Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Failed lender IndyMac Bank is among nearly two dozen banks under scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for possible mortgage fraud, U.S. officials said. The big Pasadena, Calif., bank was seized by regulators last week, the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history. It specialized in home loans to borrowers who lacked full documentation for their income or assets and have a higher default rate than other loans. The IndyMac investigation began shortly before the bank was seized last week, a law-enforcement official said.

ALBANY — Two payments to the Mayflower Hotel in Washington were included in former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s campaign filings, which were released on Tuesday afternoon. The two payments, $411.06 apiece, were recorded on Jan. 14, 2008, although it is unclear what nights were covered, or whether Mr. Spitzer stayed at the hotel. A person with knowledge of the evidence developed in the federal investigation of Mr. Spitzer said the former governor had two encounters with prostitutes in Washington in early 2008. Whether Mr. Spitzer might have misused campaign money to finance dealings with prostitutes has been one of the significant...

Banks owed money by convicted boy band mogul Lou Pearlman will be the last of his creditors to get anything if he pays back the $300 million he swindled out of investors and financial institutions, a U.S. judge ruled on Wednesday. U.S. District Judge G. Kendall Sharp said after ordering Pearlman to pay the full $300 million in restitution to his victims that small-time investors would be given preference as creditors. Ten banks who lent him money, including American Bank of St. Paul, Bank of America and First International Bank and Trust, "are going to be paid after," Sharp said....

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- The Colorado woman alleged to have sparked the raid on the polygamous FLDS ranch in Texas with bogus tips may be on the run. On Monday, an arrest warrant was issued for Rozita Swinton after she failed to show up for a court hearing on charges of violating her probation for one of two other false-reporting cases against her, court administrator Lori McKager told Salt Lake City's 2News. Swinton is accused of violating her probation stemming from her 2007 guilty plea for telling police she was a 16-year-old girl who was suicidal after giving birth. Authorities...

Drudge is reporting that the FBI has been investigating failed bank IndyMac for mortgage fraud in loans made to risky borrowers. Countrywide is also under investigation.

What happens in Vegas... by: Barbara Baker, July 14, 2008 Business and the business of education in Las Vegas is the most restrictive and oppressive that we have experienced out of the five western states in which we operate. We are a private, for-profit private school. We have 3- and 4-year-old classes as well as K-8 grades, that therefore puts us under the close scrutiny of child care agencies. Recently the Clark County/North Las Vegas transferred the monitoring of their North Las Vegas child care centers under the Metropolitan Police Department. They issued a warning that if my establishment were...

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has come under renewed intense pressure to step down this week amid allegations that he defrauded a number of national charities during his time as mayor of Jerusalem and minister of industry and trade. According to a police statement released at the weekend, evidence suggests that over the course of many years Olmert asked several different charities to fund each of his trips abroad on state business. The money from only one charity was needed to pay for each trip, while the money from the others was deposited into a special bank account that the...

Todd Stuart McGuire, a longtime Jefferson County Democratic Party supporter, was charged July 2 with voter fraud. He's accused of either repeating a vote or impersonating his wife, Rebekah, by casting her ballot in a Feb. 6, 2007, special election. Both charges are Class C felonies and carry a maximum penalty of five years in jail and/or a $10,000 fine, according to charging documents. Neither the McGuires nor Todd McGuire's attorney Ben Critchlow could be reached for comment last week or Monday. Todd McGuire is scheduled to appear in Jefferson County Superior Court at 8:30 a.m. Friday, July 18. The...

......far-left radical activist group ACORN is embroiled in financial corruption and cover-up.... The NY Times reports that Dale Rathke - whose brother started the group back in 1970 to help low-income people - embezzled nearly $1M back in 1999 and 2000. ACORN disguised it on the books as a loan and let Rathke's family make restitution at $30,000 a year. (An anonymous donor reportedly has agreed to pick up the remaining $800,000 tab.) ACORN also kept Rathke on the payroll at $38,000-a-year.....the Times reports most of the people who covered-up the embezzlement are still working for ACORN. Michelle Malkin wrote...

I have previously requested a copy of Barack Obama's birth certificate. Janice Okubo, Public Information Office of the Communications office of the State of Hawaii, responding on July 3, has chosen to refuse to provide a copy of the birth certificate. This blog consists of three parts. First, I quote Ms. Okubo's letter, dated July 3, 2008, verbatim. Her letter responds to my inquiry under the Freedom of Information Act. Although Ms. Okubo points out that the Freedom of Information applies to the federal government and not the states, most states, including Hawaii, have similar statutes. With respect to birth...

