounts with the U.S. Treasury to pay their tax bills and qualify for spectacular refunds.
“Kirk’s scheme is part of a ongoing trend amongst tax protestors to file frivolous tax returns and Forms 1099-OID (or to claim false OID income) with the IRS and courts in an attempt to escape their federal tax obligations and steal from the U.S. Treasury,” the Justice Department said.
“At his 1099 OID seminars, Kirk advises his customers that they can draw on a secret account with the United States Treasury to pay their debts,” the Justice Department alleged. “He further advises his customers to file bogus tax returns with fraudulent Forms 1099-OID to draw on this secret account that the Treasury supposedly maintains for each person. Accordingly, he advises his customers to file false Forms 1099-OID and tax returns seeking tax refunds for amounts equal to the amounts of their mortgages, car loans, credit card debts, and other debts as well as any interest incurred on those obligations.”
Kirk advised one of his customers to file fraudulent paperwork to receive a tax refund of more than $130,000. In another case, a customer of Kirk’s received a fraudulent refund of more than $700,000. At least 31 Kirk customers filed for fraudulent refunds totaling approximately $8 million, the Justice Department said.
The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a terrorism research group based at the University of Maryland, identified Kirk as a member of the Washington state “Freemen.” ADL, meanwhile, reported that Kirk was a friend of infamous Montana Freeman LeRoy Schweitzer.
URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: Two men were arrested in Washington state last night after the FBI disrupted a planned attack on a Seattle military intake center that included a daycare center for the children of federal employees, the Justice Department said.
Arrested were Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, 33, of Seattle, and Walli Mujahidh, 32, of Los Angeles. Abdul-Latif also is known Joseph Anthony Davis, and Mujahidh also is known as Frederick Domingue Jr.
Both subjects had been under surveillance, and federal agents “took possession of machine guns that they purchased and planned to use in an attack on the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) located on East Marginal Way, Seattle,” the Justice Department said.
MEPS screens and processes military enlistees.
“The complaint alleges these men intended to carry out a deadly attack against our military where they should be most safe, here at home,” said U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan.
Investigators said the Joint Base Lewis-McChord military facility in Pierce and Thurston counties was the original target of the plot, which later was changed to target the Seattle facility. The men were arrested after taking possession of machine guns, the Justice Department said.
Both machine guns and grenades would be used to murder members of the military under the plan, which law enforcement intercepted when a person contacted authorities to say that “he/she” had been approached to participate in the attack and supply weapons, the Justice Department said.
The person agreed to cooperate with law enforcement, and the weapons were rendered inoperable, the Justice Department said.
“We were able to disrupt the plot because someone stepped forward and reported it to authorities,” Durkan said.
“Since early June the conspirators were captured on audio and videotape discussing a violent assault on the Military Entrance Processing Station,” the Justice Department said.
BULLETIN: Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao, the California Ponzi schemer sentenced last month to 30 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $12.4 million in restitution, has pleaded guilty in a separate fraud case.
Federal prosecutors in Nevada alleged last year that Cao filed nearly two dozen bogus liens against SEC attorneys, federal judges, federal magistrate judges, a U.S. Attorney, assistant U.S. Attorneys, U.S. Secret Service special agents and special agents of the IRS.
In an agreement with prosecutors, Cao pleaded guilty today to six counts of filing false liens against public officials. He admitted he filed 22 false liens in all, the Justice Department, the IRS and the Office of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said.
The bizarre Cao saga began in 2007, when the SEC named him a defendant in a fraud lawsuit. At the time, Cao also was under criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California and the Secret Service for the same fraud scheme — and by the IRS for a tax scheme.
Cao went on a lien-filing spree in retaliation for the various investigations, claiming in Nevada that various public officials were “debtors” who owed him sums ranging from $25 million to $300 million, according to records.
Sentencing in the false-liens case is scheduled for Sept. 21 in Las Vegas.
Cao’s 30-year prison sentence in the Ponzi case was one of the longest sentences in the history of federal white-collar prosecutions in Southern California.
To keep victims in a state of terror, Cao said he knew people who previously had “chopped up” a baby in front of the baby’s parents, and then killed the baby’s mother, prosecutors said.
Those threats led to an extortion and firearms case brought by the state of California.
And Cao dialed up the terror by referencing an “assassination” and “fatal car accident.” When he was arrested, “he possessed a loaded firearm, and body armor and other firearms were found at his residence,” prosecutors said.
