New Jersey - Corruption and Scandal BUMP LIST

Various ^ | 2000 - 2005 | Various

[Coleus]

Former Sussex County Democrat Party Chairman and Others Charged with Embezzling from Union and Bankrupt Health Fund

NEWARK - A federal grand jury today returned a five-count indictment against a former Sussex County political party chairman and two other individuals for their roles in embezzlement schemes that victimized Local 16 of the United Service Workers of America in Newton and its now-bankrupt health fund.

Charles W. Cart, Charles H. Wiener and Marvin Raphael are charged with conspiring to embezzle a total of approximately $284,000 in health fund and union funds as a result of a multi-faceted fraud scheme existing between May 2000 and November, 2001. Susan Donato, 47, of St. Cloud, Fla., formerly the President of Local 16 and the administrator of the Local 16 Health Fund was previously charged in a separate one-count Information.

Donato pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy to embezzle from the Health Fund and is presently cooperating in the government's investigation.

Cart, 56, of Newton, is a former Sussex County political party chairman as well as the founder and former President of Local 16. He is also the CEO of Health Choice, Inc, a third-party health benefits administrator, also located in Newton. Wiener, 68, of New Port Richey, Fla., is Cart's stepfather. Raphael, 63, Boca Raton, Fla., is the owner of Marvin & Tedi, Inc., also of Boca Raton.

The Indictment portrays Cart as the union founder who left to create Health Choice. Subsequently, Cart and his co-conspirators' schemes contributed to the demise of the union with the alleged embezzlement of the health fund that the union workers paid into, said Christie.

"On the one hand, this defendant led people to believe he was on their side as a labor organizer," said Christie. "Yet, as we allege, he then turned them into victims by embezzling from them, their union and their health fund."



The main source for the embezzled funds was an alleged scheme to generate cash from the Local 16 Health Fund by fraudulently increasing the "per member" administration fee paid to Health Choice, the third-party administrator that processed Local 16 medical claims. These increased payments were then diverted to Wiener and another Cart family member who is not identified in the Indictment.

For example, between May 2000 and November 2001, Cart caused approximately $144,000 in checks to be sent from his company, Health Choice, to another company, identified as Company-1 in the indictment, under the guise of paying fees incurred by Company-1 on behalf of Local 16, according to the Indictment. In truth, Company-1 had performed no services for Local 16 and was being used solely as a conduit by Cart to get the money to his stepfather Charles Wiener.

Cart is also charged with conspiring with Raphael and Donato to defraud Local 16 of $84,000 by creating a consulting position at Local 16 for defendant Raphael, for which no legitimate services were expected or provided. Between approximately August, 2000 and July, 2001, Raphael received monthly payments of $7,000 pursuant to the consulting agreement. Thereafter, Raphael re-directed approximately $56,000 to Cart directly or through his horse farm, Horsearound Stables, according to the Indictment.

Cart and Wiener are also charged in Counts Three and Four of the Indictment with a mail fraud conspiracy for trying to deprive the union members of the honest and faithful services of co-defendant Sue Donato in her representation of Local 16 and the Local 16 Health Fund. Count Five charges both Cart and Wiener with money laundering.

Conviction on Count One, the conspiracy to embezzle from the Local 16 Health Fund, carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and restitution to the fund. Count Two, the conspiracy to embezzle from the Local 16 Union, carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and restitution to the union. Counts Three and four carry a maximum sentence of 20 years each in prison and a $250,000 fine. Count Five, the money laundering count, carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

In determining an actual sentence, the judge to whom the case is assigned would, upon a conviction, consult the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, which provide appropriate sentencing ranges that take into account the severity and characteristics of the offense, the defendant's criminal history, if any, and other factors. The judge, however, is not bound by those guidelines in determining a sentence.

Parole has been abolished in the federal system. Defendants who are given custodial terms must serve nearly all that time.

Despite indictment, all defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Christie credits Special Agents from the Department of Labor, OIG, under the direction of James Vandenberg, Assistant Regional Inspector General. Christie also credited Special Agents from the Labor Department's Employee Benefit Security Administration, Acting Regional Director Jonathan Kay, with assisting in the investigation.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney V. Grady O'Malley, Senior Litigation Counsel, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Boxer, both of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark.

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/nj/publicaffairs/NJ_Press/files/cart0223_r.htm

[Calpernia]

Judge blasts state for lenient plea deal (Man accused of selling fraudulent IDs)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1467919/posts

[Calpernia]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1421318/posts

Loophole lets ex-con fund his retirement; Former politician taps leftover election cash
STAR LEDGER ^ | Sunday, June 12, 2005 | TED SHERMAN

Posted on 06/12/2005 8:42:44 AM EDT by Liz

Tom D'Alessio is a generous guy.

Two months after he was released from federal prison after serving time for political corruption charges in 1998, the former Essex County Executive set up a charitable foundation.

D'Alessio called it the Evergreen Fund and has bankrolled it with more than $1.8 million of the nearly $2 million that was left in his campaign fund.

Last year, the foundation reported it gave out $37,750 in contributions of $500 or so to dozens of organizations like the March of Dimes, the United Way and the Boy Scouts. It also paid D'Alessio an $81,708 salary as executive director, leased a $45,665 Mercedes-Benz for him and purchased a $432,000 luxury condominium on Marco Island along Florida's Gulf Coast.

And it was all perfectly legal.

While New Jersey law prevents former political candidates from pocketing leftover campaign cash, they can give the money to charity. Using that loophole, D'Alessio has been able to tap that money through the Evergreen Fund.

Public records show the 70-year-old D'Alessio, a onetime Essex County sheriff, has paid himself far more than the actual charitable endeavors, funding a comfortable Florida retirement by tapping into the now tax-exempt money.

Between 1999 and 2003, the Evergreen Fund gave $200,850 to nonprofit organizations in New Jersey and Florida, where D'Alessio now resides, according to the foundation's income tax returns. The most recent return was filed in November.

