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