BULLETIN: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has upheld the conviction of James Bunchan in a murder-for-hire plot that grew from a pyramid scheme that gathered $20 million and mostly targeted people of Cambodian descent.
Federal prosecutors described the pyramid scheme as “devastating,” saying it relied on smoke and mirrors to fleece more than 500 victims, many of whom lacked command of English and had little formal education.
While awaiting trial in the pyramid case, Bunchan discussed hiring a hitman to kill Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Pirozzolo of the District of Massachusetts. Pirozzolo specializes in prosecuting economic crimes.
Bunchan was the founder and owner of World Marketing Direct Selling (WMDS) and OneUniverseOnline (1UOL), which were positioned as purveyors of cosmetics, health and dietary supplements.
The pyramid scheme collapsed in early 2005. Federal prosecutors said the companies generated money almost exclusively through the recruitment of new investors or “members.”
While jailed in Massachusetts awaiting trial in the pyramid case, Bunchan hatched a murder-for-hire plot that called for 12 people be believed would testify against him to be killed. The FBI became aware of the plot and staged a sting in which Bunchan believed an assassin named “Jamal” would carry out the murders for a fee.
“Jamal” actually was an undercover police officer posing as a hitman.
Bunchan first was convicted on the pyramid charges and sentenced to 35 years in federal prison. After the pyramid trial, he was tried on charges flowing from the murder-for-hire plot. A jury returned guilty verdicts in the murder-for-hire plot, and Bunchan was sentenced to 25 years.
All in all, Bunchan’s pyramid scheme resulted in sentences totaling 60 years. His bids to overturn convictions in both cases now have failed.
Pirozzolo, who joined the Justice Department in 2003 and encountered the Bunchan pyramid case two years later, was promoted to First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts last year.
In 2007, Pirozzolo received the Justice Department’s Director’s Award for his role in the investigation and prosecution of illegal mutual fund market timing conduct occurring at Prudential Securities Inc.
Pirozzolo also received the Chief Postal Inspector Award for his work on the Prudential market timing cases. In 2008, he received a Victim Rights Award for his work on the Bunchan case.
Visit Leagle.com to read the murder-for-hire appeals decision against Bunchan.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The arrest of Vladislav Horohorin is notable on a number of levels. First, the arrest in Europe was a result of an online fraud scheme that allegedly crossed international borders and made its way to the United States, where criminal charges were filed. At the same time, the crime allegedly involved the transfer of money though international payment processors. Perhaps more than anything, however, the case against Horohorin demonstrates that the U.S. Secret Service is “plugged into” forums that promote international lawlessness. His arrest is very bad news for credit-card crooks and HYIP and autosurf Ponzi schemers — and their corrupt colleagues.
Here, now, the story on the arrest of Horohorin . . .
A credit-card trafficker based in Russia has been arrested in France on U.S. charges after the U.S. Secret Service infiltrated an online scheme operating internationally through Internet forums, the Justice Department said.
Undercover Secret Service agents “negotiated the sale of numerous stolen credit card dumps,” the Justice Department said.
Vladislav Anatolievich Horohorin, 27, was arrested in Nice. He was indicted under seal in November 2009 on U.S. charges of access device fraud and aggravated identity theft. The seal was lifted today.
Authorities said they believed he was “one of the most prolific sellers of stolen data” in the world, noting Horohorin was known in web forums as “BadB.” He lived in Moscow, and was a citizen of both Israel and the Ukraine.
The Justice Department revealed today that the U.S. Secret Service used an “online undercover identity” to interact with operators of the international scheme, which featured the sale of stolen credit-card information known as “dumps.”
Payments were transferred through online currency services, including a service known as “Webmoney” that was hosted in Russia, the Justice Department said.
“Cyber criminals who target U.S citizens should not fool themselves into believing they can elude justice simply because they commit crimes outside of our borders,” said Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer. “As this and so many other cases demonstrate, working hand in hand with our partners around the globe, we will do everything in our power to bring these criminals to the United States to answer for their alleged crimes.”
Horohorin was arrested Aug. 7 as he attempted to board a flight to Moscow. He will be extradited to the United States, the Justice Department said.
A top Secret Service official said the agency would be relentless in its pursuit of cyber-criminals.