During that same period, the foundation spent more than $886,000 in operating and administrative expenses, including $346,140 in salary for D'Alessio, who also receives a $3,318 monthly state pension. During those five years, the foundation spent $16,233 for travel, $52,000 in accounting fees and $30,000 in salary for his daughter, Jennifer Luongo of Nutley, who is a director and the foundation's treasurer.

(Excerpt)

[Calpernia]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1485679/posts

FORRESTER: CORZINE MUST REVEAL DETAILS ON VOTE TO GIVE HIMSELF A $5 MILLION TAX BREAK
Forrestor Campaign ^ | September 15, 2005 | Sherry Sylvester

Posted on 09/16/2005 9:14:42 AM EDT by Spaghetti Man

(TRENTON, NJ) – Gubernatorial candidate Doug Forrester today called on Jon Corzine to fully disclose the details surrounding a vote in the Senate that earned Corzine millions of dollars.

“Jon Corzine voted to bail out Japanese bank underwriters at a cost of millions of dollars to U.S. taxpayers. It’s disturbing to learn he was one of a tiny handful who made millions of dollars of the vote.”

Despite extensive briefing by the Department of Treasury and Committee on Taxations, Corzine claims that he had no knowledge that he stood to earn approximately $5 million by casting a vote to give him and his business partners a tax break in March 2004.

[Calpernia]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1485596/posts

Among Voters in New Jersey, G.O.P. Sees Dead People
NY Times ^ | September 16, 2005 | DAVID W. CHEN

Posted on 09/16/2005 6:39:47 AM EDT by Pharmboy

TRENTON, Sept. 15 - The joke has long been that dead people vote in Hudson County, New Jersey's legendary enclave of machine politics. But now the joke may be on New Jersey, according to a new analysis of voter records by the state's Republican Party.

Comparing information from county voter registration lists, Social Security death records and other public information, Republican officials announced on Thursday that 4,755 people who were listed as deceased appear to have voted in the 2004 general election. Another 4,397 people who were registered to vote in more than one county appeared to have voted twice, while 6,572 who were registered in New Jersey and in one of five other states selected for analysis voted in each state.

At a news conference at the State House, Tom Wilson, the state's party chairman, took pains to say that the analysis did not look at voters' party affiliation. He also said that the party was not accusing voters of committing fraud, suggesting instead that someone else may have exploited their names without their knowledge.

[Calpernia]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1463223/posts


Corzine's handouts called into question ("savvy" bond trader loaned $$$ to failed businesses)
THE RECORD ^ | Aug 14, 2005 | JOHN P. McALPIN and JOSH GOHLKE

Posted on 08/14/2005 2:52:03 PM EDT by Liz

Jon Corzine is the business genius with a personal fortune in the hundreds of millions.

Now he's the front-runner in the race for governor and his skills with the checkbook are being questioned.

The savvy bond trader has admitted he made some business loans - totaling as much as a million dollars -that never panned out. One of the beneficiaries filed for bankruptcy and owes nearly $100,000 in back taxes, earning her a spot as one of New Jersey's top debtors.

Corzine gave his former girlfriend a $470,000 gift so she could repay the debt on her home, which sold for a little more than $360,000. She's a union leader who pushed to endorse him in two elections and represents the largest state workers union.

He also handed $837,000 to a South Jersey political boss who then dished that cash out across the state. Now there's a law to ban what happened, and Corzine is being forced to distance himself from the political warlord, who was caught on tape bragging about his influence with the senator.

[Calpernia]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1506777/posts
Corzine's donations questioned in New Jersey governor's race

[Calpernia]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1191576/posts

Jihadists in New Jersey with Senator Jon Corzine & Congressman Bill Pascrell, Democrats
FrontPageMag.com ^ | March 30, 2004 | Joel Mowbray

Posted on 08/14/2004 2:05:22 PM EDT by Coleus

Jihadists in Jersey

By Joel Mowbray
The New York Sun | March 30, 2004

Rep. Bill Pascrell and Senator Corzine, both Democrats of New Jersey, addressed an annual "community brunch" last month co-sponsored by 11 Muslim organizations, including a mosque that has allegedly raised funds for Hamas and another New Jersey mosque whose former imam was convicted last year for smuggling more than a half-million dollars to an Egyptian group that the American Treasury Department subsequently designated a terrorist organization. Mr. Pascrell has also received campaign contributions and fund-raising support from the president of the event's primary sponsor.

The American Muslim Union's Annual Community Brunch on February 21, 2004, was co-sponsored by 10 other organizations, including the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Center of Passaic County of Paterson, the El Tawheed Islamic Center of Jersey City, and the Dar-ul-Islah Islamic Center of Teaneck.

The co-sponsor with the most apparent ties to radical Islam, including allegedly raising funds for Hamas and hosting as a speaker last year an alleged Hamas figure, is the Islamic Center of Passaic County. The American Muslim Union, though, appears to have close ties to the Islamic Center of Passaic County, as five of its current and former directors and executives have held or still hold leadership positions at the Islamic Center.

The American Muslim Union insists it is a mainstream group, and Mr. Pascrell says he doesn't regret the appearance. Neither Mr. Pascrell nor Mr. Corzine generally vote outside of the Democratic mainstream on Israel or terror-related matters.

The co-founder of and former imam at the Islamic Center of Passaic County, which was founded in 1989, was Mohamed El-Mezain. He worked with the ICPC to raise funds for Hamas in the mid-1990s, according to an FBI memo drafted in November 2001 by the FBI's assistant director of counterterrorism, Dale Watson. Mr. El-Mezain, who is no longer affiliated with the Islamic Center and could not be reached for comment, was never charged or arrested.

The FBI document, which provided the basis for the U.S. government to shut down the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in December 2001, cited a "reliable" source in noting that "during a speech at the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC) in November, 1994, Mohammad El-Mezain, the HLFRD's current Director of Endowments and former Chairman of the HLFRD Board, admitted that some of the money collected by the ICPC and the HLFRD goes to HAMAS or HAMAS activities in Israel. El-Mezain also defended HAMAS and the activities carried out by HAMAS."