Federal prosecutors are investigating Indian generic drugmaker Ranbaxy for allegedly falsifying records that resulted in the production and sale of generic medicines that did not meet federal standards. The government alleges officials at Ranbaxy's northern India plant used raw pharmaceutical chemicals from unapproved sources, fabricated in-house test data to meet FDA standards and attempted to conceal the ruse. The "pattern of systemic fradulent conduct," left an untold portion of the tablets and capsules too weak, too potent or lacking the advertised shelf life, said government papers filed in US District Court, Maryland.

<p>I think the Iraqis would support Israel taking out their arch enemy, Iran, and would allow overflights & perhaps even the use of airfields.</p>

The Commodity Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating trading in oil futures to determine whether the surge in prices to record levels is the result of manipulation or fraud. They might want to take a look at wheat, rice and corn futures while they’re at it. The whole thing is a hoax cooked up by the investment banks and hedge funds who are trying to dig their way out of the trillion dollar mortgage-backed securities (MBS) mess that they created by turning garbage loans into securities.

The vote fraud specialists at the radical group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) have already gotten their fall vote fraud campaign underway. The Harrisburg Patriot-News reports that ACORN's recent activities in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, are under investigation by county detectives. ACORN National President Maude Hurd said she did not believe the former employee, who collected up to 150 questionable voter registrations, sought to register ineligible people. "While we don't think the intent or the result of his action was to allow any ineligible person to vote, this employee defrauded ACORN and the American public," Hurd said. So...

NONPROFIT MALFEASANCE [NYTimes]: Two prominent national nonprofit groups are reeling from public disclosures that large sums of money were misappropriated in unrelated incidents by an employee and a former employee. The groups, Acorn, one of the country’s largest community organizing groups, and the Points of Light Institute, which works to encourage civic activism and volunteering, have dealt with the problems in very different ways. Acorn chose to treat the embezzlement of nearly $1 million eight years ago as an internal matter and did not even notify its board. After Points of Light noticed financial irregularities in early June, it took...

The conservative public-interest group Judicial Watch today filed ethics complaints alleging that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, broke the rules when he accepted a discounted deal on a 2005 mortgage loan, as first reported last week by The Post. "Americans ought to be suspicious when a United States Senator such as Barack Obama, obtains a sweetheart mortgage deal," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. "We have serious concerns that Senator Obama's mortgage may have violated the law and Senate ethics rules." The group filed separate complaints with the Federal Election Commission and the...

Over the years, many statements have been falsely attributed to me, but this is the first year in which a whole column has been made up and circulated in a chain letter on the Internet, claiming that I wrote it. Letters, phone calls and e-mails from readers around the country have asked me if I wrote a column saying that Barack Obama is not an American citizen. The answer is "No." Many of my readers have been savvy enough to tell that the style of the phony column is not mine, but checked with me just to be sure. What...

Recently a user, Lori Drew, was charged with a felony for the heinous crime of pretending to be someone else on the Internet. Using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Lori was charged for signing up for MySpace using a fake name. "The access to MySpace was unauthorized because using a fake name violated the terms of service. The information from a "protected computer" was the profiles of other MySpace users. If this is found to be a valid interpretation of the law, it's really quite frightening. If you violate the Terms of Service of a website, you can...

BOSWELL — An Indiana County trucker faces more than $1.2 million in fines after authorities said he routinely traveled the Pennsylvania Turnpike with a stolen E-ZPass. State police charged Thomas Howard Wambold, 38, of Blairsville, with 1,241 counts of using the E-ZPass to evade tolls for 21/2 years – between Sept. 23, 2005, and March 24. Wambold was scheduled to be arraigned Monday before District Judge Susan Mankamyer of Boswell. In addition to a $1,000 fine for each alleged violation, authorities contend Wambold owes $575,980 in full fares to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. “My life is over. Thanks,” Wambold allegedly...

NEW YORK -- Phillip R. Bennett, Refco Inc.'s former chief executive officer, was sentenced to 16 years in prison Thursday for his role in a scheme to hide the commodities broker's financial troubles. At a hearing, U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan said white-collar defendants such as Mr. Bennett often "just don't think they'll get caught." "You and others like you play a truly high-stakes poker game," the judge said. The judge didn't impose a fine and said restitution will be discussed at a later date. Mr. Bennett has agreed to forfeit essentially all of his assets. The...

I've got a great idea! Let's go over to the "Smears" website and use their "PUSH BACK NOW" form letter -- except that before you mail it out, you change the verbiage from: "Friend -- You may have recently heard right-wing smears questioning Barack Obama's birth certificate and citizenship. These assertions are completely false and designed to play into the worst kind of stereotypes. You can see Barack Obama's birth certificate for yourself and help push back with the truth at: http://my.barackobama.com/fightthesmears Together we can make sure these negative and divisive attacks don't affect this campaign. Thanks for your help....