“This arrest is an illustration of the success that comes from international law enforcement and private sector partnerships and confirms the Secret Service commitment to traversing the globe in pursuit of online criminals,” said Michael Merritt, assistant director for investigations.
In August 2008, Merritt was among the officials who announced the seizure of tens of millions of dollars in the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme.
Assisting the Secret Service in the Horohorin probe were the French Police Nationale Aux Frontiers, the Netherlands Police Agency National Crime Squad High Tech Crime Unit, and the FBI’s Atlanta Field Office.
Horohorin was one of the founders of a network known as CarderPlanet, a forum through which criminals sold stolen financial data to other criminals.
Using his “BadB” forum identity, Horohorin “advertised the availability of stolen credit card information through these web forums, and directed purchasers to create accounts at “dumps.name,” a fully-automated dumps vending website operated by Horohorin and hosted outside the United States,” the Justice Department said.
“The website was designed to assist in the exchange of funds for the stolen credit card information,” the Justice Department said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Still selling autosurfs and HYIPs? Quick! Name your autosurfing neighbor, his or her neighbors, the source of their funding — and describe their intent. Do you even know the names of the program owners, the venues from which they operate and the sources of their funding? How many companies do they own? How many bank accounts do they control? How do they keep their books? Do they truly know their own customers? Has your need to believe you could not possibly be doing business with criminals affected your ability to think things through clearly?
Getting paid via a debit card or an offshore processor? Ever ask why? Has your “due diligence” ever gone beyond parroting what you’ve been told by others? Have you ever really peeled back layers of the onion, looked for connections to other schemes and performed anything other than cursory research? How many “bad apples” do you think you might find in a barrel of tens of thousands of members, especially if the barrel exists in a business universe already infamous for shadowy practices? Think that some of the participants may live in the dimmest corners of the nation and world and have secret agendas?
What if their agenda is to do the unthinkable in the United States or elsewhere? What if they’re a “lone wolf” — a lone actor waiting for the perfect time? And what if you’re helping them?
The FBI has been advising Congress about the nexus between white-collar crime and the potential for terrorism. Some very strange things have been happening in the United States as a result of what FBI Director Robert Mueller III described as the emergence of a “shadow banking system” and an increasing reliance on “shell corporations” to commit crimes and hide from investigators. Some of the crimes have been elaborate, using multiple companies, domestic and offshore venues and selling multiple “services” such as tax-avoidance schemes and “debt-elimination” services.
Although Mueller did not mention AdSurfDaily and other “autosurf” companies in Congressional testimony yesterday, the Justice Department did outline a separate case against several companies and individuals who offered “services” similar to the “services” offered by some ASD members.
Longtime PP readers know that ASD and a closely connected autosurf known as AdViewGlobal have been linked to racketeering allegations and tax-avoidance and debt-elimination schemes similar to the cases encapsulated below. Some members of ASD also associated themselves with militia and tax-denial movements, underground “associations” and credit-repair organizations. Some of them associated themselves with wild conspiracy theories — the kind that would cause you to lose friends and cause your family to distance itself from you if you ever associated yourself with the theories.
Find yourself attacking the messenger or spinning impossible yarns because the truth you fear is just downright uncomfortable and you are not ready to confront it yet? Have you generally supported law enforcement throughout your life — and yet now find yourself condemning the very agencies whose efforts have permitted you to rest comfortably at night since birth? Is it reallyyou constructing a theory that the agents mysteriously somehow had become a sort of hybrid that mixes Nazism and Communism and that the hybrids have made it their business to destroy your entrepreneurial spirit?
Here, now, a story about a mysterious and perhaps increasingly dangerous world that largely exists outside of public view . . .
UPDATED 7:49 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Returning to a theme voiced last month, FBI Director Robert Mueller III appeared before another Congressional panel yesterday and warned lawmakers about a “shadow banking system” and a troubling increase in certain areas of U.S. white-collar crime, including mortgage fraud, securities fraud and money-laundering.
Meanwhile, cross-border crime also is producing a dangerous cocktail, Mueller said.
“[T]he potential for terrorism-related activities associated with criminal enterprises is increasing due to the following: alien smuggling across the southwest border by drug and gang criminal enterprises; Columbian based narco-terrorism groups influencing or associating with traditional drug trafficking organizations; prison gangs being recruited by religious, political, or social extremist groups; and major theft criminal enterprises conducting criminal activities in association with terrorist-related groups or to facilitate funding of terrorist-related groups,” Mueller said.