The American Muslim Union's president, Mohamed Younes, who is a member of Islamic Center of Passaic County's board of trustees, told The New York Sun that people at the mosque "did not know everywhere their money was going, and they would not have meant to give to Hamas."

Mr. El-Mezain and the Islamic Center of Passaic County appear to have other ties to Hamas.

Mr. El-Mezain attended a conference in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s where more than $200,000 was raised for Hamas and the keynote speaker urged participants to "finish off the Israelis," according to the FBI memo.

The FBI memo cites a "reliable" source who says that at a Muslim Arab Youth Association conference held from December 30, 1994, to January 2, 1995, the keynote speaker was Sheikh Muhammed Siyam, who was introduced as "head of operations of Al Jihad Al Islamia in Gaza, the Hamas military wing." According to the FBI in formant, Mr. Siyam told the crowd, "Finish off the Israelis. Kill them all! Exterminate them!"

"Following Siyam's speech," the memo continues, "El-Mezain exhorted the crowd to contribute money. It was subsequently announced that $207,000 was raised for 'the cause."' The FBI informant also said that at the conference, Mr. El-Mezain announced that he had raised $1.8 million inside the United States for Hamas in 1994 alone.

Magdy Mahmoud, who is the cofounder and president of CAIR-NJ, one of the co-sponsors of the American Muslim Union brunch, was on the executive board of the Muslim Arab Youth Association and directed its Chapters Committee from 1993 to 1998, during which time the 1994-95 conference occurred. According to his biography on CAIR-NJ's Web site, Mr. Mahmoud later served as the chairman of the Chapters Committee for the American Muslim Union from 1999 to 2001. Mr. Mahmoud did not return a call requesting comment.

According to the Islamic Center of Passaic County's Web site, the mosque hosted a lecture in February 2003 by Abdelhaleem Ashqar, who was identified in the FBI memo as a prominent Hamas figure.

Another co-sponsor of last month's event attended by Messrs. Corzine and Pascrell, Dar-ul-Islah Islamic Center, was co-founded by Waheed Khalid, who has defended Hamas activities. When asked by the Bergen Record newspaper in 1998 about Hamas' terrorist activities, Mr. Khalid, who until late last year served as the mosque's president, responded, "They are trying to get the occupiers out of their home."

Mr. Pascrell said that allegations that any of the co-sponsors of the event are radical Islamists or tied to terrorist organizations are "pure crap." Asked if he felt that by appearing at the event he was lending legitimacy to radical organizations, he added, "I'm not going to deal in rumors; the rest is crap. I know these men as fine family men."

A spokesman for Mr. Pascrell later clarified that the congressman wasn't referring to Alaa Al-Sadawi, the former imam at El Tawheed Islamic Center, who was convicted last July of attempting to smuggle more than $650,000 in cash to the Global Relief Fund in Egypt in April 2002.The U.S. Treasury Department designated that fund as terrorist in October 2002.

The spokesman for the congressman said, "That guy should be in jail, but you can't hold the members of the mosque responsible for his actions."

Despite multiple calls from the Sun, Mr. Corzine's office offered no comment.

The American Muslim Union's president, Mr. Younes, stressed that his organization is both moderate and mainstream, adding that it has worked to "bring people together of all faiths."

According to both men, Mr. Younes and Rep. Pascrell have been friends for almost a decade. Mr. Younes and his wife have contributed more than $4,300 to Mr. Pascrell's campaigns since 1998, according to federal election records. Mr. Younes also said that he has hosted "several" fund-raisers for the congressman, including one that netted over $20,000 in October 2000. Messrs. Younes and Pascrell said they can't remember how many fund-raisers Mr. Younes has hosted, or when the most recent one was held.

Mr. Pascrell said he had no regrets about addressing the American Muslim Union- sponsored brunch last month, noting that he has never been given any warning about the group by authorities. "I'm on the Homeland Security Committee and I've never been briefed that they are something I should stay away from," he explained.

Some information for this report was provided by the Investigative Project, a group headed by counterterrorism expert Steven Emerson.

[Calpernia]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1516493/posts

Judge: State must provide counties with names of deceased voters
Newsday ^

Posted on 11/05/2005 7:30:21 PM EST by Sub-Driver

Judge: State must provide counties with names of deceased voters

November 5, 2005, 6:29 PM EST

TRENTON, N.J. -- State officials must quickly provide all 21 counties and both major political parties with the names of adult New Jerseyans who have died since 1985 in an effort to guard against voter fraud in Tuesday's elections, a judge has ruled.

The lists must be distributed no later than 10 a.m. Monday, state Superior Court Judge Linda R. Feinberg said Friday. She issued the directive after learning that the state official responsible for tracking deaths each year and providing the names of deceased residents to county election officials had failed to do so because he did not know it was one of his duties.

Before making her ruling, Feinberg was considering a plan to have staffers with all county election boards work this weekend to compare the death lists to their voter rolls, a move that could have had them pouring over the names of as many as 1.5 million people in three days.

However, Feinberg changed her mind after Paul Josephson, an attorney for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jon Corzine, expressed concern that eligible voters could accidentally have their names purged from the rolls and possibly not be allowed to vote if workers rushed to complete the review by Tuesday.

The hearing stemmed from complaints that state Republican officials filed earlier this year. They claim that an estimated 13,000 people who apparently have died remain on voter registration lists in New Jersey, including 4,755 people who reportedly voted in last November's election.

The state registrar of vital statistics is required by state law to annually provide the counties with a list of all people over age 18 who died

(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...

[Calpernia]

JERSEY GOVERNOR RACE TURNS UGLY: CHARGES OF ABORTION, AFFAIRS DRIVE LAST DAYS (Drudge Report Flash)
Drudge Report ^ | Nov 5th, 2005 | Drudge

Posted on 11/05/2005 12:31:38 PM EST by PhiKapMom

JERSEY GOVERNOR RACE TURNS UGLY: CHARGES OF ABORTION, AFFAIRS DRIVE LAST DAYS

Sat Nov 05 2005 11:06:43 ET

New Jersey Public Radio & Television aired a report Friday night in which New Jersey Democratic Candidate for Governor Jon Corzine was grilled about whether a staffer he allegedly had an affair with -- had an abortion.