Jay McKinnon, a self-described Department of Homeland Security-trained document specialist, has implicated himself in the production of fraudulent Hawaii birth certificate images similar to the one endorsed as genuine by the Barack Obama campaign, and appearing on the same blog entry where the supposedly authentic document appears. The evidence of forgery and manipulation of images of official documents, triggered by Israel Insider's revelation of the collection of Hawaii birth certificate images on the Photobucket site and the detective work of independent investigative journalists and imaging professionals in the three weeks since the publication of the images, implicate the Daily Kos,...

The criminal case that brought former California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley's political career to an abrupt halt more than three years ago is scheduled for trial today, as federal prosecutors attempt to prove mail fraud and witness tampering charges against his onetime fundraiser Julie Lee. While the case dashed the lofty aspirations of Shelley - once considered a potential senator, mayor or governor - and took a long time to get to trial, the allegations against Lee are straightforward. Prosecutors have charged her with four counts of mail fraud and three counts of witness tampering for fraudulently obtaining state...

PARIS (AFP) - The former German head of aircraft manufacturer Airbus, Gustav Humbert, was detained for questioning by France's financial crime unit Monday in connection with alleged insider trading at Airbus parent EADS, a source close to the matter said. The French financial market regulator, AMF, in April alleged in a report that Humbert sold 160,000 EADS shares in November 2005, earning 1.685 million euros (2.7 million dollars). He is suspected of having benefited from privileged information on EADS' financial prospects as well as delays to the Airbus A380 superjumbo project, which were announced in June 2006 and caused the...

EVERY few years, the conflicts of interest so deeply embedded in the Wall Street business model emerge from the shadows for all to see. Coming to light last week, courtesy of Massachusetts regulators, was UBS’s dual roles in the auction-rate securities market, which have had devastating effects on the people and institutions that invested in them. Because every big brokerage firm that participated in this market faced the same conflicts as both underwriters of the securities and managers of the auctions that set their prices, similar ugliness will likely turn up elsewhere as regulators continue their digging..... The problem UBS...

Here is hard, irrefutable proof that the Obama campaign is engaged in a huge deceit related to what they are claiming is a copy of his birth certificate. Notice on Obama's official site, his birth certificate says OHBM 1.1 in the lower left corner. The original document displayed on the Daily KOS website says OHSM 1.1 in the lower left corner. The million dollar question is: If the Daily KOS document was supplied by a Obama campaign staffer, as was reported, then how on earth can these two documents differ? There may be a Hawaiian state agency or department with...

Unfortunately, Barack Obama is a fraudJim Longworth Columnist 6/17/2008 1:16:00 PM I detest disclaimers, but for those of you who have never read one of my columns or watched my TV show, be advised: I am not a Republican or a Democrat. I am an Independent, and I attack candidates of both parties with equal zeal. And that brings me to the young hypocrite, Sen. Barack Obama. Obama has promoted his presidential campaign as being inclusive of all people. Sort of a "No Voter Left Behind" approach. He says all of the right things, and makes all of the right...

A Horsham car wash company and three of its managers have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the government, harbor illegal immigrants, and commit identity theft. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia said Car Care managers operated a scheme between 2000 and March 2006 that allowed car washes to hire illegal workers by giving them false names and a way to cash their checks at local banks without identification. The banks were given a list of employees who were authorized to cash paychecks without showing identification other than clothing bearing the company logo. Car Care is a wholly owned subsidiary...

The Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network has 36 chapters across the country but has mostly failed to register in states that require nonprofits to file public records, The Post has learned. Only two chapters, those in Washington state and Nevada, have registered with the appropriate agency. NAN chapters in Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Illinois solicit donations, according to their Web sites or representatives - but neither the chapters nor their New York-based parent are registered to do so in those states. [Snip] NAN's failure to file paperwork regarding its regional chapters comes as Sharpton and his nonprofit...

I have acquired additional information related to my earlier posts today (at my blog) on the subject of Barack Obama’s ‘Certification of Live Birth.’ My first post on this subject, Obama Birth Certificate, Fake?, included an analysis that I came across by a blogger named Polarik, who concluded based on “20 years of experience in computers, printers, and typewriters” that the document provided by the Obama campaign (and published by Daily Kos) was manufactured. In a subsequent post, Certification of Birth from Hawaii: Where’s the Seal?, I showed a ‘Certification of Live Birth’ from Honolulu County for Patricia Decosta, which...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Some cash-strapped US municipalities are resorting to slapping fuel surcharges onto tickets issued to speeding drivers in order to fill dwindling city coffers hit hard by skyrocketing gas prices. Beginning July 1, the Georgia town of Holly Springs, near the city of Atlanta, will add a surcharge of 12 dollars for each moving violation as a means to avert a budget deficit brought on by high fuel prices. "It's a creative and innovative idea of our police chief," said Holly CothranDrake, spokeswoman of the city administration which on Wednesday received queries from several American municipalities that are...

