Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
He also had a company called Intrax d/b/a Surplus Computers which ran a scam reselling restricted overseas student editions of Microsoft software in the US. MSFT sued and won a summary judgement against him in 2008; Mak went bankrupt.
Case 07-cv-01840-CW in fed dist court Nth California.
You can see it as either a failure of natural justice, or an indication of how much Matt must have pissed off the govt thru obstruction of justice etc etc.
But also remember that it's just Matt's attorney saying that Mak walked away with $3M. Recall that this is what the prosecution said:
Responding specifically to Mr. Garey's argument, as the Court knows from the presentence report, the funds that were generated from the Asia Global fraud were wired offshore. We don't know what happened to them at this point except to know that they were distributed among the conspirators in the fraud ...
I guess the question is: did they try to find out & if not, why not.
Would really like to know what's in the sealed sentencing submissions.
Who/what is S.H. I wonder? Oh - just realised he probably actually said "S8".
"Mack" is obviously Michael Mak, ex-CEO of Asia Global, an unindicted co-conspirator: http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=38142959
Apparently most of the redacted part of the transcript has the judge & counsel discussing which of your pics they liked the best, and the judge urging Matt to take heed of selections from fung_derf's homespun pearls of wisdom.
Interestingly, the govt's sentencing submission apparently included an upwards adjustment for obstruction of justice.
Judge: With respect to the obstruction of justice, based on the record that I have reviewed in writing, I find that it is an appropriate upward adjustment in this case, and therefore, again, reject the objection on that basis, so that the guideline -- the guideline numbers that I have recited are appropriate ...
The govt's sentencing submission delivered a guideline range of 87-108 months, including this upwards adjustment, and the prosecutor argued strongly for a sentence in this range.
Matt's father also addressed the court, apparently bewildered that other people involved in this were not prosecuted etc while his son seemed to have taken the fall for them.
Obviously one sympathsizes with Matt's dad - but the transcript does indicate that Matt actively obstructed justice in some way, and the prosecutor speaks generally of bad things done by Matt both before & after the indictment. On the other hand, the mitigating factors offered by the defense seem weak: Matt led astray by nasty Californians; his efforts to change IHUB with the Bag Holder Induction Page thing etc etc.
All consistent with Matt having only himself and the attorneys he chose to blame & in the end he was perhaps lucky not to get double his sentence.
The redacted portion is a sidebar called by Matt's attorney - no indication what it was about but a fair guess is stuff to do with Matt's assistance or lack of it with other cases - eg Joey M.
Finally - the judge's address was embarrassingly weak, no? What's with the irresponsible computer genius crap? No fundamental difference between this and eg some cabal rigging the Amsterdam market in the 17th century.
Partially redacted transcript of Matt Brown's sentencing hearing now available thru PACER. See DE #65 in 09cr00046 in DEDC.
Matt's attorney: And I think it's significant given the fact that
the government has asked for a forfeiture of 4.7 million, that the three million of those funds went to an individual that was neither charged nor prosecuted. And these are the S.H. shares I'm speaking about, which would have gone directly to Mr. Mack.
Prosecutor: Responding specifically to Mr. Garey's argument, as the Court knows from the presentence report, the funds that were generated from the Asia Global fraud were wired offshore. We don't know what happened to them at this point except to know that they were distributed among the conspirators in the fraud, and under the principles of Pinkerton, liability as well as relevant conduct in the
guidelines, the defendant, as a member of the conspiracy throughout the fraud, is responsible for that reasonably foreseeable gain, and therefore the reasonably foreseeable loss for purposes of the guideline calculation.
Prosecutor: The victims of this fraud are not corporations, they're not banks. They're not even institutional investors or sophisticated m oney managers, and that's because this fraud was committed in the penny stock markets. And the penny stock markets by and large attract the least sophisticated investors that are out there. [..] There is very little in the way of SEC reporting that is done, let alone required, and so we're dealing with the ultimate world of caveat emptor when we're dealing with the penny stock market.
And the class of victim investors who were targeted by this offense were those investors who rely on Internet chat rooms, bulletin boards, message boards to make their investment decisions. And what the defendant and his co-conspirators did was take advantage of that class of investors to perpetrate this fraud. And ultimately what they did is they rigged the game. They had the cooperation of traders, of the issuers of these securities, of stockbrokers and promoters to rig
the game. It's like walking into a casino and you know there's a risk. You know that if you play the slots, chances are pretty good you might lose your money, and you might -- but you think you might win some money, too, if you play blackjack or what have you.