NJN News’ Michael Aron reported Friday: “The press is interested right now in personal conduct. Corzine was asked about a persistent rumor that he had an affair with a staffer whom the reporter identified by name.”

Sen. Jon Corzine: “A, not true. B, I’m not going to comment on the kind of, I think, low, guttural politics that’s going on over and over in this state, and I think the ad that was talked about was just symptomatic of that.”

NJN’s Michael Aron: “He was asked about a rumor that the same staffer had an abortion in Ohio. “ Reporter: “Can you respond to those rumors that are circulating?”

Corzine: “Trash.”

Saturday's edition of THE NEW YORK TIMES reported the incident but ignored the specifics: “But Mr. Corzine did deny a new allegation raised by reporters yesterday regarding another woman.”

TIMES reporter David Kocieniewski has been investigating the claims, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

"He had the details. He's sat on the details," says a source.

Meanwhile, sex charges have been leveled at Corzine's republican challenger, Doug Forrester.

At an appearance in Woodbridge, Forrester denied that he had an extramarital affair, which was reported in a NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, which attributed the allegation to an e-mail it had received. "These are false accusations. It is wrong. It is despicable. It is the example of the kind of campaign that Jon Corzine has been running from the beginning," he said.

A final debate is set for tonight at 7.

New Jersey voters head to the polls on Tuesday.

Developing...

[Calpernia]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1516316/posts

[Calpernia]

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newjersey/ny-bc-nj--officialcharged1110nov10,0,1666141.story?coll=ny-region-apnewjersey

Councilman indicted for tampering with absentee ballots

November 10, 2005, 7:39 PM EST

TRENTON, N.J. -- The state Attorney General's Office on Thursday announced the indictment of an Atlantic City councilman on charges of tampering with absentee ballots before the city's June 7 primary election for mayor and city council.

Marty L. Small, 31, has been charged with 10 counts of tampering with public records and one count of hindering or preventing voting.

(snip)

Small is accused of filing absentee ballot applications for 10 people. He represented himself as their "authorized messenger," when he had no such designation from the voters.

A registered voter in New Jersey has the option of having a person pick up their absentee ballot if they are unable to file for the ballot themselves.

Small faces a maximum of 55{ years in prison and $160,000 in fines if convicted, though such offenses often do not result in incarceration. Small would also have to forfeit his position on the city council and his job with the Atlantic City public schools.

(snip)

[Calpernia]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1519380/posts

FBI searches office of former Sen. Lynch
Documents from powerful Democrat and developer partner sought in corruption probe
Thursday, November 10, 2005
BY JOHN P. MARTIN AND JOSH MARGOLIN
Star-Ledger Staff

FBI agents yesterday raided an office shared by former state Sen. John Lynch and a politically active developer, bringing into the open a longstanding corruption probe involving one of the state's most powerful political figures.

Agents executed a search warrant at the Tinton Falls office that Lynch, a Democrat and political mentor to former Gov. James E. McGreevey, shares with developer Jack Westlake, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the raid.

The purpose of the raid was unclear, although sources believed that FBI agents were seeking documents related to the men's business dealings, including an unidentified real estate project in New Brunswick.

Lynch and Westlake have been under scrutiny by federal prosecutors for more than a year in a probe that began when two former McGreevey aides scored millions of dollars developing and selling highway billboards just before the ex- governor took office in 2002. The sources said the same FBI agents on the billboard investigation supervised yesterday's search.

Excerpt

[Calpernia]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/718076/posts

Sen. Corzine and Goldman Sachs

For a freshman senator who spent more than $60 million of his own money to capture 50.1 percent of the vote in his 2000 election, New Jersey Democrat Jon Corzine arrived on Capitol Hill with an overabundant supply of chutzpah.

Evidently due to his experience as co-chairman and CEO of the Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs from 1994 to 1999, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was only too happy to enlist Mr. Corzine's services as designated inquisitor-in-chief immediately after Enron imploded last December.

Now, Mr. Corzine has come under scrutiny for the role played by Goldman Sachs in the stock-market bubble that greatly expanded on his watch. As David Boyer of The Washington Times reported yesterday, a class-action suit filed last year charged that Goldman Sachs underwriters were involved in manipulating numerous initial public offerings (IPOs), including at least six when Mr. Corzine was at the firm's helm. Mr. Boyer also reported that Nicholas Maier, who was syndicate manager at the Wall Street firm Cramer & Co. from 1996 to 1998, has told Securities and Exchange Commission investigators that Goldman Sachs routinely forced him to buy stocks at inflated prices if he wanted to participate in the red-hot IPO market. Calling Mr. Corzine's firm "the worst perpetrator" of such a scheme, Mr. Maier charged that Goldman Sachs "totally fueled the [market] bubble." Mr. Corzine denies any such involvement by Goldman Sachs, and the courts will have to determine who is telling the truth. But he cannot deny his firm's role in the Enron debacle.

How, one wonders, does Mr. Daschle think Enron raised the billions and billions of dollars over 15 years to build its house of cards that crashed and burned last year, destroying more than $50 billion in shareholder value? As it happened, no investment bank on Wall Street "earned" more underwriting fees from Enron since 1986 than Goldman Sachs.

And, no other investment bank was more bullish on Enron for a longer period of time than Goldman Sachs, whose market guru Abby Joseph Cohen was indispensable in raising Enron's share price to its $90 peak and whose analyst David Fleischer pushed this dog all the way until the bitter end. That is Mr. Corzine's Goldman Sachs record. The jaws of scandal have a bipartisan bite.

[Calpernia]

"Corzine tied to stock scheme"

EXCERPT.....Goldman Sachs, the firm that Mr. Corzine left as chairman in May 1999, has been a target of class-action lawsuits and accusations by a former broker who complained to the SEC that the investment house engaged in a scheme to force unwitting investors to pay artificially high prices for certain stocks.


