Tag Archives: Money laundering

Will She Be Held Accountable?

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On Thursday, the United States Attorney’s Office, Western District of Oklahoma posted  a Press Release about a federal grand jury Indictment against TASHELLA SHERI AMORE DICKERSON, Executive Director of Black Lives Matter OKC (BLMOKC).

The Press Release reports:

A federal grand jury Indictment has been unsealed, charging TASHELLA SHERI AMORE DICKERSON, 52, of Oklahoma City, with wire fraud and money laundering, announced U.S. Attorney Robert J. Troester.

According to the Indictment, beginning in at least 2016, Dickerson served as the Executive Director of Black Lives Matter OKC (BLMOKC). As Executive Director, Dickerson had access to BLMOKC’s bank, PayPal, and Cash App accounts.

The Indictment alleges that, although BLMOKC was not a registered tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, it accepted charitable donations through its affiliation with the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ), based in Arizona. AFGJ served as a fiscal sponsor to BLMOKC and required BLMOKC to use its funds only as permitted by Section 501(c)(3). AFGJ also required BLMOKC to fully account upon request for the disbursement of all funds received and prohibited BLMOKC from using its funds to purchase real estate without AFGJ’s consent.

Beginning in late spring 2020, BLMOKC raised funds to support its social justice mission from online donors, as well as from national bail funds. In total, BLMOKC raised more than $5.6 million, which included grants from national bail funds, including the Community Justice Exchange, Massachusetts Bail Fund, and Minnesota Freedom Fund. Most of those funds were routed through AFGJ, as fiscal sponsor, to BLMOKC.

According to the Indictment, BLMOKC was supposed to use these national bail fund grants to post pretrial bail for individuals arrested in connection with protests for racial justice after the death of George Floyd. When bail funds were returned to BLMOKC, the national bail funds sometimes allowed BLMOKC to keep all or a portion of the grant funding to establish a revolving bail fund, or for BLMOKC’s social justice mission, as permitted by Section 501(c)(3).

Despite the stated purpose of the money raised, and the terms and conditions of the grants, the Indictment alleges that beginning in June 2020 and continuing through at least October 2025, Dickerson embezzled funds from BLMOKC’s accounts for her personal benefit.  The Indictment alleges Dickerson deposited at least $3.15 million in returned bail checks into her personal accounts, rather than into BLMOKC’s accounts. Among other things, Dickerson then used these funds to pay for:

    • recreational travel to Jamaica and the Dominican Republic for herself and her associates;
    • tens of thousands of dollars in retail shopping;
    • at least $50,000 in food and grocery deliveries for herself and her children;
    • a personal vehicle registered in her name; and
    • six real properties in Oklahoma City deeded in her own name or in the name Equity International, LLC, an entity she exclusively controlled.

It always amazes me when people who claim to be collecting money to help those less fortunate decide to use the money to further their own lifestyle.

Unraveling the National Basketball Association Scandal

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On Friday, Doug Ross posted an article at Substack about the scandal related to the National Basketball Association. The article lists twenty facts about the scandal. Some are truly disturbing.

Here are a few of the items stated in the article:

  • The FBI’s “Operation Nothing But Bet” and “Operation Zen Diagram” led to 34 arrests across 11 states in two intertwined schemes: one exploiting insider NBA information for illegal sports betting, and another rigging high-stakes underground poker games backed by four of New York’s “Five Families” (Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese), highlighting the Mafia’s shift from traditional violent crimes to sophisticated tech-driven frauds like online betting scams. High tech included rigged card shufflers with hidden cameras to predict hands. Threats involved gunpoint robberies and extortion to collect gambling debts, with one incident where mobsters allegedly punched victims and sent messages like “Watch what’s good now” to intimidate payments. Link: CNBC.
  • Portland Trail Blazers head coach and NBA Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups was charged with wire fraud and money laundering for acting as a “face card” to lure high-rollers into rigged poker games in luxurious spots like Las Vegas and the Hamptons, where he was paid by the Mob to participate and sometimes instructed via text to intentionally lose hands to avoid suspicion. Advanced cheating tech featured X-ray poker tables allowing accomplices to see face-down cards remotely. In one crazy debt collection episode, a victim who lost $1.8 million was threatened with “a bunch of goons” showing up at the door. Link: The Athletic.
  • Miami Heat guard Terry “Scary Terry” Rozier was arrested for allegedly faking an injury during a March 2023 game against the Memphis Grizzlies, exiting after just nine minutes to manipulate prop bets on his underperformance, netting bettors over $200,000 in illicit gains. The scheme used encrypted messaging apps for sharing insider tips. One co-conspirator drove through the night to Rozier’s house to count and divide profits, while threats of physical harm were used against debtors, including ominous texts implying violence. Link: USA Today.
  • Former NBA player Damon Jones, a confidant of LeBron James, was implicated in both schemes, leaking non-public injury info about James before a February 2023 Lakers vs. Bucks game via text: “Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out!” Tech involved special contact lenses to read marked cards in poker. Jones’ own gambling addiction reportedly cost him millions, leading to mob ties where debtors faced extortion like being punched or robbed at gunpoint to settle debts. Link: NBC News.

