Posted on 10/28/2007 2:49:08 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Scandalous $10 Million Bat Mitzvah
David Brooks of DHB Industries Arrested for Embezzling Company Funds
Oct. 27, 2007 —
The headliners read like a who's who of music: Aerosmith, 50 Cent and Don Henley of the Eagles.
No, it wasn't the Grammys, it was 13-year-old Elizabeth Brooks' birthday party -- a $10 million mega bat mitzvah. Aerosmith alone was paid a $1 million to perform -- flown in on her father's company jet.
Her father is David Brooks, who was then the CEO of DHB Industries, the leading body armor provider to U.S. soliders in Iraq. And he had his company pick up the tab for the party two years ago, according to investigators.
This week, the former CEO was indicted on 21 counts of alleged securities fraud, insider trading, tax evasion and obstruction of justice. Authorities say he inflated his company stock and bilked his firm out of tens of millions of dollars to bankroll his fairy tale lifestyle.
"Right off the bat, he's going to have a problem with the jury that's going to be able to comprehend spending $10 million on a bat mitzvah, when most people won't ever see $10 million in their lifetime," defense attorney Joe Tacopino said.
Brooks is accused of getting his company to pay for his ex-wife's facelift, a $200,000 Bentley, and even a $100,000 belt buckle.
The criminal charges center around the claim that Brooks cashed in $185 million worth of stock just before the New York Police Department recalled 6,000 of his company's defective vests.
Tests showed that a quarter of the Interceptor vests worn by New York's finest were defective.
"This is another form of corporate irresponsibility, of where corporate officers knowingly ship defective products in order to boost the revenue of the company to benefit themselves financially," shareholders' attorney Bill Lerach told ABC's Brian Ross in 2002.
In 2004, DHB Industries was awarded a $200 million contract to provide body armor to the U.S. military for soldiers fighting on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But in May of 2005, the Marine corps announced a recall of more than 5,000 DHB Industries vests as government tests showed the critical life-threatening flaws.
If convicted, Brooks could spend rest of his life in jail.
At first, I thought it was the David Brooks who writes as an op-ed columnist for the New York Times.
NYT’s David Brooks...
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html
I'll believe that when I see it.
“This is another form of corporate irresponsibility, of where corporate officers knowingly ship defective products in order to boost the revenue of the company to benefit themselves financially,” shareholders’ attorney Bill Lerach told ABC’s Brian Ross in 2002.”
How ironic to have Bill Lerach talking about corporate irresponsiblity. He too is headed to federal prison for his ginned up lawsuits.
Nothing funny about this. This guy sold body armor (”Interceptor”—sound familiar?) to my Marines that had not passed the tests he certified it had. He’s a war profiteer and should rot in prison.
TC
No.
I’m not laughing about that.
Of course this is deadly serious.
I was just laughing at my case of mistaken identity regarding the two David Brooks...
Must be my priorities are out of whack < / s >
We need to make an example of him. Throw away the key.
There, fixed it.
There, fixed it.
Must be a friend of the Clintons.
Thanks for posting this! I hope they barbeque his ass!
Rot in prison?
That’s good enough for me, as long as it’s Abu Ghraib.
Send this guy straight to the gray-bar hotel for a long stay...
It'd be interesting to find out who DHB Industries' biggest supporters were.
Amen. As long as our troops and their families are making the ultimate sacrifice, NONE of these contractors should be making profits - salaries and costs only.
You tell em comrade! From each according to his ability, to each according to his need!
Don't forget the investors, we'll need to lay down the law and make sure individuals and firms who back these manufacturers don't get any returns on their investments.
blade,
Nothing wrong with making a FAIR profit for responding to emergency needs. Smells like his profits were beyond fair, for a defective product. And then he had the Chutzpah to make a public spectacle over how “My product is superior to the existing” and he lied to back that up.
Tet68 (Were you there too, Tet?) has it right. The new rehabilitated Abu Graihb is too good for him. Is Alcatraz still available?
TC
I'm all for supporting the troops...but your statement is anti-capitalist bilge.
There would be NO defense industry if profit was banned.
One can support the troops and still make a profit.
How you find the two to be incompatible is beyond my comprehension.
Excuse me, thought I was posting in a forum where patriotism might trump individual gain in a time of war...
Guess those values have become outmoded..
“Do we know if any Marine died as a result of these defective vests? If so why not charge him with negligent homicide?”
We do not know of any such cases. The untested vests were in the pipeline and recalled before they got to the sandbox, I think. But he was all over the “lobby the congress” scene that we were even questioning the company’s integrity. Scumbag.
TC
Of course patriotism triumphs here. But it is patriotism toward our FREE nation and our FREE MARKET economy. How the heck do you expect a company to stay in business if you do like the Soviets and abolish profit and incentive? Who is going to stay up late, miss their kids recitals and family vacations and work weekends for that “breakthrough” in armored vests that will make their product better than all the others and likely to win the contract, if they can’t make any money at it?
The mentality you expressed above is at the very heart of socialism. “How dare someone profit when there is a good cause?” If you start down that road, everything will be defined as a patriotic good cause. What about the clothes the soldiers wear? What about the underwear they bought at JC Penney’s? What about their ipods for those long boring treks? How about their computers and their vehicles. What about the food they eat? How dare those farmers and growers profit when they could be patriotic about it all???
Terrorism is arguably at least as big an enemy to our freedom as Fascism ever was. But look around..does anyone feel that we are at war? Over 50% of this country wants us to start pulling out of Iraq - the frontline of the war on terror. Most of the country simply isn't involved, doesn't appear to think that this is a big deal, seems to think that the war was won when Saddam was caught..
