Profits of Death (A Special FTW Series)--Part II

So they pay pennies on the dollar as fines. Good Deal. Need a part of that action, don't we?

Rule of Thumb for White Collar Criminals

1. There is no downside.

2. Every scam needs to gross a minimum of $1 million.

$500k goes to a politically well connected law firm in D.C.

$500k you get to keep

You need at least a minimum of $500k to start a new scam.

Guaranteed you will never go to jail.

Then they get an agreement that if more of this same fraudulent scheme is exposed in the future they can't be prosecuted for it.

These financial juggernauts that are involved in all these swindles are virtually unstoppable, everybody at the DOJ just "rolls over" and "lays down" for them.

Today I was reading a cease and desist order issued late 2000 by the FDIC against the Maryland Permanent Bank which they forced the board of directors to sign.

One of the board of directors is a Mark Sapperstein, alleged to be the close personal friend & political crony of MD. Attorney General, Joseph Curran Jr.

In early 1998 Mark Sapperstein along with a Michael Meisel bought controlling interest in Maryland Permanent Bank.

The money Sapperstein used to purchase controlling interest in Maryland Permanent Bank came from a scheme where Sapperstein sold certain Maryland cellular assets to a Pinnacle Towers in Sarasota, Florida for approx. $8/9 million.

Which Pinnacle Towers bundled into a $325 million IPO.

Since late 2000 Pinnacle has been the focus of an SEC investigation and also numerous class action lawsuits.

What makes this most interesting is that Sapperstein falsified an affidavit in early 1998 with the federal court in West Palm Beach,Florida claiming he had never been engaged in any business transactions in Florida, when in fact he had been engaged in the Pinnacle Towers sales only 3 or 4 months earlier.

I guess Mark Sapperstein simply forgot about that $8/9 million check that was made out to him personally by Pinnacle Towers.

I also found out that certain of the Maryland cellular tower assets Sapperstein sold to Pinnacle were obtained through questionable activities.

Thanks so much for the ping on this! Don't have time to thoroughly digest it today, but you can bet I'll dig into it when time permits.

It's possible that the person(s)/entities that placed the order couldn't collect because he/they died before 9/11. Bin Laden claimed on the tape released today that he was notified of the impending attack on the Thursday before. If our mystery person(s) was notified at about the same time, he/they might have been taken out for a "breach" of security. The only person I can think of who died about that time was the guy who headed security (think he was former FBI or CIA) at the WTC. He was being investigated at the time and was said to have died in the attack.

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