Corpus Christie and Philadelphia Busts Prove the U.S. Cocaine Problem

Posted on June 26, 2019June 26, 2019 by Denise Simon

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — On their latest trip to South America, a CBP Air and Marine Operations aircrew spoiled cocaine smugglers’ best efforts when they contributed to the arrest of 11 smugglers and the seizure of almost $300 million worth of narcotics between June 17-21.

Small vessel carrying narcotics — This low-profile vessel is designed to be hard to detect
when moving in open waters.

“No one can hide from us on our watch,” said Director of Air and Marine Operations Bob “Thor” Blanchard. If smugglers are trying to bring drugs into the U.S., our dedicated and experienced crews will find them and they’ll go to jail.”

The crew of an AMO Lockheed P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft began its work by detecting a small fishing vessel or “panga” loaded with 1,656 pounds of cocaine. The next day, the crew was on patrol using its sophisticated radar system detected a purpose-built smuggling vessel. The “Low Profile Vessel” or, LPV, was loaded with 4,134 pounds of cocaine. On the last day of its trip and while heading back to the United States, the crew detected a hard to find semi-submersible vessel. That load was one of the Corpus Christi office’s largest ever seizures. The 16,938-pound load on this vessel brought their weekly total to 22,728 pounds, or roughly the weight of three heavy-duty pickup trucks.

An AMO P3 — A P-3 Orion Long Range Tracker patrols
the Gulf of Mexico.

The National Air Security Operations Center—Corpus Christi is a division of Air and Marine Operations and operates the Lockheed P-3 Orion conducting counterdrug patrol missions over the Eastern Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Together with the National Air Security Operations Center in Jacksonville, Florida, Customs and Border Protection P-3 crews seized or disrupted 261,939 pounds of cocaine in 2018.

The mission of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Air and Marine Operations is to serve and protect the American people. It applies advanced aeronautical and maritime capabilities and employs its unique skill sets to preserve America’s security interests. With 1,800 federal agents and mission support personnel, 240 aircraft and 300 marine vessels operating throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands, Air and Marine Operations uses its sophisticated fleets to detect, sort, intercept, track and apprehend criminals in diverse environments at and beyond U.S. borders.

*** It was earlier this month that yet another cargo ship arrived at the Philadelphia shipping yard containing 15,000 kilos of cocaine. This ship named the MSC Gayane had traveled from Chile, Panama and the Bahamas before reaching the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal Port on the Delaware River were the actual bust occurred. The MSC Gayane is a newer cargo ship that flies a Liberian flag yet is Swiss owned. The value of the cocaine aboard was over $1 Billion.

photo

Six crew of the cargo ship are in Federal custody.

The six men have been identified as Ivan Durasevic, Nenad Illic, Aleksandar Kavaia, Bosko Markovic, Laauli Pulu, and Fonofaavae Tiasaga, according to NBC10. Tiasaga and Durasevic were the first charged last Thursday with conspiracy to possess cocaine. Four of the five suspects waived their preliminary hearings while the fifth suspect asked from a continuance through his attorney, which was granted by the judge.

The nationalities of the six crew members had not been confirmed as of Monday. According to an attorney, one of the defendants is from Montenegro. There were two interpreters present in the court room that spoke Serbian and Samoan with the defendants, according to the Associated Press.

The crew members allegedly admitted to helping load cocaine onto the cargo ship while it was at sea off the west coast of South America, according to an affidavit. Authorities said 14 boats approached the ship on two separate occasions. Records show the previous ports of call were the Bahamas on June 13, Panama on June 9, Peru on May 24, and Columbia on May 19.

More Executive Action Against Iran

Posted on June 24, 2019June 24, 2019 by Denise Simon

Due to timing, it is assumed rather than a U.S. military strike campaign against designated targets as a result of Iran shooting down a U.S. drone, Cyber Command initiated a cyber operation. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard maintains control of the rocket and missile systems and they have been disabled as the U.S. response. Iran has confirmed the cyber-attack but also says it failed. Iran expected a response by the United States and in advance shut down several radar sites.