The Book of Mormon and the King James Version (1999) Curt van den Heuvel Introduction The King James Version of the Bible is, in all likelihood, the most successful of all the English translations. Volumes have been written on its distinctive and rhythmic style, and it is still regarded as a triumph of modern English literature. So great was the influence of the King James Version that it coloured and directed the development of the English language for decades. English speakers still uses such phrases as `a fly in the ointment', `go the extra mile', and `stick to the straight...

This weblog does not belong to the Media Bloggers Association. This weblog had never heard of the Media Bloggers Association until yesterday, when the Associated Press made an announcement: AP to meet with blogging group to form guidelines The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers’ group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online. Jim Kennedy, the AP’s director of strategic planning, said Monday that he planned to meet Thursday with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, as part...

Federal authorities are investigating the actions of a Catholic charity in Richmond which helped a 16-year-old Guatemalan girl to receive an abortion in January, in possible violation of Virginia law. Officials have called the matter to the attention of U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) headquarters in Washington, urging it to prevent any repetition of the incident. Four employees of Commonwealth Catholic Charities, Richmond, (CCR) have been fired and one supervisor with the bishops' Migration and Refugee Services agency has been suspended, according to federal sources and a secret April 29 letter written by three bishops to 350 bishops nationwide....

"I'm getting 100 miles to the ounce on water," inventor Anthony Brown said. Brown said he shut his fuel injection system down and created the system that can use any type of water with a small amount of gas. He said the car is getting just fuel vapor.

Gore’s personal electricity consumption up 10%, despite “energy-efficient” home renovations NASHVILLE - In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.”...

Jun 13 Standard & Poor’s said it found an error in models that assigned top credit ratings to constant proportion debt obligations, three weeks after rival Moody’s Investors Service said it misgraded similar debt because of a computer glitch. S&P, a unit of New York-based McGraw-Hill Cos, fixed the mistake in October, and there was no “erroneous” effect on the ratings, Vickie Tillman, an executive vice president at the firm, said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. “We regularly conduct surveillance of our ratings, and in the routine course of that surveillance, we discovered one error,” Tillman said. The mistake was...

MIAMI -- All it took to bilk the federal government out of $105 million was a laptop computer. From her Mediterranean-style townhouse, a high school dropout named Rita Campos Ramirez orchestrated what prosecutors call the largest health-care fraud by one person. Over nearly four years, she electronically submitted more than 140,000 Medicare claims for unnecessary equipment and services. She used the proceeds to finance big-ticket purchases, including two condominiums and a Mercedes-Benz... The South Florida region bills Medicare more than $2 billion each year for injectable HIV medications. That figure is 22 times as high as the amount of similar...

Vitamin supplement little more than 'snake oil'June 12,2008 A popular vitamin supplement is being advertised with claims that are demonstrably untrue, as revealed by research published in the open access journal BMC Pharmacology. Benfotiamine is a synthetic derivative of thiamine (vitamin B1). It is marketed heavily as a dietary supplement using a selection of unsubstantiated, 'not-quite-medical' claims that tend to characterize this field. A large part of this campaign has been built around the belief that benfotiamine is lipid-soluble and, therefore, more physiologically active. Scientific research led by Dr Lucien Bettendorff of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology at...

Next month, Michelle Augustine plans to walk away from her four-bedroom house in a Sacramento, Calif., subdivision and let the property fall into foreclosure. But before doing so, she hopes to lock in the purchase of another home nearby. SNIP In markets hit hardest by falling home prices and rising foreclosures, lenders and brokers are discovering a new phenomenon: the "buy and bail," in which borrowers with good credit buy a new home -- often at a much lower price -- then bail out of the "upside down" mortgage on their first home.

A Hall County woman is serving a year in jail for pretending to be a girl's mother when she signed off on the girl's abortion. In reality, Cindi Cook was the mother of the girl's boyfriend, who also was 16 when she became pregnant in early 2007. Displeased that the baby would ruin her son's chance of going to college, Cook, 44, pressured the 16-year-old girl to have the abortion in the spring of 2007, found a clinic that would do it without her present, and paid for the procedure, DeKalb Solicitor General Robert James said Wednesday. Last week, a...