That’s just four of the twenty items listed. Please follow the link to the article and read the entire list. This is a sad day in American sports.

The Covid Relief Debacle

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On Saturday, The Epoch Times posted an article about a case of fraud involving the Covid-19 relief funds.

The article reports:

Fourteen people were arrested on May 28 for their alleged involvement in a scheme to fraudulently obtain over $25 million in COVID-19 relief funds and federally guaranteed small business loans, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The individuals are among the 18 people charged in connection with the case. Four who have not yet been arrested are currently believed to be in Armenia, the DOJ said in a statement.

All of them are facing charges of conspiracy to defraud the government, false claims, wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, laundering of monetary instruments, monetary transactions involving property derived from specified unlawful activity, and structuring financial transactions to evade reporting requirements.

Law enforcement officers seized about $20,000 in cash, two money-counting machines, paper cash bands, cellphones, laptops, two loaded semi-automatic handguns, and boxes of ammunition during the arrests.

Tyler Hatcher, special agent in charge of the IRS Criminal Investigation agency, said the defendants were accused of fraudulently obtaining funds through the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program, Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, and other federal funding programs.

The article concludes:

“This transnational criminal network sought to defraud the government of millions of dollars and almost succeeded,” John Pasciucco, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations Los Angeles, said.

It remains unclear whether the defendants have been assigned legal representation as of publication.

Was anyone in government paying attention to where taxpayer money was going?

This Has Been Deleted From The Internet

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This was previously posted at Govtrack.us:

Also appearing on Twitter:

There are also some serious questions about money laundering in her fundraising.

On Wednesday, The Conservative Treehouse reported the following:

Newsmax Carl Higbie has done a deep dive on FEC reports using the “number of donations” as the datapoint to track.  What he discovered about donations to Act Blue might surprise the people assigned to the contributions. {Direct Rumble Link} 

“This is verifiable data. Whoever is choreographing this volume is doing it in such small donations because they thought those wouldn’t get flagged by watchdogs and FEC officials. The way this is brought to our attention was not by the dollar amount, but rather by the number of donations per person. That’s where they messed up. But my question is, if these people whose names are on the FEC report are not making these donations, who is? Where’s the money coming from?”

The Kamala Harris campaign is a scam perpetrated on the American people. Her past is being whitewashed, and she will be given almost unlimited dark money. If Americans are stupid enough to fall for this scam, they deserve what they will get–open borders, lawfare against political opponents, the end of the 2nd Amendment, the end of free speech, and government control of almost every aspect of our lives. Make sure you are paying attention and looking beneath the surface.

The Road To War

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One of the major differences between President Trump and President Biden is that President Trump knows how to wage economic war rather than physical war. All it would take to bring peace to Ukraine and cripple Iran would be to resume domestic drilling in America on a large scale. Since oil is an international commodity, that would drop the price of oil. A dropped price in oil would weaken the economies of both Russia and Iran. So why hasn’t the Biden administration done this? Ukraine is great for money laundering and if the Biden administration resumed drilling, they would lose the ‘green’ vote.

On Friday, The New York Post reported:

NATO is mapping out “land corridors” to enable US troops and other allied forces to reach the front lines quicker in the event of a broader European ground war with Russia.

The move follows warnings from NATO leaders earlier this year urging Western governments to prepare themselves for a full-blown war with Russia sometime in the next 20 years.

The newly established troop expressways would see American soldiers landing at one of five designated ports.

They would then be deployed along pre-established routes depending on how a potential attack by Moscow would play out, NATO officials told The Telegraph.

The new routes would expand on existing arrangements that have been in place since last year when the alliance agreed to have 300,000 troops in a state of high readiness during a summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Under the current plans, US forces would land at ports in The Netherlands before being transported through Germany and on to Poland by train.

If you are over 60, you remember the beginnings of the Vietnam War. The American involvement in Vietnam began in the 1950’s under President Eisenhower. Our involvement began innocently enough–we sent advisors. The election in November will determine whether or not your sons and daughters are deployed to Ukraine. You have a choice–a President who will wage an economic war or a President who will wage a physical war.

A Question That Should Have Been Asked Long Ago

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According to Michelle Clarier.com:

Michelle Celarier is an award-winning journalist who writes about the world of money and power for New York magazine, Fortune magazine, Institutional Investor, Worth and Slate. She has reported on hedge funds and the men who run them for over a decade, including a four-year stint as a tabloid scribe with the New York Post. She was previously the editor of Absolute Return and its successor Absolute Return + Alpha (AR), which won several magazine awards under her leadership.