The United States has been inside several cyber operations in Iran for a very long time and was ready for a go order. Meanwhile, The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning that Iran has been advancing their own cyber operations against select US targets. It is unclear what those targets are.

President Trump spent the weekend at Camp David while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Saudi Arabia and to Abu Dhabi while NSC John Bolton is in Israel. Bolton has on his calendar meetings with the Israeli national security and atomic energy officials as the introduction of the coming peace plan proposal dealing with the Palestinians will be introduced in Bahrain.

Photo: Alex Brandon AP

Trump has signed yet another addition to the sanctions architecture on Iran. There is talk of sanctions relief if Iran is willing to negotiate on key topics including escalating uranium enrichment. So far, Iran has said they will not meet with the United States and will shoot down other aircraft if they impede Iran airspace. The FAA has ordered all U.S. commercial aircraft to reroute outside of the existing Iran airspace buffer zone.

There are now heavy decisions for Europe to make in their economic trade with Iran versus that of the United States and remaining in the JCPOA, the Obama nuclear deal with Iran.

The Executive Order signed by President Trump goes right to the top of the regime yet does not yet include Mohammad Javad Zarif, the top Iran diplomat, however it is said that could come later in the week.

The new round of sanctions is all about existing monies controlled by the IRGC and the Iran Supreme leader and his associates. This includes access to revenues from oil exports and freezes the financial assets of key officials where the Iran Central Bank is listed.

***

Additional Executive Order sanctions details:

Today’s action targets commanders of the IRGC’s Navy, Aerospace, and Ground Forces, in addition to the commanders of the IRGC Navy’s (IRGCN) five naval districts. These include the naval district commanders who are responsible for the IRGCN’s activities off the coast of the southern provinces of Khuzestan, Bushehr, and Hormozgan, which lie adjacent to the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

OFAC is designating IRGCN Commander Ali Reza Tangsiri pursuant to E.O. 13224 for acting for or on behalf of the IRGC. As recently as February 2019, Tangsiri threatened that the Iranian regime’s forces would close the Strait of Hormuz, an international waterway, if U.S. sanctions stopped Iran’s oil exports, and that the Iranian regime is prepared to target U.S. interests in the region. As the commander of the IRGCN, Tangsiri sits atop a structure—including those regional IRGCN commanders sanctioned today—that is responsible for the sabotage of vessels in the international waters.

Also designated today pursuant to E.O. 13224 for acting for or on behalf of the IRGC is Amirali Hajizadeh, commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force, whose bureaucracy was responsible for downing the U.S. unmanned aircraft on June 20, 2019. Hajizadeh oversees Iran’s provocative ballistic missile program.

OFAC is also designating pursuant to E.O. 13224 Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the IRGC’s Ground Forces, for acting for or on behalf of the IRGC. Under Pakpour’s command, the IRGC Ground Forces have deployed to fight in Syria in support of the IRGC-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and the brutal Assad regime. In 2017, Pakpour said that the IRGC Ground Forces were in Syria to help the IRGC-QF.

OFAC is also designating the commanders of the IRGCN’s five naval districts pursuant to E.O. 13224 for acting for or on behalf of the IRGC. The IRGC is responsible for the Regime’s destabilizing and provocative naval actions in and around the Strait of Hormuz.
IRGCN commanders of five naval districts designated today are:

IRGCN 1st Naval District Commander Abbas Gholamshahi
IRGCN 2nd Naval District Commander Ramezan Zirahi
IRGCN 3rd Naval District Commander Yadollah Badin
IRGCN 4th Naval District Commander Mansur Ravankar
IRGCN 5th Naval District Commander Ali Ozma’i

The IRGC was designated pursuant to E.O. 13224 by OFAC on October 13, 2017 and it was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the Secretary of State on April 15, 2019.

Sanctions Implications

As a result of today’s action, all property and interests in property of these individuals that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons must be blocked and reported to OFAC. OFAC’s regulations generally prohibit all dealings by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of blocked or designated persons.

