If you're Happy - Clap your Muskrat Paws

The biggest tell-tale of a problem is when the happy believers find it necessary to thwart those who want more information and answers.

It is one of the largest red flags of white-collar crime and corporate corruption. Silence the naysayers.

If you are one of the happy ones - content that Muskrat is the best deal - content that NL Hydro is run to perfection - that Kathy Dunderdale is one of our times best minds and that Ed Martin is an energy guru - then good for you. Sit quietly in your content houses and dream of butterflies and lollipops.

There is no reason whatsoever for those who are "onside" to try and dissuade others from being more skeptical, inquiring, or involved in public discourse. There is no reason whatsoever for government members to use words like naysayers, or pessimists, or partisans and/or conspiracy theorists - when speaking about the people they work for. People who want to ask questions and dig deeper into 8-10 billion dollar projects that they and the future generations will pay for.

When government members do that to citizens - it is not for altruistic purposes. It is only for political reasons - in that they do not want to subject themselves to criticism. 

The world is damn well square and don't you question our experts. We will build things to fit a square world and don't be damn partisan and stop progress. Square is the least cost option and we will hear nothing more. We will hire "independent" analysts and tell them to investigate "square" and check to see if the information we provide that resulted in "square" is accurate.

If we remove skepticism and inquiring minds from our world - it would be square.

The mess we are in today should cause more questioning and more skepticism - and right on time like trained seals - the spinners - or happy people appear. If you are happy good for you - let others who want to prevent another Enron or Canary Wharf do their thing.
 

Conspiracy Theories and Pillars of our Community

The Pillars of our Community

As you read the post below - remember that all these people were "successful" - "trustworthy" - and some even "heroes". Then remember there were those who tried to do the right thing - tried to stop these things from getting worse and prevent the victim list from getting larger. Those people were not listened to - the perpetrators were protected by society while more and more people suffered.

Never stop asking questions - never stop peeling back the layers of onion - never stop sniffing when there is a stink - never place anybody on a societal pedestal so high as to become untouchable.

Those who plan to or are currently involved in frauds against society or crimes against children and seniors - think again. You ALL get caught.

Below is just a sample of the thousands of pillars that crumbled and fell. The problem is we should be trying to dig out the schemes, the frauds, and the dirt before more and more children are harmed, before more economies of countries fall, and before our children's future is robbed from them.

1. In January 2011, Joe Paterno learned prosecutors were investigating his longtime assistant coach Jerry Sandusky for sexually assaulting young boys. Soon, Mr. Paterno had testified before a grand jury, and the rough outlines of what would become a giant scandal had been published in a local newspaper.

That same month, Mr. Paterno, the football coach at Penn State, began negotiating with his superiors to amend his contract, with the timing something of a surprise because the contract was not set to expire until the end of 2012, according to university documents and people with knowledge of the discussions. By August, Mr. Paterno and the university’s president, both of whom were by then embroiled in the Sandusky investigation, had reached an agreement. Read More Here

Mr. Paterno was to be paid $3 million at the end of the 2011 season if he agreed it would be his last.

2. J P Morgan disclosed on Friday that losses on its botched credit bet could climb to more than $7 billion and that the bank’s traders may have intentionally tried to obscure the full extent of the red ink on the disastrous trades.

Mounting concerns about valuing the trades led the company to announce that its earnings for the first quarter were no longer reliable and would be restated. Federal regulators, who were already examining the trades, are now looking at whether employees of the nation’s biggest bank by assets intended to defraud investors, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Read More Here

3. In September 1988, Fr. James Hickey pled guilty to 20 charges of sexual assault, gross indecency and indecent assault involving teenage boys while he was a parish priest on the Burin Peninsula. He spent five years in prison. Despite Hickey’s criminal conviction the Roman Catholic Church fought the victim’s claims for compensation for over 20 years.