But what the defendant and his co-conspirators did is they gave the appearance of a casino when there's no way that slot machine is going to come up triple bars. There's no chance that when you play blackjack in their casino that you are ever going to get 21, and that's because
they created the artificial impression of a market when there was no market. [..]
This defendant knew what he was doing, and I included examples in our papers for the Court to illustrate this. But in sum, this was a defendant who was not making a mistake. This was not a momentary lapse of judgment. As he admitted in the presentence investigation, he used the very business that he had created, this business called iHub,
which was the online stock messaging board that they used in
furtherance of the crime. The community that he created online was the community that he victimized. This defendant knew what he was doing and continued to do it. [..]
When it comes to deterrence, your Honor, the government is not arguing that specific deterrence is a serious issue here. [..] However, I think this is one of those situations where there actually is an opportunity for general deterrence.
I know there is research out there suggesting that general deterrence is hard to accomplish through an individual sentence, but what we pointed out in our papers and I'd like to emphasize for the Court is that there is actually a very specific community that is very, very
closely paying attention to this case. I mentioned in our papers that there is a message board on iHub dedicated to this case that has been
in existence since the indictment was returned, where there have been over 15,000 posts in the last two years. The online trading community is paying attention to this case, and I think there are others out there. I know there are others out there who are engaged in this type of fraud or may be contemplating getting involved in this type of fraud.
And so this is a situation where a sentence in a particular
case will be heard by a particular community.
Matt: Your Honor, I stand before you today absolutely ashamed of myself for the decision that I made and what I allowed myself to get into. I'm extremely regretful for the impact that it had on anybody that invested in these stocks that I was involved with and got hurt as well as the impact that it has had on my family and friends and colleagues and people close to me.
I have totally blown it and let everybody down and I know that and it has been absolutely the most painful lesson in my life I've ever had to go through. I'm now a convicted felon. I have all of those hurdles that that entails to deal with for the rest of my life. My reputation online that I spent so many years building has been completely destroyed by this case. Not this case, by what I did. And that hurts a lot.
The -- just reflecting on this, the result of my stupidity are just overwhelming, and I'm extremely afraid of the sentence that you are about to issue me, but at the same token, I want to let the Court know that I'm actually very thankful for this case in many ways. I got involved in activities and with people that I should never have been
involved with, did things I shouldn't have. And my family raised me to be a better person than, you know, doing the things that I did.
This case, you know, has stopped me from going even further into the abyss that I was going into with the involvement and the things that I was doing, and I was able to -- you know, I've corrected that behavior and learned so many valuable lessons because of this. I'm now focused on right and productive things, aligned myself with some truly incredible friends and colleagues, and I've been removed from the bad element that I was involved in. I'm now in a proper environment and I'm
very fortunate to be being mentored by some very impressive people. I've become socially responsible with my local community, something that prior to this case, I was not.
And I've put significant effort into educating the investing public over the last few years as an absolute direct result of this case, and I've, as noted in the sentencing memorandum, I've even put together a letter for the SEC, addressing what I think would have prevented the GH3 fraud, and will continue to do things like that to help the SEC
out.
And I've got so many ideas on education and helping people to invest properly because over the last few years, like I said, I'm being mentored, I have learned how to invest properly and the right type of stocks to get involved in, and I want to share that with the world. And
because of Investor's HUB, I'm in a rare and unique position to make a difference on a very, very large scale, and as, you know, we've submitted in the sentencing memorandum, I've started that and will only continue to do that in as many ways as possible.
Your Honor, I know I'm on the right track now. I've grown up a lot since I was 24 years old, and I hope that you'll consider who I am today when sentencing me.
Judge: Mr. Brown, how ironic is it that you come before me for your part in a scheme to defraud members of the investing community, the same community in which you have been a part since you were 16, the same community that legitimately made you a millionaire by the time you were 25, the same community that continues to support you.
Sadly, I suspect, the situation reflects failings in both you and the investing community, the failings being greed I think obviously, but I suggest more dangerous than greed -- and I really don't think greed was
your motivation -- is this peculiar kind of arrogance associated with computer crimes. The victims are not real and the conduct can be seen as nothing more than the same kind of intellectual exercise you undertake when you are playing one of these complexion realistic computer games.
It is the stuff of all manner of entertainment media, romanticizing these computer geniuses who are able to take advantage of the rest of the world because they are so much smarter. Shame on you for using your intellect and abilities in this dangerous and frivolous way, without
thought of the consequences to the real victims of your conduct.