In addition, persons that engage in certain transactions with the persons designated today may themselves be exposed to designation. Furthermore, any foreign financial institution that knowingly facilitates a significant transaction or provides significant financial services for any of the individuals designated today could be subject to U.S. correspondent account or payable-through sanctions.

Time to Start a Recall Process for California

Posted on June 11, 2019June 11, 2019 by Denise Simon

Recalling a governor has been done before (Gray Davis) in California for reasons not nearly as serious as those under the present Governor Gavin Newsom. Procedures are here.

Let’s take a look shall we?

He pardoned several felons just last month including that committed grand theft, solicited a murder for hire operation in a street gang network and even forgery.

There is a growing homeless problem that is so far out of control, the Center for Disease Control should declare several cities/counties a threat to public safety for disease control and prevention. In fact, the CDC spends more than $3 million out of their California office and most of that is earmarked for Los Angeles.

Remember that boondoggle of a high speed rail system? Well the Federal government kicked in $2.5 billion and canceled a balance of $930 million since Newsom for the most part terminated the rail construction. There is some chatter about restarting the high speed rail construction where the cost would blow up to $77 billion. But hold on….there is more about this. California owes landowners under eminent domain. Seems many of those landowners moved away for nothing, literally nothing. Businesses too wonder about their financial sacrifice. Others could not sell their real estate that was not part of the rail system or eminent domain but was too near the proposed rail project, the land was essentially declared worthless.

John Diepersloot squinted under a bright Central Valley sun, pointing to the damage to his fruit orchard that came with the California bullet train.

He lost 70 acres of prime land. Rail contractors left mounds of rubble along his neat rows. Irrigation hoses are askew. A sophisticated canopy system for a kiwi field, supported by massive steel cables, was torn down.

But what really irritates Diepersloot is the $250,000 that he paid out of his own pocket for relocating wells, removing trees, building a road and other expenses.

“I am out a quarter-million bucks on infrastructure, and they haven’t paid a dime for a year,” he said. “I don’t have that kind of money.” Read more of the sad/pathetic stories here.

Now Governor Newsom has declared undocumented immigrants will get state paid healthcare. The state has already financial obligations it has not paid and must to make things right for her citizens before he can go spend $98 million. Where did that number even come from in the first place? Oh, another detail is a fine on people who don’t buy healthcare insurance, known as the individual mandate. He included in this budget (state budget is $214 billion) an additional $450 million over 3 years to fund insurance subsidies. Don’t forget that water tax too, it is still on the table while the state power companies are toggling power to users to save dollars. Sounds like a third world country more every day. Can the state even fund the $7.8 billion in the state employee pension fund? Oh, all diapers and menstrual products are tax exempt, there is rental assistance and a major housing shortage. Swell eh? photo

Don’t think this is just a California problem, rather it is a national problem. Remember federal dollars go to the state for all kinds of reasons, least of which is for the sanctuary status. People and disease can travel freely anywhere in the country.

It is prudent to review the members of the state legislature, the attorney generals office in Sacramento and the governor’s mansion and consider a real movement to encourage Californians to recall almost all of the state officials for the protection of national public safety and to stop the fleecing of all taxpayers.

Now it is Human Smuggling VS. Immigration

Posted on June 11, 2019June 11, 2019 by Denise Simon

Let’s start calling it for what it is and it is profitable to epic levels. We cannot overlook that the Syrian refugees were also smuggled, so there is no longer much separating the United States from Europe in this human crisis and yet Congress is not acting.

Don Bartletti shares some of his most memorable images ...

Senator Lindsey Graham at least introduced a bill to address the asylum issue but is there Democrat on the House side that has visited the border or introduced anything? silence….

Arrests at the southwest border increased for the fourth straight month in May as authorities continued to grapple with an unprecedented influx of migrants from Central America. 132,887 people were arrested between ports of entry last month, up from 99,304 migrants in April, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection released Wednesday.

The cartels have shifted their business model to include smuggling and it has an annual value in the BILLIONS. (hat tip to Rand Corporation)

Unlawful migrants from Central America apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border each year often hire smugglers for assistance or pay others for rights of way at some point during their journey north. Policymakers face concerns that a substantial share of migrants’ expenditures on smuggling services could be flowing to transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), entities that represent a potential threat to homeland security.