.....Nicholas Maier, who was syndicate manager of the Wall Street firm Cramer & Co. from 1996 to 1998, told SEC investigators in the spring that Goldman Sachs routinely forced him to buy stocks at inflated prices if he wanted to purchase shares of an initial public offering (IPO). "Goldman, from what I witnessed, they were the worst perpetrator," Mr. Maier said. "They totally fueled the [market] bubble. And it's specifically that kind of behavior that has caused the market crash. They built these stocks upon an illegal foundation manipulated up, and ultimately, it really was the small person who ended up buying in."


For example, Mr. Maier told the SEC that Goldman Sachs would offer him shares of a new company's IPO at the initial, low price of $20 per share only if he agreed to purchase "aftermarket" shares of the same company at $100 each. In turn, he would sell the shares of the higher-priced stock to small investors. "None of these aftermarket orders had anything to do with what I honestly valued a company to be worth," Mr. Maier said. "Goldman created the convincing appearance of a winner, and the trick worked so well that they seduced further interest from other speculators hoping to participate in the gold rush. The general public had no idea that these stocks were actually brought into the world at unnaturally high levels through illegal manipulation."



STORY HERE: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:CzMLY_dPk4YJ:corporatefraud.tripod.com/democrookery/id2.html

[Calpernia]

http://209.157.64.201/focus/f-news/1460423/posts
NYP: SO MUCH FOR 'MR. CLEAN' - Corzine's 'privacy' problem

(snip)

Last October, just before launching his statehouse bid, Corzine invested $7 million in a hedge fund headed by Carl Icahn... majority owner of the Sands Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City. That would be a blatant conflict of interest and a violation of ethics for a sitting governor....

Then there's his financial partnership... with real-estate tycoon Charles Kushner. The soon-to-be-convicted Kushner was brought down in a tawdry scandal involving tax fraud and sex. Ironically, he'd been the key link between then-Gov. Jim McGreevey and his lover, Golan Cipel, whose hiring as a key state homeland security official ultimately led to the governor's resignation....

(snip)

[Calpernia]

Bob Menendez: Cuban-American Hero or Cuban- American Castroite?
Jersey Politics.com ^ | 12.12.05 | Murray Sabrin, Ph.D.

Posted on 12/15/2005 12:53:30 PM EST by Coleus

Governor-elect Corzine’s appointment of Congressman Robert Menendez to fill the remaining year of his U.S. Senate term was no surprise. Corzine had been signaling the Menendez appointment since he jumped into the governor’s race a year ago.

In all the press reports about the life and career of Bob Menendez, he is always identified as the son of Cuban immigrants. The implication is that Menendez’s parents fled Castro-ruled Cuba. In yesterday’s Record columnist Mike Kelly writes, “As the son of Cuban –American parents, who fled the brutal hand of Fidel Castro…” stating in no uncertain terms that Menendez’s parents arrived in America to escape Castro’s brutal totalitarian regime. (Emphasis added)

In his address accepting governor-elect Corzine’s appointment to the U.S. Senate, Menendez said, “My own parents came to this country fleeing tyranny and searching for freedom.” Again, Menendez implied his parents fled Cuba because of Castro’s oppressive policies. And journalists have been inferring that the Menendez family escaped the Castro regime.

There is one major problem with the newspaper reports about Menendez’s parents’ migration from Cuba, and Mike Kelly’s column. Bob Menendez was born in New York on January 1, 1954, exactly five years before Castro seized power on January 1, 1959. Menendez’s parents arrived in America well before Castro ousted the dictatorial Batista regime. In other words, the Menendez family did not leave Cuba because of Castro. Why did they leave Cuba? Were Mr. and Mrs. Menendez brutalized by Batista—the Cuban dictator of the early 1950s? If so, how were they able to leave Cuba?

More: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1541070/posts

[Calpernia]

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39a9e4cf7770.htm
Winning Washington's Ear, With a Checkbook and a Tale

News/Current Events Breaking News News
Source: New York Times
Published: 8/28/00 Author: TIM GOLDEN and DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
Posted on 08/27/2000 21:04:31 PDT by kattracks

At his small suite of offices in Fort Lee, N.J., David Chang was a tycoon without much to do.

Mr. Chang, 56, often rode to work in a Rolls-Royce and strode through the door in a long mink coat, a cigarette dangling from his lips. But although his holding company boasted of big, global deals in everything from oil exploration to telecommunications, almost none of those ventures ever got off the ground.

"I never really saw anybody there do anything," said Clark R. Wilcox, a former banking executive who was hired to help run the firm in 1997, only to quit soon after and successfully sue his former employer for breach of contract.

In Washington, however, Mr. Chang cut a very different figure. There, he attended state dinners at the White House and visited informally with the president. He hired Mr. Clinton's chief fund-raiser as a consultant and cultivated senators and congressmen from both parties. The chairman of his company, a retired Navy admiral, had been chief of staff to George Bush when he was vice president.

The secret of Mr. Chang's popularity among American politicians was of course no secret: he and his employees gave generously to favored candidates and their parties -- more than 100 contributions that totaled $325,000. Mr. Chang also pledged at least $1 million toward the presidential library that Mr. Clinton hopes to build in Little Rock, Ark.

Mr. Chang's activities finally caught the attention of federal campaign-finance investigators, who learned he was spending more on politicians than he was reporting in taxable income. In June, he pleaded guilty to channeling more than $53,000 in illegal contributions to one of the Democratic Party's most important fund-raisers, Senator Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey.

Now, Mr. Chang is at the center of a widening federal inquiry into the possibility that Mr. Torricelli's 1996 campaign staff may have been complicit in Mr. Chang's illegal donations -- something the senator strongly denies. Lawyers familiar with the case say Mr. Chang has given prosecutors information suggesting that Mr. Torricelli's aides accounted improperly for some of his contributions, and at least two dozen Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have been added to the inquiry in recent weeks.

Mr. Torricelli and other politicians now cast him as an unscrupulous con man, and themselves as his unwitting victims. Through his Washington lawyer, Mr. Chang declined to comment at all. But Mr. Chang's credibility is likely to be a central issue in any new case that is brought.