Ms. Celarier recently posted an article at New York magazine about Jeffery Epstein.

The article notes:

Long before Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to prostitution charges in Florida more than a decade ago, his fellow Palm Beach resident and hedge-fund manager Douglas Kass was intrigued by the local gossip about his neighbor.

“I’m hearing about the parties, hearing about a guy who’s throwing money around,” says Kass, president of Seabreeze Partners Management. While stories about young girls swarming Epstein’s waterfront mansion and the sex parties he hosted for the rich and powerful were the talk of the town, Kass was more focused on how this obscure person, rumored to be managing billions of dollars, had become so wealthy without much of a track record.

Kass was well-connected on Wall Street, where he’d worked for decades, so he began to ask around. “I went to my institutional brokers, to their trading desks and asked if they ever traded with him. I did it a few times until the date when he was arrested,” he recalls. “Not one institutional trading desk, primary or secondary, had ever traded with Epstein’s firm.”

When a reporter came to interview Kass about Bernie Madoff shortly before that firm blew up in the biggest Ponzi scheme ever, Kass told her, “There’s another guy who reminds me of Madoff that no one trades with.” That man was Jeffrey Epstein.

“How did he get the money?” Kass kept asking.

For decades, Epstein has been credulously described as a big-time hedge-fund manager and a billionaire, even though there’s not a lot of evidence that he is either. There appears little chance the public is going to get definitive answers anytime soon. In a July 11 letter to the New York federal judge overseeing Epstein’s sex-trafficking case, Epstein’s attorney offered to provide “sealed disclosures” about Epstein’s finances to determine the size of the bond he would need to post to secure his release from jail pending trial. His brother, Mark, and a friend even offered to chip in, if necessary.

The article notes some unusual things about Jeffery Epstein’s investment success:

To begin with, there is much skepticism among the hedgies Intelligencer spoke with that Epstein made the money he has — and he appears to have a lot, given a lavish portfolio of homes and private aircraft — as a traditional money manager. A fund manager who knows well how that kind of fortune is acquired notes, “It’s hard to make a billion dollars quietly.” Epstein never made a peep in the financial world.

Epstein was also missing another key element of a typical thriving hedge fund: investors. Kass couldn’t find any beyond Epstein’s one well-publicized client, retail magnate Les Wexner — nor could other players in the hedge-fund world who undertook similar snooping. “I don’t know anyone who’s ever invested in him; he’s never talked about by any of the allocators,” says one billionaire hedge-fund manager, referring to firms that distribute large pools money among various funds.

The article notes one very believable theory on how Jeffrey Epstein became a billionaire:

Given this puzzling set of data points, the hedge-fund managers we spoke to leaned toward the theory that Epstein was running a blackmail scheme under the cover of a hedge fund.

How such a scheme could hypothetically work has been laid out in detail in a thread on the anonymous Twitter feed of @quantian1. It’s worth reading in its entirety, but in summary it is a rough blueprint for how a devious aspiring hedge-fund manager could blackmail rich people into investing with him without raising too many flags.

Kass and former hedge-fund manager Whitney Tilson both emailed the thread around in investing circles and both quickly discovered that their colleagues found it quite convincing. “This actually sounds very plausible,” Tilson wrote in an email forwarding the thread to others.

“He somehow cajoled these guys to invest,” says Kass, speaking of hypothetical blackmailed investors who gave Epstein their money to invest, but managed to keep their names private.

The fact that Epstein’s fund is offshore in a tax haven — it is based in the U.S. Virgin Islands — and has a secret client list both add credence to the blackmail theory.

The article concludes:

In the 2015 filing, Giuffre claimed that Epstein “debriefed her” after she was forced into sexual encounters so that he could possess “intimate and potentially embarrassing information” to blackmail friends into parking their money with him. She also said photographic and video evidence existed — an assertion that looms especially large now that federal investigators have found a trove of images in Epstein’s home safe.

There are other theories about how Epstein made his money–a Ponzi scheme, work for the intelligence community, money laundering, and offshore tax schemes. Now that Epstein’s New York City residence has been cleared of evidence by authorities, it will be interesting to see who is involved in his financial dealings (and other activities).

Using The Justice System As A Political Weapon

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USA Today is reporting today that the criminal conviction of Tom Delay, former House majority leader, has been overturned by a Texas court.

The article reports:

The documents were released Thursday by the Texas 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin.

“The evidence was legally insufficient to sustain DeLay‘s convictions,” the documents said. The judges said they “reverse the judgments of the trial court” and acquit DeLay, once one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress, of all charges.

The acquittal means DeLay cannot be retried and the money laundering case is over.

This case has been a sham from the beginning. Tom Delay was a very successful House majority leader, and the Democrats worked very hard to remove him from office. It is wonderful to see that justice has finally been served.

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