Analysts used to joke about waiting for the results from cemetery precincts in Chicago before calling elections. In Louisiana, that may be closer to the truth than one might imagine. WBRZ reports on a voter registration scandal that had Democrats submitting thousands of fraudulent enrollments, included George W. Bush and a bunch of dead people:Secretary of State Jay Dardenne said Tuesday he will meet today with a Democrat-affiliated group responsible for a voter registration effort that is inundating East Baton Rouge and other parish registrars with bogus and incomplete applications.Dardenne said his investigators are trying to determine if any state...

Louisiana Secretary of State Jay Dardenne said Tuesday he will meet today with a Democrat-affiliated group responsible for a voter registration effort that is inundating East Baton Rouge and other parish registrars with bogus and incomplete applications. Dardenne said his investigators are trying to determine if any state election laws have been violated as thousands of voter registration cards have been dumped on registrars offices through the efforts of VIP. “We have some very real concerns about the data we are getting from them,” Dardenne said. VIP is a Washington, D.C., group hired by national Democrats to register some 70,000...

Here I posted about a Democrat Barack Obama supporter in Pennsylvania trying to pass herself off as a "lifelong republican". Well, here is yet another one, this time in North Carolina. First, an excerpt from the Charlotte Observer, titled "Obama Sends A Message": Obama seemed to be reaching out to many of the working class voters who voted for Clinton in the Democratic primary. He shared a stage with Pamella Cash-Roper, a 54-year old licensed nurse from Pittsboro, who along with her husband is unemployed after both had heart surgery. Cash-Roper said she was forced to cash out her 401(k)...

The next three weeks in Zimbabwe will be the most traumatic in its history. Robert Mugabe has declared war on the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), NGOs and churches to reverse the electoral defeat he suffered in March. It is a war on unarmed people. Can he win it and what would victory mean? Scenario one: When the votes are counted after a peaceful, well-organised and credible election on June 27, President Mugabe concedes defeat, congratulates Morgan Tsvangirai, hands over the reins of power and retires. Likelihood? Zero. The official results of the election on March 29 did not give...

Another New Jersey school principal -- the third educator in a month -- has been indicted on car arson charges in Essex County as prosecutors crack down on suspected insurance fraud. The charges against Amanda Wright-Stafford, principal of the Lincoln Avenue Elementary School in Orange, come as cases of auto insurance fraud are growing nationally, according to experts who blame the souring economy. Wright-Stafford, 51, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted on charges she faked the theft of her 2000 Honda Passport, which was found burning in East Orange in 2006. An indictment handed up in Superior...

THE home of grand opera will soon be staging a different kind of tragedy. La Scala in Milan has commissioned a musical version of An Inconvenient Truth, the apocalyptic eco-documentary presented by Al Gore, the former American vice-president. Gore will be replaced on stage by a cast of tenors and at least one soprano as the story of man-made climate change is told. The makers believe this format will be more suited to the 230-year-old opera house than the graph-heavy lectures given by Gore in his Oscar-winning 2006 film. Gore, 60, will pick up a writing credit for his part...

Jane Drury voted last year in an election in Stonington, Conn. The only problem is, she died eight years ago. Her daughter Jane Gumpel thought someone must have goofed. “I was surprised because this is not possible,” she said. But it did happen. The town clerk’s record clearly shows Drury’s vote, marked by a horizontal line poll workers put next to her name. And it turns out, Drury isn’t the only voter to apparently cast a ballot from the grave. [snip] 8,558 deceased people who were still registered on Connecticut’s voter rolls. They discovered more than 300 of them appeared...

Previously (A Tale of Two Thermometers) we looked at how US temperature data sets have been adjusted - with more recent versions of historical data sets showing a steeper rise in temperature than they used to. To recap the earlier article, the graph below shows additional adjustments to the data set since the big "correction" in 2000 We observe that the data has been consistently adjusted towards a bias of greater warming. The years prior to the 1970s have again been adjusted to lower temperatures, and recent years have been adjusted towards higher temperatures. DivergenceSo how does NASA's data compare...

AN old friend and fundraiser for US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has been found guilty of fraud for using his political clout to demand kickbacks and win government contracts.Real estate developer Antoin "Tony" Rezko was also convicted of bribery and money laundering in the case which has dogged Senator Obama during his quest to secure the party's presidential nomination, even though he is not accused of any wrongdoing. In all, jurors found Rezko guilty of 12 counts of fraud, two of aiding and abetting bribery and two of money laundering after deliberating for several weeks. He was cleared on...