A portrait of Mr. Chang -- drawn from interviews, court records and a thick file of lawsuits by and against him -- shows a man of glaring, sometimes comical contradictions: one who claims to have been educated at England's best schools but who speaks broken English; whose closest business contacts included Communist officials from North Korea and a former Republican congressman from New Jersey; who rallied American politicians to help him buy a billion-dollar South Korean insurance company but never had even a small fraction of the money he needed.

"How can a guy like Chang get hooked up with all these people?" asked Mr. Wilcox, his former employee. "As a citizen, quite frankly, it makes me very angry."

As a businessman, many of his former employees say, Mr. Chang generated all sorts of ambitious schemes but almost no apparent profit. Though he has owned large homes, expensive cars and the 235-room Fort Lee Hilton hotel, just over the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan, it is unclear where he has gotten his money, large chunks of which have arrived in wire transfers from abroad, court records show.

And while Mr. Chang's generosity won him many attentive friends in Washington, it did not buy him all the political favors he sought. His most important request, that the Clinton administration help him win repayment of tens of millions of dollars he said he was owed by North Korea for grain shipments, made almost no progress at all.

"Did anything go wrong?" said a spokesman for Mr. Clinton, Jake Seiwert. "His proposals were neither accepted nor acted upon.

What he wanted to do didn't happen."

Still, the story of Mr. Chang's education in money politics is a remarkable chapter in the saga of Washington influence bought and sold. In a world of fund-raiser business executives, deal-savvy senators and retired officials who increasingly exploit their connections abroad, Mr. Chang was a magnet for the powerful -- even after he was publicly identified as having given illegal donations to two different election campaigns.

Basic Contradictions

Just who David Chang is has been difficult to ascertain.

At a bail hearing earlier this year, prosecutors noted that Mr. Chang had used at least two passports and three Social Security numbers, listed two different birthplaces and three different birth dates, and was married to two women at the same time -- not including a reputed girlfriend who has also been listed as his wife.

"David Chang is a chronic liar," one of his many former lawyers, Michael S. Kimm, asserted in a recent lawsuit that, like several others by other people, claims that Mr. Chang failed to pay him what he owed.

Even on the basic facts of his background, Mr. Chang has at least contradicted himself repeatedly. In one set of court papers, he said he was born in Beijing in 1943 and emigrated to South Korea soon after the Communist takeover of China six years later. In an interview last year with a South Korean newspaper, he said he was born in Korea and left his homeland in 1963, when he hopped a freighter and sailed to America. In New Jersey, Mr. Chang told his employees that he spent the 70's and 80's working as a high-flying oil trader in London and the Middle East. Through his Washington lawyer, David Schertler, Mr. Chang said he had worked abroad for his own oil company, Nikko Petroleum, and moved its operations to New York in 1976.

Mr. Chang's profile began to rise in the United States around 1990, when he became an American citizen. By then, he was calling his firm Nikko Enterprises Inc. and had moved it into offices in Fort Lee, just across the river from Manhattan.

He portrayed himself as a man of discreet but powerful patrons. He told associates that he had named his firm for its sponsorship by the Nikko Securities Company, Japan's third-largest brokerage, and that he had a rich young wife back in Japan, the daughter of a Nikko executive.

But not only did Nikko Securities have nothing to do with Mr. Chang, it also apparently persuaded him to stop using its name, prompting him to reincorporate his company in 1994 as Bright & Bright. Soon enough, though, he found new sources of respectability in the United States.

Among the first and most important of Mr. Chang's Washington contacts was Daniel J. Murphy, a high-profile lobbyist with a gleaming government résumé. A retired four-star admiral, Mr. Murphy had commanded the Navy's Sixth Fleet, had served as chief of staff to George Bush when he was vice president, and had been a deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and a deputy undersecretary of defense.

After resigning from Vice President Bush's staff in 1985, Mr. Murphy went to work as a lobbyist, first for Gray & Company, a firm closely tied to the Reagan administration, and then on his own. He quickly built a reputation for putting business ahead of politics, representing the Marxist government of Angola, trying to drum up business in Gen. Manuel Noriega's Panama, and maintaining a friendship with Tongsun Park, the former South Korean lobbyist and intelligence agent, long after Mr. Park's ties to American congressmen touched off a political scandal involving United States officials in the late 1970's.

Mr. Murphy, who declined to say anything about his relationsip with Mr. Chang, began working for him as a consultant and lobbyist by at least 1990, according to Mr. Schertler, Mr. Chang's lawyer. Mr. Murphy soon became a business partner as well, helping Mr. Chang open some of the more important doors in Washington.

"He was at the White House once a month, when I was there," said one former assistant who worked for Mr. Chang during the latter half of the Bush administration. Mr. Bush's spokesman said the former president did not recall ever meeting Mr. Chang, and there are no records that he ever made a private visit to the White House.

Creating a Niche

Mr. Chang used his contacts to carve out an unusual business niche, trying to supply goods and services to countries hostile to the United States. Besides shipping wheat to North Korea, his former employees said, he tried to send ambulances and other equipment to Iraq.

He also bought American real estate and Asian stocks, tried to sell repackaged cigarettes in Russia and beer snacks in South Korea, and explored building a fleet of mini-blimps for advertising. Almost none of his start-ups, however, seem to have even gotten off the ground.

It is unclear what Mr. Chang was using for capital. For his grain deal with North Korea, he received at least $60 million from South Korea's Shinhan Bank, and from L.G. International, the New Jersey subsidiary of one of South Korea's biggest conglomerates.

In 1991, Mr. Chang obtained one of the first Commerce Department licenses authorizing the sale of food to North Korea, which was then subject to American trade sanctions. By 1994, court records show, he had shipped the government there some 560,000 tons of wheat, with a value of $110 million.

Mr. Chang accused the North Korean government of failing to pay him $71 million on the deal and reneging on a $1.2-billion contract for further shipments. He made the accusations in a libel suit filed against a Korean-language newspaper based in Queens, which published an article accusing him of giving free rooms at the Fort Lee Hilton to visiting North Korean officials. The paper stood by its story; Mr. Chang dropped his suit three years later.