Nevertheless, once again, the guideline sentence of more than seven years for someone like you, who is young, who has no criminal record, who has contributed legitimately to society and who has admitted to and who is remorseful for the errors of your ways is, I don't believe, just
punishment. I think it is unduly harsh punishment. Therefore, I am going to vary from the guideline range, but a term of incarceration is absolutely appropriate in this case, and one that is longer than the 36-month period of incarceration given to your co-conspirator, as I find your role in the scheme more compelling than his was.
WilmerHale's revolving door has connections beyond the SEC, it seems.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/business/patent-bill-could-save-a-law-firm-millions.html
Patent Bill Could Save a Law Firm Millions
By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: September 7, 2011
The bill to overhaul the patent system that is now before the Senate contains a provision that could get an influential law firm off the hook for a possible $214 million malpractice payment. [..]
The provision clarifies how much time pharmaceutical companies have to apply for patent extensions that can provide extra years of protection from generic competition.
But critics, who have dubbed the provision “The Dog Ate My Homework Act,” say it is really a special fix for one drug manufacturer, the Medicines Company, and its powerful law firm, WilmerHale. The company and its law firm, with hundreds of millions of dollars in drug sales at stake, lobbied Congress heavily for several years to get the patent laws changed. [...]
The firm has a huge Washington office, and a few dozen of its members went to work for the Obama administration. The firm is also a powerhouse in Boston, and some of the most active supporters of the provision in Congress are from Massachusetts, like Representative Ed Markey, a Democrat.
In February, WilmerHale agreed to pay $18 million to the Medicines Company to compensate it for its legal and lobbying costs. It also agreed to pay as much as $214 million more if a generic version of Angiomax reached the market before June 15, 2015, because the extension application was deemed late.
None of the regulators do a very good job of providing useful guidance to what reports, forms, filings etc mean. It can be fun puzzling things out for yourself but it isn't something you should have to do.
It isn't just a retail issue. I bet that many professional buy-side analysts and PM's would find some of this stuff equally murky, to the extent that they're not dealing with it day to day.
Yes, I do understand. What would be useful is a clear & authoritative statement by FINRA or whoever of what is actually included in the daily short volume report and, even more useful, how it relates to the bi-monthly short interest report. Anybody know of such a thing?
When you're trying to convince somebody that Evil Shorties are not beating down a stock, it's not very useful to just say, "Because I know what the reports mean & you don't".
FINRA daily short reports eg http://regsho.finra.org/FORFshvol20110829.txt include market maker shorting to provide liquidity in the total short volume, right?
Is there anything published showing short volumes traded as agent only?
Yup. PNMS always going to be a scam, and the minute they filed their ridiculous pretend financials back whenever, everybody had as much information as you'd ever need to be sure of it.
Reading and understanding the company's own filings is enough to conclusively validate most pennyscams as scams. If you don't know how to read financials, get somebody who does to do it for you. That IMO is the single most important lesson.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=28571987
Riviello sentenced:
Minute Entry for proceedings held before Judge Sue L. Robinson - Sentencing held on 8/11/2011. Deft. was present with counsel. SENTENCE OF THE COURT: Marc Riviello (3), Count(s) 1s, 8 MONTHS IMPRISONMENT; 24 MONTHS SUPERVISED RELEASE; $100.00 SPECIAL ASSESSMENT; FINE WAIVED. (Court Reporter V. Gunning.) (fms) (Entered: 08/12/2011)
On a quick skim of the Final Rules, you're only eligible for money if you provide information or analysis which leads to a successful enforcement action.
However, those people who provide information or analysis which could have led to a successful enforcement action except that the SEC left it in that pile of stuff it should get around to sometime; or just weren't really into the enforcement thing that day; or were too busy looking at dwarf-porn; or didn't really know what to make of it though it looked kinda kinda; or decided that tipping off the target was a better career move, may at the discretion of the Commission receive a generic letter from Mary Schapiro expressing cursory appreciation for the recipient's interest in the Commission's activities.
I'm sure Matt doesn't really care.
Apparently he's deeply into the Consolatio Philosophiae you sent him, and spends all day in the library with it, annotating yr annotations.
He's trying to get everybody there to call him "Boethius" but that doesn't seem to have taken off yet.
Court has granted the govt's motion for forfeiture on those four accounts of Matt's, nobody having made a claim against them during the notice period.