... and the contractors scrambling for a slice of the action like they were on the trading floor of the Dow, like business as usual, supplying our brave troops no more different than any other investment bonanza, contributes to this blase attitude.
When supplying our troops on the frontline of the world war on terror is treated like just another opportunity for a financial "killing", sooner or later greedy types like the aggressive Mr. Brooks are going to cut corners and undermine our efforts.
WE ARE AT WAR... Are the efforts of our brave troops somehow less because they aren't in this for profit? War time is different than peace time.
The point is that the 10 mil was other people’s money he had stolen.
So those who work in defense industries should be limited in their ability to make a profit, while those who work in other industries can just plug along as if no war is on?
To be consistent, shouldn’t all profits and salaries above subsistence level be suspended until the war has been won?
I understand that
Still, how many soldiers died because of defective equipment he sold the DOD?
Even one would pale in comparsion
Dad should be in prison just for that.
True enough.
No, we're not.
Study FDR's EOs between December 8, 1941 and February 15, 1942.
Full press censorship. 24/7 government propaganda. Enemy aliens arrested, incarcerated, deported. Control of all industry. Rationing of critical supplies. Limits on private use of motor vehicles. And on, and on, and on.
THAT'S how you take the nation to war.
My point was that during WWII ALL major industries were pressed into service - Ford retooled to make tanks, nylon was diverted from hose to parachutes, etc. etc.
The entire country went to war back then. Now we let a few companies rake up profits while we go into debt to the Chinese. There is no call to shared sacrifice, so most of the country is oblivious to the war effort, and they DO "plug along as if no war is on". Does it then surprise anyone that most people (by the polls) feel that the war is over and we should pull out of Iraq?
No. Your post shows that you do not understand the difference between profiteering and profits.
Profiteering is the making of excessive profits on goods in short supply.
You're advocating the abolition of profits.
There is a major difference.
No FReeper is supporting profiteering.
We're just astonished that you're promoting Marxism as the solution and calling it patriotism.
Call me old-fashioned, but war times are different than peace times..
A dollor bill is six inches long, the average male member is also six inches long, thus I beleive 50 cent is aptly named !
I agree with you, we are not a nation at war. We pussyfoot around the issue.
War was not declared nor have we acted as such as a nation.
Guess they needed to fly those planes into Starbucks !
And then tell me why stockholders invest in these companies? A reasonable profit made by delivering needed, quality gear to our soldiers is an honorable thing.
Profit made by delivering junk is not. The two are different.
I suppose you wouldn't pay your doctor for a life saving operation either, or the pharmaceutical company that made the drugs to cure your illness, since you might think it wrong to profit from your illness.
The issue here isn't profit, it's a matter of cheating to get that profit. I see no reason not to reward folks who come up with things that save soldiers lives, nor in hanging those who cost soldiers their lives.
$10 Million for a Bat Mitzvah? Sounds like a scene from the movie “Keeping up with the Steins”.
I’ll be surprised if he gets much of a sentence. People like him can afford lawyers who are able to make sweet deals for their clients where they avoid doing more than 1-2 years.
http://frauddigest.com/index.php
Look, I’m all for capitalism, and the principle that within broad limits, you should be able to spend your money any way you like, even on hiring a roster of celebrity musicians for your daughter’s bat mitzvah that’s eclectic to the point of overkill...but even if he’d spent his own ten mill instead of the company’s, it WAS overkill. (And again...what? David Lee Roth wasn’t available?)
I disagree, he should be given a fair trial then hung.
He was plundering the company AND failing to get the job done. I think I can generate enough anger to cover both.
You're posting in a forum where folks believe that capitalism works better than anything else ever tried. Folks who understand that the driving force of capitalism is enlightened self-interest. Without that motivator, workers don't do their best work, and innovators aren't going to toil away in hopes of having the next great idea or solving the next great puzzle.
Take UAVs, for example. They're already revolutionizing the battlespace in Iraq and Afghanistan (and, at least once, in Yemen). They're going to change warfare in ways we can scarcely imagine. Do you really think an aerospace company would sink all those R&D costs if there weren't some gold at the end of the raibow, if they couldn't hope for better than break-even?
Yes, there is such a thing as price gouging. There is such a thing as war profiteering. They are despicable acts, and ought to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. What's gouging, and what's a fair profit? I can't define it precisely, at least at this hour. More knowledgeable folk than I can decide where to draw the line.
No profiteering doesn't mean no profit. Wartime manufacturing brought back to life plants idled by the Depression. Government money went to expand plants -- capacity the companies kept when the war ended. When Singer stopped making machine guns and went back to sewing machines, it was in shiny new plants with state-of-the-art machine tools, courtesy of Uncle Sam.
The little guy made out okay, too. We were way past full employment -- by past, I mean we were recruiting a bunch of riveting Rosies who previously hadn't been considered part of the labor pool. Everyone who wanted a job had one. Farmers could sell as much as they could grow.
Scientists and engineers got generous grants to pursue useful technologies. Some of which, like the "Spruce Goose," turned out the be dead ends; some of which, like the Manhattan Project, were real horkin' expensive, but turned out to be crucial.
If in this new war, most of the populace isn't being asked to sacrifice, whose fault is that? I'd direct your gaze to 1600 Penn. Ave., Washington DC, home of the belief that you can have guns and butter AND tax cuts. The White House told our soldiers to go into battle and told us to go to the mall.
WE ARE AT WAR... Are the efforts of our brave troops somehow less because they aren't in this for profit? War time is different than peace time.
Shout it across the Potomac and the Anacostia. It ain't the folks here who need that message. It's the folks inside the beltway.
:}
profit and profiteering are two different things.
David Brooks
Why stop at company profits? Wages of all employees working in all industries that supply needed materials should get evaluated & adjusted down to allow purchase of bare necessities...
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