Whatever misgivings Mr. Chang had about doing business with the North Koreans apparently eased. By 1998, he had been back in North Korea on a contract to provide logistical support for a United States Army team that sought to recover the remains of American soldiers missing there since the Korean War.

New Alliances

With Mr. Bush out of the White House and South Korean financiers pressing him for repayment on the grain deal, Mr. Chang began to cultivate the Democrats.

Until then, he had been a relatively modest and mainly Republican donor. In 1992, for instance, he gave $25,000 to Republicans and $1,000 to Mr. Torricelli, then his local congressman. But by the 1995-96 election cycle, the balance of his generosity shifted to Democrats, and Mr. Torricelli became his most-favored politician.

When pressed, a spokesman for Mr. Torricelli said his campaign fund-raisers merely found Mr. Chang's name -- along with hundreds of others -- on a list of New Jersey donors provided by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "He was not one of the senator's inner circle of fund-raisers," the senator's chief of staff, Eric B. Shuffler, said. "Not in any way, shape or form anything close to that."

But many of Mr. Torricelli's friends and former aides tell of a much closer relationship. "All of a sudden," one former aide recalled, "he became a player."

Over the next few years, Mr. Chang and his aides gave $8,000 to Mr. Torricelli, and Mr. Chang was named to the finance committee for Mr. Torricelli's 1996 campaign. Mr. Chang gave Mr. Torricelli use of his corporate jet during his 1996 Senate campaign, and investigators are now examining whether the campaign fully reimbursed Mr. Chang for the 19 flights. Mr. Chang gave $30,000 more to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, of which Mr. Torricelli was named vice chairman and then chairman, and $5,000 to a legal-defense fund set up on Mr. Torricelli's behalf for a House ethics inquiry involving Mr. Torricelli, who was ultimately cleared.

As his relationship with the White House grew, Mr. Chang and his companies gave $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee and $70,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Over the same period, Mr. Chang, his aides and his companies gave only about $44,000 to the Republican Party.

Between late 1995 and 1996, Mr. Chang also arranged for an additional $53,700 in illegal contributions to Mr. Torricelli's campaign, funneling the money through friends, business associates and even the former chairman of the Bergen County Republican Party, Berek Don. Mr. Don has pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and is cooperating with prosecutors.

A spokesman for Mr. Torricelli, who declined to answer questions himself, said the senator's office did almost nothing for Mr. Chang.

"I know it looks strange, but this is not a guy who we did anything for," Mr. Shuffler said. "No one on our staff, in our Washington office, ever spoke to Chang or met him."

Again, however, several other politicians and current and former Torricelli aides remember the relationship differently.

"He was seen as someone who Torricelli was actively engaged with," one former aide said. "This was a guy who was important to Bob."

In December 1997, Mr. Torricelli went to South Korea just days before a presidential election there.

The American embassy, concerned that Mr. Torricelli might be seen as meddling in the campaign, balked at setting up political meetings for him. Mr. Chang swept into the void.

In a one-page statement issued in response to written questions, Mr. Torricelli's office denied that Mr. Chang was present on the trip, made any of the arrangements for it, or communicated about it with any members of the senator's staff.

But two people with detailed knowledge of the trip said Mr. Chang did stay in the same hotel as Mr. Torricelli, while Mr. Chang's aide, Christopher Kim, helped set up meetings for the senator with the two opposition candidates, Kim Dae Jung, who won the vote, and Rhee In Je. In a brief interview, Mr. Kim also acknowledged that Mr. Chang sent him to Seoul to help with the arrangements and to act as the senator's guide as he met with Korean officials and candidates.

The week of Mr. Torricelli's visit, one of Mr. Chang's companies also made a $30,000 donation to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Seeking Payback

Despite all that support, a spokesman for Mr. Torricelli said he never helped Mr. Chang with the matter of his greatest concern -- persuading the administration to transfer frozen North Korean assets to him, or to pressure the North Korea to repay the debt. But other politicians were apparently more forthcoming.

As recently as last fall, a handful of legislators, from the relatively liberal Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey to conservative Republicans like Senator Craig Thomas of Wyoming, wrote to the administration on Mr. Chang's behalf, urging it not to ease the sanctions on North Korea without pressing for the repayment of debts to American companies like Bright & Bright.

Aides to Mr. Lautenberg said they wrote a pro forma letter for him because he was a New Jersey resident. An aide to Mr. Thomas said the Wyoming senator supported Mr. Chang's appeal after being lobbied on his behalf by one of his business partners, James A. Courter, the former Republican congressman from New Jersey.

According to two politicians close to Mr. Clinton, Mr. Chang was introduced to the president by Mr. Torricelli at a fund-raising event for the senator. Under questioning by the head of the Justice Department's campaign-financing task force, Robert J. Conrad Jr., Mr. Clinton said that Mr. Torricelli might have made the introduction, but that he could not remember.

When South Korea's president visited Washington in June 1998, Mr. Chang and his then 30-year-old assistant, Audrey Yu, were among the guests at a state dinner. Barely a month later, on July 14, Mr. Clinton invited Mr. Chang over again, this time to watch a movie in the White House screening room. When Mr. Clinton traveled to Seoul that November, Mr. Chang and others said, he was invited to the president's hotel room for conversation and pizza. Days before Christmas, Mr. Chang was invited to the White House again, for a holiday dinner.

Early the following spring, Mr. Chang was invited to the White House to watch the N.C.A.A. basketball final with Mr. Clinton. And when the Chinese prime minister, Zhu Rongji, visited that April, Mr. Chang and Ms. Yu were invited to another state dinner.

Over the year that he was so assiduously wined, dined and entertained by Mr. Clinton and other administration officials, Mr. Chang and his companies donated more than $150,000 to the Democratic Party.

Nonetheless, Terry McAuliffe, the president's friend and chief fund-raiser, said, Mr. Chang "was treated no differently from any other supporter." White House officials suggested that while senior National Security Council officials were dispatched twice in 1998 to meet with Mr. Chang and listened to his thoughts on the Middle East, North Korea and Iraq, mostly they just humored him.