Total amount snatched by the US: ~$270K.
Remaining amount still owed by Matt: ~$4.5M
In contrast, the govt last week asked for & was granted a similar money judgement against Marc Riviello, but for just $107K.
Math: Govt says MR "conducted financial transactions involving $253K which represented a proportion of the fraudulent proceeds"; $146K recovered in the original non-Lambo incident; leaving $107K.
A rather striking difference in treatment. The two admitted to different levels of involvement in the collection of scams, of course, but nevertheless it seems fair to guess that the prosecution hates Matt a whole bunch & MR hardly at all.
Riviello due for sentencing on Aug 11th. A couple of sealed motions filed by govt in lead up. My guess: minimal time, if any.
Joey M probably would have been up for sentencing around now, also, except of course the govt withdrew the charges - IMO almost certainly because Matt was the main witness & he screwed up the case, probably by trying to dump all the blame on Joey. Hence govt's attitude towards him.
For some reason I'm still chuckling over this.
In more detail the argument goes like so:
The Supreme Court has held in several cases that particular federal statutory disclosure requirements put the respondent at "substantial hazzard of self-incrimination" and therefore violated the Fifth.
The SC history apparently draws a distinction between broad requirements directed at the public at large - eg the requirement to file tax returns - and those targeting a narrow group of people quite likely to be guilty of something or other.
The attorney cites eg to a SC decision in Albertson v. SACB (1965):
In Sullivan the questions in the income tax return were neutral on their face and directed at the public at large, but here they are directed at a highly selective group inherently suspect of criminal activities. Petitioners’ claims are not asserted in an essentially noncriminal and regulatory area of inquiry, but against an inquiry in an area permeated with criminal statutes, where response to any of the… questions in context might involve the petitioners in the admission of a crucial element of a crime.
Now comes the creative leap. Since Enron, SarbOx etc etc,
The harsh criminal penalties contained in § 1350 and other Sarbanes-Oxley provisions have caused modern day CEOs and CFOs to be much more like criminal suspects than like average taxpayers.
In other words, CEOs & CFOs are a narrowly defined class of low-lifes likley to be guilty of fraud. Requiring them to certify an SEC filing is unconstitutional, because it requires them to choose between lying or incriminating themselves, in violation of the Fifth.
The conclusion is then clear:
As a result, the hazards of incrimination created by the mandatory reporting requirements of § 1350 cannot withstand Fifth Amendment scrutiny.... Section 1350 should be struck down
The attorney is Barry S. Polllack of mid-tier firm Sullivan & Worcester, where he leads the white collar defense group: http://www.sandw.com/professionals-201.html
Presumably this is the kind of thing you do when you have a client who is as guilty as sin but refuses to cut a deal - pull out all stops and get anything at all which might form the basis for an appeal into the record.
I guess he's earning his fee - he's filed several dozen motions in the case so far, some of which look pretty telling against a government case which in part looks cobbled together to avoid statute of limitation issues arising from the feds' 6+ years of mooching around before bringing charges.
Contrast with Matt Brown's choice of attorneys ...
Fun filing from the Locateplus criminal trial: a motion from the ex-CFO's attorney arguing that the SarbOx requirements for CEO and CFO certfications on SEC filings breach 5th amendment rights. That is, making a CEO/CFO sign a declaration that a 10-Q etc is accurate unconstitutionally forces the CEO/CFO to incriminate himself, if the filing is fraudulent.
What a guy! If I ever commit blatant unconscionable fraud over many years as an officer of a public company and get charged for it, he's the attorney for me.
This really does get to the point where I see only these possibilities:
(1) Brooks et al really didn't know what was going on at the time due to incompetence,
(a) innate; or
(b) innate and exacerbated by massive quantities of cocaine.
(2) They knew what was going on and thought it was a good idea, due to evil stupidity,
(a) innate; or
(b) innate plus the coke hoovering.
Believing in the essential goodness of mankind, I bet on 1(b).
I guess his next step is to appeal?
I love the pic of James the Guardian is using: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/21/james-murdoch-select-committee-evidence
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to make up tabloid headlines.
-- H. L. Mencken
"Everybody" assumes that Rupert will try to pull some kind of rabbit out of the hat at his & the others' the parliamentary grilling on Tuesday.
I'm betting ** 10c ** that he'll announce his resignation as CEO of News but only because I found some coins down the back of the couch. And I'm hedging it with a 5c bet bet that it'll be a damp squib.
I'm sticking with my main bet that James will get charged with something before long - he's pretty naked now.