In February 2009, the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador ruled that the Roman Catholic Church in St. John’s was responsible ("vicariously liable") for the sexual abuse of eight former altar boys by disgraced priest, Reverend James Hickey. Read More Here

4. Accounting firm Arthur Andersen had already been found guilty in the court of public opinion, and paid a heavy penalty. Clients deserted; employees fled. In fact the Chicago firm was barely alive, but one question remained: What would its epitaph be, the lesson for others? An answer came last Saturday, when a Houston jury found Andersen guilty of obstructing justice. It provided a moment of vindication for investors who lost more than $60 billion in the spectacular collapse of Enron, whose books had been audited by Andersen. But the verdict held a twist: at first the case seemed to hinge on whether an Andersen employee ordered tons of Enron paperwork to be shredded before investigators arrived. Read More Here

5. A man many people saw as a possible heir to Danny Williams as (Newfoundland & Labrador) premier was handcuffed and escorted to jail Friday (April 17).
Ed Byrne-a former cabinet minister and the first politician named in the constituency spending scandal that rocked the province three years ago-was sentenced to two years less a day in jail in provincial court in St. John's.

The 45-year-old had pleaded guilty to two fraud charges and was given the prison term for fraud over $5,000. He was also given 18 months in jail for a single count of frauds on the government. Both sentences will be served concurrently. Read More Here

6.  U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, Jr. announced today that Sean Ola-Ojo, 31, of Brooklyn, New York; Angelo Louissaint, 38, of West Babylon, New York; and Jennifer Johnson, 36, of Dix Hills, New York, have been indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with conspiracy, mail fraud, and wire fraud. In addition, Louissaint is charged with money laundering. The defendants are accused of defrauding Flaherty Funding, a mortgage company located in Rochester. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in jail, a fine up to $500,000 fine, or both.

In one instance, the purported seller of the property did not even own the property that was sold to the straw-buyer. Defendant Johnson prepared fake title insurance for this transaction, creating the appearance of valid title in the property, in order to induce Flaherty Funding to issue a mortgage loan. As a result of this scheme, Flaherty Funding issued three mortgage loans to straw-buyers in the amounts of $533,850, $533,850 and $646,300, totaling $1,714,000. The vast majority of the mortgage loan proceeds went to defendants. In addition, Ola-Ojo, Louissaint, and Johnson submitted two other false applications, but those transactions did not close. Read More Here

7.  U.S. federal agents have arrested a telemarketer who once ran a government-supported call centre operation in Newfoundland. The Department of Homeland Security says in court documents that it has been investigating Michael Mouyal “for running an international telemarketing scheme,” and committing mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. Read More Here

8. An independent review of six decades of Scouts Canada records revealed that the organization failed at least 65 times to report allegations of sexual misconduct to authorities. Not all of those are ancient history.

Thirteen of the 65 incidents came to the Scouts' attention since 1992, when it became mandatory to report everything suspicious to police, said the report by investigators at KPMG.
The review was released on Monday. Read More Here

9. The Bank of Montreal is suing hundreds of people in Alberta, including lawyers, mortgage brokers and four of its own employees, in what is one of the largest alleged cases of mortgage fraud in Canadian history. Legal documents obtained exclusively by CBC News allege the bank was the target of a sophisticated fraud operated by 14 inter-connected groups. The documents claim the scheme generated at least $140 million, about $70 million of which was for phoney mortgages.
The bank has estimated it may lose as much as $30 million. Toronto forensic accountant Al Rosen said he has never seen anything like it. Read More Here

10. A Quebec man who got rich at the expense of unsophisticated investors and the federal and provincial tax departments has lost his bid to appeal his case at the Supreme Court. Jacques Gagne, from Longueuil, Que., was sentenced in 2010 by Quebec Court Judge Ellen Pare to 42 months in prison for tax evasion.

Pare said she took into consideration the degree of preparation and premeditation, and the fact that Gagne targeted people who were financially vulnerable. "They were the instruments of his crime," she said. From 1997 to 2000, Gagne used a series of shell companies he created to drain more than $3 million from the RRSPs and locked-in retirement accounts (LIRAs) of 152 people recruited through newspaper ads. Read More Here

Stay out of Jail Free Pass....

What is it? Rub a few shoulders with the legal community - be an upstanding citizen and/or if it's a "one shot event" - you can get a "stay out of jail pass" for fraud? If I ask this question am I in contempt?

Convicted of 1 count of fraud over $5000.....house arrest for 1 year.....
Is this a foreshadowing of things to come?