Yet even as Mr. Chang became a more prized Democratic donor, his legal troubles were in fairly plain sight.

The Biggest Deal

His role in making $12,000 in illegal campaign contributions to the 1992 campaign of former Representative Jay Kim, a Korean-American Republican from California, had come to light in news articles by August 1997. (Mr. Chang was not charged, after agreeing to cooperate with federal prosecutors.) His involvement in illegal contributions to the 1996 Torricelli campaign surfaced clearly in May 1999, when Mr. Don, the former Bergen County chairman, pleaded guilty to funneling Mr. Chang's money through employees at his law firm.

Nor was there much evidence that Mr. Chang was flourishing in business.

Between 1996 and 1998, while he donated more than $270,000 to various political causes, Mr. Chang reported only $183,000 in income. Over a one-year period starting in the fall of 1998, he also lost nearly $300,000 gambling in Atlantic City, federal prosecutors said.

Mr. Seiwert, the White house spokesman, said a presidential visitor and donor like Mr. Chang should typically have been vetted by the Democratic National Committee, the Secret Service and White House researchers. He said administration officials were "still checking" to determine how that vetting might have been done in his case.

In mid-1998, Mr. Chang hired Mr. McAuliffe to help him try to buy a bank in South Korea. Mr. McAuliffe said that before signing a yearlong consulting contract with Mr. Chang, he checked with several people, including Mr. Courter, the former congressman who was listed on company documents as the president of the new trading company that Mr. Chang established in late 1997, Panacom Inc.

A person familiar with the contract said Mr. Torricelli provided an enthusiastic reference, telling Mr. McAuliffe, "He's a legitimate person, a legitimate businessman, his wife's family owns Nikko Securities."

Mr. Torricelli's aides deny that he or any staff member ever vouched for Mr. Chang.

Mr. McAuliffe said he never discussed Mr. Chang's business deals with President Clinton, and ended his consulting arrangement after only about six months. Roughly six months after that, however, he agreed to work for Mr. Chang again, this time as an investment banker when Panacom sought to buy the troubled Korea Life Insurance Company, South Korea's third-largest insurance company.

Mr. McAuliffe said he went back after learning that Mr. Murphy was acting as Panacom's chairman, and after Mr. Courter assured him that Mr. Chang had enough money to buy the company. He said one of Mr. Chang's lawyers also gave him a Korean newspaper clipping indicating that former President Bush had already met with Korean officials on Panacom's behalf, something that one of Mr. Chang's former lawyers, Michael Critchley, also asserted during a hearing in federal court.

A spokesman for Mr. Bush, Gian-Carlo A. Peressutti, said this was untrue. The former president, he said, had been in Korea on behalf of another American firm, the Carlyle Group, which is headed by former Republican adminstration officials.

The Korea Life deal would have been by far Mr. Chang's biggest yet, one that three of the world's largest multinational insurance companies had already bid on and lost by the summer of 1999, when Mr. Murphy and Mr. Chang stepped into the void.

"It was a bit of a surprise, because no one had ever heard of them," recalled Lee Jong-Koo, a senior Finance Ministry official who attended the meeting. "Chang and Admiral Murphy asked questions about K.L.I. and they indicated that they could raise abundant funds to acquire the company from various sources, especially New Jersey pension funds."

In an interview at his office in Seoul, Mr. Lee said Korean officials repeatedly sought further evidence from Mr. Chang that Panacom could assemble the roughly $1.5 billion they were seeking for the company. Instead, they heard about Mr. Chang's politician friends.

"I remember David Chang said he knew Senator Torricelli and other politicians," Mr. Lee said. "He also said that he knew President Clinton and that he had eaten pizza with the president."

Within weeks, the Korean prime minister, Kim Jong Pil, began to receive letters from politicians in Washington and New Jersey. Representative Gregory W. Meeks, a New York City Democrat, wrote to "highly recommend Panacom for this acquisition because of their strong record in investment, trade and finance for many years." Representative Carolyn Maloney, another New York CityDemocrat, who received $2,000 from Mr. Chang and his assistant in 1998, wrote a similar letter. Senator Torricelli and a New Jersey state finance official, wrote similarletters, Korean officials said.

The two representatives said through spokesmen that they did so because they believed Panacom was a legitimate business with operations in New York.

Aides to one lawmaker said they also checked first with Mr. Torricelli's staff, which vouched strongly for Mr. Chang. A spokesman for Mr. Torricelli denied this had happened.

Mr. Torricelli agreed to provide The New York Times with a copy of the letter he wrote to the Korean government on Panacom's behalf. After several weeks, however, his aides said the letter could not be found.

Deepening Troubles

As Mr. Chang's push for the insurance deal continued last summer, Korean officials became openly suspicious that he was acting as a front man for the former owner of the insurance company, who had been jailed on corruption charges but was trying to win it back.

"I knew this guy Chang was lying to me," Mr. Lee said.

Mr. McAuliffe flew to Seoul in late August to help move the deal ahead.

But he said that after only two discussions with Panacom lawyers, he turned around and flew home, refusing to meet with Korean officials.

The Korea Life deal finally fell through last fall, as Mr. Chang's legal troubles were deepening in New Jersey.

With the pressure from federal prosecutors growing, the lawyer then leading Mr. Chang's defense, Mr. Critchley, did something that stunned many of the lawyers following the case. After Mr. Chang's arrest on campaign-finance, conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges, Mr. Critchley announced in court that Mr. Chang had "no information about any criminal wrongdoing" by any public officials, mentioning President Clinton, Senator Torricelli and Mr. McAuliffe by name. With that, Mr. Critchley, who is active in Democratic Party politics in New Jersey, seemed to foreclose the possibility that Mr. Chang would ever cooperate with the government.

Less than six months later, however, as Mr. Chang prepared to go to trial with a new lawyer, he indicated to prosecutors that he might have that kind of information and agreed to cooperate with the authorities. He became the sixth person to plead guilty to making illegal contributions to Mr. Torricelli's campaign.




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