Two good people to follow on twitter for Murdoch hack updates:
Michael Wolff, Rupert's biographer http://twitter.com/#!/MichaelWolffNYC
Tom Watson, the labour MP who has been blood-hounding away at this for ages http://twitter.com/#!/tom_watson
Eg from Wolff: In 2008, during a two hour interview I did with Rebekah Brooks, she took seven phone calls from James Murdoch--that's how often they spoke.
But Wolff is known for thinking that James is a bit of a pimple.
Rebekah Brooks just arrested.
James Murdoch next? I guess probably not right away.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/jul/17/phone-hacking-live-blog
I like Hilary Swank as James, in the youtube posted there:
Ummmm, is there any reason why the equity holders should get anything, or do they just think the secured creditors are being big meanies?
I haven't really been following that one but I did see some story where a post-petition share punter managed to get a good hearing in court because he was eloquent in explaining how clueless he was or something.
Some Egregious Onanist?
Yup, the excellent Hunter was the one digging info out of Sha'an.
The good ole days!
Ancient but still kind of intriguing, if you haven't seen it before:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/44847516/Task-Report
A report by "Task International" into our Sha'an, back in the day. There isn't any particular reason to take it at face value or to trust Task particularly, but still fun.
When this was leaked there was a lot of correspondence between Sha'an and others posted at the shady old Diligizer board, now defunct unfortunately. I can't remember much about it except some stories from his youth, eg being worked over in the back room by tough Sydney cops in connection with a heroin deal or something. Colorful!
One reason why I remember the old TASK thing is that it lists Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest, now and again the richest person in Australia, as owing Heffernan $3.3M.
Is Heffernan still around?
Apart from being a nasty little villain, he used to be good for some cheap laughs.
My favorite was when he was posing as "Sha'an Kheffe", a Very Well Connected Arab.
Federal contracts database:
https://www.fpds.gov/fpdsng_cms/
If eg you want to check that yr favorite little pinkie does actually have a $50 trillion contract with Homeland Security for commercializing technology recovered from impounded unregistered alien space craft.
In a strange incident last year that showed both Brooks's closeness to the Murdochs and her love of a bold gesture, she and James Murdoch showed up unannounced at the offices of the newspaper The Independent before the general election.
They were upset, it seems, at a headline in The Independent saying ''Rupert Murdoch Won't Decide The Election - You Will''.
According to an account in the Daily Mirror, a non-Murdoch tabloid, ''the wild-eyed duo then started to harangue bemused editor Simon Kelner in a foul-mouthed tirade''.
The words they used cannot be printed in a non-tabloid newspaper.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/murdoch-favourites-knack-for-making-the-right-friends-20110708-1h6tu.html [from NYT]
From what I know of these people, there's no reason to dismiss the simplest explanation for this chaos, i.e. cocaine.
Mr Watson [the Labour MP who has been pursuing this for ages] said: “I believe James Murdoch should be suspended from office while the police now investigate what I believe was his personal authorisation to plan a cover-up of this scandal.
“Mr James Murdoch is the chairman. It is clear now that he personally, without board approval, authorised money to be paid by his company to silence people who had been hacked and to cover up criminal behaviour within his organisation. This is nothing short of an attempt to pervert the course of justice.”
The MP also said he wanted detectives to ask Mr Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, whether they knew of an attempted destruction of data at a storage facility in Chennai, India.
Mr Watson said: “Their behaviour to the most vulnerable, their knowledge of law-breaking and their failure to act, their links with the criminal underworld, their attempts to cover up law-breaking and pay for people’s silence tell the world all we need to know about their character: that they are not fit and proper persons to control any part of the media in this country.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8621926/Rupert-Murdochs-son-must-pay-for-phone-hacking-scandal-says-MP-Tom-Watson.html
James, like his brother Lachlan, is a twit. Has to be at least some chance he gets charged with something.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jul/08/james-murdoch-questioning-david-cameron
James Murdoch should answer to the police, Cameron suggests
My suspicion is that Rupert's big mistake here was to once again put one of his idiot sons in charge of anything.
Roddy Boyd's latest, on ZAGG:
ZAGG: A Thin Film Between Love And Hate
The world of penny stocks is always worth a stroll because no matter what you come across almost every company and its story ultimately follows the same script.
A maker of cellphone and computer accessories from Salt Lake City, Zagg, is trying to buck that trend, and based on this chart, you could think they are pulling it off, managing to emerge from the primordial ooze of a reverse merger and walk upright in the sun.