“There also remains the ever-present concern that criminal enterprises are, or can, facilitate the smuggling of chemical, biological, radioactive, or nuclear weapons and materials,” he said.
But Mueller said it would be a mistake to view terrorism as a uniquely international problem and look at it only through the narrow lens of traditional threats and the post-9/11 threat posed by al Qaeda.
“Homegrown violent extremists also pose a very serious threat,” Mueller told the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies.
Beware The ‘Lone Actor’
“Homegrown violent extremists are not clustered in one geographic area, nor are they confined to any one type of setting — they can appear in cities, smaller towns, and rural parts of the country,” Mueller said. “This diffuse and dynamic threat — which can take the form of a lone actor — is of particular concern.
“While much of the national attention is focused on the substantial threat posed by international terrorists to the homeland, the United States must also contend with an ongoing threat posed by domestic terrorists based and operating strictly within the United States,” he said. “Domestic terrorists, motivated by a number of political or social issues, continue to use violence and criminal activity to further their agendas.”
Mueller’s testimony took place against the backdrop of a order by a federal judge in Arkansas that effectively banned a “private banking system” from operating.
Judge Shutters ‘Private Banking System’
Wayne Hicks and his company, My Icis Inc., gathered about $100 million between 2003 and 2006 and helped customers avoid taxes by shielding their identities and other financial transactions from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Justice Department said yesterday. Hicks and My Icis consented to an injunction that barred the system from operating.
Hicks already is serving five years in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States in a related criminal case. Although the agency did not raise the issue of terrorism yesterday, the case underscores the sensitivity of the United States to banking practices that are hard to monitor and may involve thousands of people whose identities are murky or unknown.
My Icis “helped customers set up purportedly anonymous bank accounts to hide their identities, income and other financial transactions, including deposits, wire transfers and bill payments,” the Justice Department said. “Hicks admitted in his criminal case that My Icis helped customers ‘get out’ of the traditional banking system and successfully shield their financial transactions from the government, more specifically the IRS, and thereby avoid paying federal income taxes.”
The scheme was promoted through websites, seminars in Mexico and online newsletters, the Justice Department said.
To recruit customers, Hicks promoted his banking system at Pinnacle Quest International (PQI) seminars in 2005 in the Mexican resorts of Cancun and Ixtapa, the Justice Department said.
Eight people associated with PQI were convicted in Florida last month of wire-fraud, money-laundering and tax charges by a federal jury following a weeks-long trial in Pensacola.
Investigators said PQI, which also was known as Quest International, was operating a “fraudulent tax and debt elimination scheme.” My Icis was one of its vendors, and the PQI scheme crossed U.S. borders and ventured into Panama, a hotbed for financial fraud.
“PQI was an umbrella organization for numerous vendors of tax and credit card debt elimination scams,” the Justice Department said. “Some of the PQI vendors, such as Southern Oregon Resource Center for Education (SORCE), sold bogus theories and strategies for tax evasion.
“For fees starting at $10,000, SORCE assisted its customers in the creation of a series of sham business entities in the United States and Panama,” the Justice Department said. “Other tax-related PQI vendors denied the legitimacy of the income tax system on various theories and provided customers with a purported ‘reliance defense’ that consisted of a paper trail of frivolous correspondence [that] a client could allegedly use as evidence of good faith if the client were prosecuted.”
My Icis “operated as a sophisticated, computerized ‘warehouse bank,’” the Justice Department said. “[It] was a single bank account in which customers pooled their money. [My Icis] was promoted to PQI’s clients as a method to hide their assets from the IRS as a result of the pooled nature of the account.”
The company had 3,000 clients, the Justice Department said of My Icis. PQI, meanwhile, had more than 11,000 members “throughout the United States.”
Prosecutors established that Arthur Merino, who operated a company known as Financial Solutions and sold a scheme to eliminate credit-card debt, “charged its customers thousands of dollars for a series of letters to send to credit card companies disputing the lawfulness of the underlying debt.
“The product was wholly ineffective, and customers typically were sued by their creditors and often forced into bankruptcy,” the Justice Department said.
Convicted in the PQI case were Claudia Constance Hirmer and Mark Steven Hirmer of Niceville, Fla. They were found guilty of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and tax evasion.