As the Telegram story points out:

Donald Mercer and Byron Button, the chairman and president, respectively, of the now-defunct St. John's trust company, were originally charged with 21 counts of fraud after $3.5 million went missing when Caribou went into receivership in 1995.

This after an acquittal as noted in this CBC story in 2003:

A long, drawn-out case against two former directors of a local investment and loan company has ended.

Donald Mercer and Byron Button were charged with fraud. Their company, Caribou Investments, closed down in 1995. .

Both men have been acquitted.

The Crown asked for the acquittals because evidence gathered through four RCMP search warrants was ruled inadmissible.

The judge agreed there wasn't enough evidence to continue the trial

About 150 investors lost close to three million dollars when the company's assets were sold off.

Then as the Telegram Story points out:

That acquittal was overturned and a second trial ordered in March 2005 when the Court of Appeal ruled the trial judge erred in excluding the evidence.

To top it all off once again from the Telegram story by Jamie Baker:

In July, Mercer's lawyer, Averill Baker, filed an application to stay the charges against him and Button, based on the assertion that the defence's case had been impaired by Mercer's medical condition and associated memory loss.

Geez that sounds strangely familiar to other trials - remember?

In either case people suffered - families suffered - and no doubt they are still suffering from the fraud perpetrated on them.

And let me say we sent a strong message to white collar criminals by sentencing these two - to one year house arrest - which Mercer can serve in Nova Scotia - that's where he went off to - when things went sour. Mercer I have heard proclaim innocence before - and I would like to know what he has to say now.

Button for his part according to the Telegram said:

"Any sentence that the court will impose, it will be in addition to what Mr. Mercer as well as myself have been through in the last 14 years," Button said prior to sentencing. "There has been a loss of income, loss of career, total devastation to my family, even though I have all the support from them that anyone could expect."

I would like to remind Mr. Button and Mr. Mercer that they are responsible for their misery - what the court had to deal with was the misery suffered by people who were not responsible for the situation. In other words the "victims".

What really got me was the Judge's comments during sentencing - from the Telegram Story:

"I don't believe a prison term in relation to this matter is appropriate for either of the accused," Justice Robert Hall said Wednesday, referring to the charge against Mercer and Button as being a "one shot event."

Does that mean ENRON was a one shot event? Or Conrad Black hauling evidence from his office - a one shot event?

Hardly surprising considering the Police and the Crown had them under the scope after the charges were laid originally. They got caught!

and then again from the story:

Hall said the trial was also personally difficult for him, given that he knew both the accused well and had "rubbed shoulders" with them as part of the province's legal community.

"I take no joy at all from this trial whatsoever, or the conclusion I had to come to, or the sentence I had to impose," Hall said, before pointing out he was "scrupulous" in making sure the fact he knew the two men did not "interfere with my judgments in this matter."

Okay now is it just me - or do two of those paragraphs contradict each other. Would the Judge be so tormented if some mother was passing bad cheques to feed the kids ( a one shot event) - or some kid addicted to drugs prescribed by a pill pushing doctor robbed a store to feed his/her habit (a one shot event)? Would he be so tormented over a blue collar stiff defrauding EI (a one shot event)? Or a small business person failing to report all revenues (a one shot event)?

This is a joke and a very bad one on the people who were screwed by the actions of these two men.

So here I go - annoying the establishment again. That should bring it's usual rewards of personal condemnation and back-room whispers.

What I should have said was - what a sin - these two men dragged through investigations and trials for over a decade - it's time we let it go - give them some peace. They have already suffered enough - and the poor man is sick.

Where's the money? Where's the money? Where's the money?

The other thing I'm wondering about is this:

The MHA's that have been charged with various offenses in the House of Assembly spending scandal which include 1 count of fraud over $5000 - should they be found guilty should they expect the same sentence? After all these guys must have "rubbed shoulders" with the legal community while holding office - all of them can claim the same as Button loss of reputation - income etc. I can see it now - 1 year of "House" arrest. Would this also be a one shot event? I wonder if ankle bracelets can be included in constituency allowance spending - they are interesting trinkets and much more substantial than rings.