Think again.
[more]
http://www.thefinancialinvestigator.com/?p=390
30 years seems about right for this guy.
Yup.
http://www.bop.gov/iloc2/LocateInmate.jsp
MATTHEW W BROWN 48370-112 29-White-M 12-09-2014 ATLANTA USP
NYT editorial today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/opinion/29wed3.html
The Judge Who Cracked the Bulger Case
Published: June 28, 2011
For anyone trying to fathom James (Whitey) Bulger’s long, pathological career on both sides of the law, a 661-page opinion by Mark Wolf, chief judge of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, tells the inside story.
[The magisterial opinion here: http://www.ipsn.org/court_cases/United_States_v_Salemme_Decision.htm
He leads with a quote from Lord Acton: "Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice."
... ]
The Wolf opinion is famous in the world of criminal justice. It led to high-profile hearings in Congress on “The F.B.I.’s Use of Murderers as Informants.”
The only time Judge Wolf commented publicly about this saga was a decade ago when he sentenced Mr. Flemmi to life in prison for his part in 10 murders. He said that “the F.B.I.’s relationship with Bulger and Flemmi was not an isolated, aberrant occurrence” when it came to the Top Echelon informants program. He found “a long pattern of the F.B.I.” ignoring the Constitution’s requirement that it be “candid with the courts” and prosecutors.
Judges are supposed to dispense justice but rarely root out crimes. As a result of Judge Wolf’s courage and persistence, the government has paid more than $100 million in claims to families of people murdered by informants shielded by the F.B.I. There is no good evidence that the F.B.I. has set up independent oversight of its informants program like what the judge called for. It’s high time.
That's pathetic in several different ways.
It's a sign of weakness, more than anything else, like something a weak pre-modern regime or China would do - drawing-and-quartering a few bad guys in a poor attempt to make up for not having the power to catch and rationally punish *most* bad guys.
The prosecutors in this one should get other jobs.
Anyway, for fruit-cakes like me who enjoy reading case docs, a piece of good news is that the very excellent Justice Mark Wolf will be presiding over the Bulger trial, without handing off anything to a magistrate.
Main case appears to be 94-cr-10287 in MA DC, and there is also 99-cr-10371.
Wolf handled much of the case load for Bulger-related things back in the day, and his orders and rulings from these are intellectually and ethically delightful.
He wants to get the case tried quickly. So hopefully some meaty court-room edutainment as well as lots of FBI/DoJ/politician douchebag-uncovering coming up.
FBI shame casts a long shadow
By Kevin Cullen
Globe Columnist / June 26, 2011
Richard DesLauriers, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Boston, could be forgiven for sounding a bit miffed the other day, when he was forced to respond to the inescapable reality that a lot of people don’t necessarily buy the FBI’s version of how Whitey Bulger’s 16 years on the lam came to an end.
[..]
DesLauriers seems like a decent, sincere guy, so I hate to break the news to him, but the FBI has little credibility in these matters with many people, including me, because in this town, the only things that last longer than winters are memories.
The FBI never told the truth about anything involving Whitey Bulger, so it’s not really surprising that so many of us don’t necessarily believe the FBI now.
We love our history in Boston, so maybe I can fill DesLauriers in on some history that might explain the skepticism he finds so exasperating.
In 1988, the Globe’s investigative unit, the Spotlight Team, published a four-part series about the Bulger brothers, Whitey the gangster and Billy the politician, which included the bombshell revelation that Whitey Bulger had a relationship not just with the FBI, but with FBI agent John Connolly, a self-acknowledged Billy Bulger protege.
The FBI vehemently denied the Globe’s contention that Whitey was an informant. Jim Ahern, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Boston at the time, angrily demanded a meeting and a retraction. We met with him at the Globe, but when we said we couldn’t retract something we knew to be true, he was furious.
Nine years later, a very fine federal judge named Mark Wolf forced the FBI to admit what we all knew was true: Umm, yes, Whitey Bulger had been an FBI informant, since 1975. Oh, and for good measure, they kept him on as an informant for three years after the Globe exposed him. I’m sure he was very effective in those three years.
[more]
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/06/26/fbi_shame_casts_a_long_shadow/
Whitey Bulger nabbed in LA!
I wonder if he has any more FBI/DoJ stories to tell?
Well, any *verifiable* stories. I'm sure he could make up a whole bunch.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0623-whitey-bulger-20110623,0,3111204.story