Eugene “Gino†Joseph Casternovia of Ashland, Ore., Arnold Ray Manansala of Renton, Wash., Dover Eugene Perry of Renton, Wash., and Michael Guy Leonard of Troy, N.Y., were convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Meanwhile, Mark Daniel Leitner of Fairport, N.Y., and Merino, who lives in Renton, Wash., were convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
“The use of abusive trust schemes and fraudulent debt elimination tactics intended to conceal income from the IRS isn’t tax planning; it’s criminal activity,” said Victor S.O. Song, chief of the IRS Criminal Investigation division. “There is no secret formula that can eliminate a person’s tax obligations.â€
UPDATED 5:14 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) The database being built by affiliates of Narc That Car (NTC) will not be used solely for the purpose of locating cars for seizure by the repo man, according to a recording of a March 11 conference call by the company.
The database, according to the recording, also is envisioned as a means of locating people, meaning it could be used to develop a data map that can plot the movement of citizens by tracking sightings of the license plates of their cars. The announcement of NTC’s plans may trigger even more concern about privacy and legal issues because citizens may not know their plate numbers are being recorded by a private business and entered in a database that tracks movement of cars.
NTC does not publish a list of data clients. The company says it is expanding internationally, which raises the possibility that overseas data clients could track the movement of U.S. citizens, as well as citizens of other countries. Meanwhile, NTC provides only threadbare details about its management team while collecting millions of dollars from participants.
Absent transparent controls, such a data tool conceivably could be used by spy agencies and secret clients, nationally and internationally, as a means of monitoring the behavioral patterns of individuals, including persons who hold sensitive jobs in government, science and industry, as well as the behavioral patterns of individuals such as politicians, candidates for offices, judges and their family members — and people of all stripes, regardless of occupation.
NTC does not describe how it screens data clients, and also has announced a new name change — the third name the company will use this year alone.
“What we want to become is the biggest company in the world for locating one individual item,” a speaker on the call said. It is believed the speaker was CEO William Forester.
“That could be a car, boat, person, child — anything you could possibly imagine,” the speaker said. “That’s what we’re building this database for.”
No Paid Clients From Law Enforcement
The speaker confirmed that NTC has no paying clients from law enforcement, saying the company would provide data to police agencies “for free” as a “service to the community.”
“We’re not charging local law enforcement; law enforcement — any law enforcement — is not a customer of ours,” the speaker said. The confirmation that NTC had no paid law-enforcement clients leads to questions about the company’s ability to attract clients outside of law enforcement in sufficient quantity to mute concerns about how it pays affiliates and whether the firm was using a pyramid or Ponzi model to pay participants who harvest license-plate data.
The confirmation also destroyed claims from individual NTC affiliates that the company had an existing stable of law enforcement clients such as the FBI, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the military — and was part of the federally operated AMBER Alert program.
Such claims appeared in promoters’ ads for weeks, leading to questions about whether NTC had come into possession of money based on false, misleading or confusing claims by its army of promoters — and whether NTC’s own vague claims led to the dubious claims of its affiliates.
The speaker said NTC had “over 34,000” members, was expanding “very, very rapidly” and had paid out “over several million dollars” in bonuses and commissions. He added that the company was integrated with Code Amber.
Code Amber is an entity that publishes AMBER Alerts and makes available a website ticker for others to publicize alerts, but is not the AMBER Alert program itself. The AMBER Alert program is administered by the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, both of which said last month that they are not affiliated with NTC, despite the claims of promoters.
An Ohio man who promotes NTC on a Blog known as Cash For Car Plates announced the name change on his Blog last week.
“Narc Technologies/Narc That Car is now Crowd Sourcing International,” wrote Ajamu Kafele.
No announcement of a name change appears on NTC’s website.
But an NTC audio (the source of the quotes above) is accessible from a website titled CrowdSourcingWealth.com operated by Kafele, who uses the nickname “Jah” to promote the company. The audio, which Kafele described as an excerpt of remarks by the “CEO,” suggests the name change is official and that NTC will begin to use the initials CSI.
Indeed, a speaker says in the call, “We’re gonna change our name to Crowd Sourcing International — that’s right, for short, CSI.”
The CrowdSourcingWealth.com domain was registered in Kafele’s name March 12, one day after the NTC conference call. A similar domain name that references NTC — CrowdSourcingPower.com — was registered in California Jan. 27. Like Kafele’s domain, the CrowdSourcingPower domain appears to be an NTC affiliate site that is a work-in-progress.
NTC appears to have arrived at the conclusion that tying the company’s brand to the catch phrase crowdsourcing — which describes a method of accomplishing a task using large numbers of people and is controversial as an economic and scientific approach because it may drive down wages and lead to flawed and uneven results — would resonate with NTC members.
“The main goal of NarcThatCar is to us (sic) the Power of CrowdSourcing to develop the largest database of it’s (sic) kind,” the CrowdSourcingPower.com site says. “Working together with Amber Alert and other organizations we can help to locate the known vehicles that may be involved in the abduction of children.”
“CSI” is an acronym used by law enforcement that stands for “Crime Scene Investigation.” It also is the title of a crime drama on the CBS television network. If the name change is official, Crowd Sourcing International will become the third name NTC and its corporate parent have operated under this year.
The use of the CSI name as an acronym also could set the stage for NTC affiliates again to leech off the brands of famous entities by tying NTC to companies or entities that have no affiliation with the firm.
NTC affiliates have demonstrated a desire to link the program to the names or the intellectual property of famous entities, including government entities. At least one NTC affiliate registered a domain titled AmberAlertHelp. org, using it as an affiliate site for NTC. Another affiliate used a takeoff of the ToysRUs brand to promote NTC.
Kafele has recorded check-waving videos to promote NTC and has said repping for the firm was like working for the U.S. Census Bureau.
The announcement about the name change, Kafele said, was based on a “company wide” announcement NTC made during a March 11 conference call. Why the announcement does not appear on the NTC website was not immediately clear.
Company VP To Explain Vision
Meanwhile, NTC has identified Rene Couch as its vice president of marketing. No biographical
Narc That Car says VP Rene Couch will share his vision for the company.
information on Couch was provided on NTC’s website, which said Couch will “share his vision” of the company at a meeting March 23 in Oklahoma City. The audio accessible from Kafele’s website includes comments from a male speaker who used the name Rene.
A man by the same name with the middle initial of “L” was charged civilly by the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) with selling unregistered securities and misappropriating investors’ funds in a complex case involving real-estate promissory notes.
It is unclear if NTC’s Rene Couch is the Rene L. Couch referenced in the ACC complaint.
A call to NTC by the PP Blog was answered by an auto-attendant. A message said the office was closed. There was not an option for a caller to leave a message. The Blog verified there was no option to leave a message by placing a second call to the number. As was the case with the first call, the auto-attendant simply hung up.
In 2005, after a finding that Rene L. Couch and entities he controlled had made “untrue statements or misleading omissions of material facts, and or . . . [engaged] in transactions, practices or courses of business which operate or would operate as a fraud or deceit upon investors,” ACC issued an order to cease and desist from unlawful conduct.
Rene L. Couch and the entities further were ordered to disgorge “$549,085 plus interest at the rate of 10% per annum” to investors. In filings in the case, Rene L. Couch was described as the owner of a “personal nutritional supplement business known as Infinity 2.” Rene L. Couch consented to the order, according to case filings.
Rene L. Couch was accused in the Arizona case of using investor funds in the real-estate venture for “various undisclosed purposes” and diverting investor funds to the Infinity 2 supplement business. Infinity 2 was described in documents external to the case as a multilevel-marketing company.
The filings in the ACC case are public records.
Other Arizona public records show that Rene L. Couch was a party in a Family Court dispute in Maricopa County over back child support and unreimbursed medical expenses between April 1, 2006 and May 31, 2009. Records published on an Arizona court site show that one of the parties was ordered to pay $65,895 in back support, plus an additional $8,472 in unreimbursed expenses.
Repayment terms in the support case were set at $550 a month, according to records. The party ordered to pay the back support was not clear from court filings, and the case still appears to be in litigation. The PP Blog was unable to contact NTC to clarify whether the Rene Couch referenced as its vice president was the Rene L. Couch referenced in the Arizona documents.
In February, NBC-5 of Dallas/Fort Worth reported it repeatedly was unable to reach NTC by telephone to answer questions for a story.
“Repeatedly, NBCDFW worked through a phone tree, only to reach a recording that said, ‘Sorry, this mailbox is full and cannot accept any more recordings. Thank you for using the voice mail system. Goodbye,” the station reported of its efforts to navigate NTC’s phone tree.
NBC-5 further reported that it sent a reporter to the company’s office, and was met by a man who identified himself as the operations manager.
“He said company phones are busy because Narc Technologies has more than 20,000 participants,” the station reported. “He declined to answer any other questions and said the company’s CEO would call us back, but we have received no return calls.”
Timing Of Name-Change Announcement
The timing of the name-change announcement coincides with a negative rating NTC received from the Better Business Bureau. The BBB branch in Dallas gave Narc That Car a rating of “F” on March 4. The “F” rating is the BBB’s lowest on a 14-point scale that begins with “A+” as the highest possible score. The announcement of the name change occurred March 11, a week after the BBB issued the company an “F.”
Three versions of domains using the phrase CrowdSourcingInternational — a .com version, a .net version and a .org version — were registered behind a proxy Feb. 4. All three domains resolve to a parked page that shows advertisements.
It was not immediately clear if the domains are connected to NarcThatCar. If they are, the domains were registered 17 days after the BBB opened an inquiry into Narc That Car amid pyramid concerns. On the previous day — Feb. 3 — the district attorney of Henderson County, Texas, also opened an inquiry. In a statement last month, the district attorney said he was consulting with Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott in the case.
Less than a month earlier, on Jan. 12, a corporation named National Automotive Record Centre Inc. filed papers to incorporate in Nevada. Kafele produced a YouTube video March 1 that showed affiliate payments from National Automotive Record Centre Inc. for NTC earnings.
An earlier video by Kafele showed a payment coming from Narc Technologies Inc., another company associated with the NTC brand. Both videos were made private on YouTube after the PP Blog reported that Kafele claimed in the video that working for NTC was like working for the U.S. Census Bureau, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
NTC is not a government entity. Its affiliates are deemed “independent consultants” by the company. Regardless, advertisements by NTC promoters have implied or stated directly that NTC was associated with the government, including the federally operated AMBER Alert program and even the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Kafele was toiling with NTC critics on Scam.com a day after the name-change announcement. Among other things, he asserted that “Whip,” a poster on the PP Blog, and PP were one in the same.
The claim is false, but follows a general pattern of claims about the PP Blog, which frequently becomes the target of fanciful theories and criticism from supporters of companies the Blog is writing about.
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that Kafele had engaged in the unauthorized practice of law in a banking and mortgage-foreclosure case involving a third party, and assessed him a $1,000 civil penalty. Kafele and others have made sweeping statements that license-plate numbers are “public information” available for the taking to be entered by affiliates in the NTC database.
“This is how simple this business is, folks,†he said in the video, as a camera panned around the Giant Eagle parking lot and captured one car after another in video frames.
“I’m not even going to talk to anybody,†he said. He noted that “I’m just going to jot down some public information of the license plates. That’s the way this works.â€
At Scam.com, Kafele also suggested that the PP Blog “lied about our company not being affiliated with Code Amber, in an attempt to discredit us.”
That claim, too, is untrue. The PP Blog never asserted NTC had no relationship with Code Amber. The Blog reported that the U.S. Department of Justice denied that the federally managed AMBER Alert program, which NTC referenced in a promotional video, had any affiliation with NTC.
NTC removed the AMBER Alert reference from the video after the Justice Department’s denial.
Kafele also has defended NTC by attacking the credibility of the BBB and dismissing critics as “naysayers” and “haters.”
The PP Blog reads Scam.com, but does not post there — under any identity. The Blog even has been called a scam on Scam.com by a poster who was banned from the Blog for abusing its Comments function and, later, sending dozens of communications under multiple identities that were designed to harass the Blog and probe its software systems for vulnerabilities.
The poster, who was banned from Scam.com for posting under multiple identities, later threatened to sue the PP Blog.
UPDATED 8:33 P.M. EDT U.S.A. There must be some long faces at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Secret Service today. That’s because two federal agents once assigned to a Task Force investigating the illicit Silk Road marketplace have been charged with federal crimes.
A Washington state man sentenced in the 1990s to 46 months in federal prison for possessing a pipe bomb now has become the subject of a tax investigation.
URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: Two men were arrested in Washington state last night after the FBI disrupted a planned attack on a Seattle military intake center that included a daycare center for the children of federal employees, the Justice Department said.