In response to these concerns, the authors of this report conducted a scoping study to develop a preliminary estimate of TCOs’ revenues from smuggling migrants from the Northern Triangle region of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) to the United States and to characterize the TCOs’ structure, operations, and financing. They conducted interviews with subject-matter experts, a review of literature, and an analysis of governmental and nongovernmental data on migration and human smuggling and found that human smuggling involves many different types of actors and that most TCOs’ activities and revenues cannot be separated credibly from those of ad hoc groups, independent operators, and others who engage in human smuggling. They developed a preliminary estimate of revenues from human smuggling flowing to all types of smugglers, not just TCOs — ranging from about $200 million to $2.3 billion in 2017 — with uncertainty stemming largely from analytical challenges related to data limitations and time constraints. Separately, they also produced a preliminary estimate of the taxes, or pisos, that migrants pay to drug-trafficking TCOs to pass through their territories, ranging from about $30 million to $180 million.

Key Findings

Characteristics of actors that engage in human smuggling

Actors that engage in human smuggling range from independent operators, to ad hoc groups, to loose networks, to more-formally structured networks, such as TCOs.

Many of these actors are subcontractors that offer their services to different networks or groups or other independent operators at the same time.

Many of the actors engaged in human smuggling do not appear to meet the statutory definition of a TCO.

Relationship between human smuggling and drug trafficking

There is little evidence that drug-trafficking TCOs engage directly in human smuggling, but they maintain control of primary smuggling corridors into the United States and charge migrants a “tax,” known as a piso, to pass through their territories.

Drug-trafficking TCOs might also coordinate unlawful migrants’ border crossings to divert attention from other illicit activities and recruit or coerce migrants to carry drugs.

Preliminary findings on revenue estimation

Estimating revenues from human smuggling requires data on (1) the number of unlawful migrants, (2) the percentage hiring smugglers, and (3) typical payments. A lack of reliable information on each point contributes to uncertainty in revenue estimates.

The authors’ preliminary estimate of revenues to all types of smugglers from smuggling migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, combined, ranged from a total of about $200 million to a total of about $2.3 billion in 2017.

The authors’ preliminary estimate of taxes paid to drug-trafficking TCOs by migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador who passed through those TCOs’ territories ranged from $30 million to $180 million in 2017.

Recommendations

Target vulnerabilities of human smugglers. For example, consider expanding existing efforts to investigate payments made to human smugglers, especially in the United States, and working more closely with formal and informal banking services to identify suspicious payments. Also, consider expanding current efforts to work with foreign law enforcement partners to disrupt smuggling operations.

Use information about the value of the smuggling market to inform decisions about efforts to allocate resources to market disruption.

Consider standardizing and expanding the range of questions that border officials ask migrants during interviews to seek more consistent and detailed information from migrants about different types of smugglers, routes, and payments.

Use shared portal for data entry that can screen for errors and use a randomized survey process to reduce the administrative burden of data collection on frontline personnel and increase the likelihood of successful data entry.

Fraud/Theft on Govt Contractor for Puerto Rico Hurricane

Posted on June 3, 2019June 3, 2019 by Denise Simon

Not only do individuals not do the research and proper vetting of people and information, but when the Federal government is guilty, things are really bad. The Federal government has people, technology and the resources to ‘get it right’ when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars but again, we get fleeced.

So we have this cockamamie contractor that in the end was just not real and no one up or down the system to figure that out. So, 475,000 tarps that were to be delivered to Puerto Rico, never happened but the money…well that is gone too. Yikes.

Puerto Rico: Where Americans live without roofs - CNN

Just for fun, read the contract here.

Now for the story that began burning in 2017 and continues.

The owners of the Textile Corporation of America promised the government that they could deliver 1,000 new jobs to residents of Pikeville, Tennessee, and millions of dollars of supplies to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. And federal and state leaders lined up to support them, helping them secure millions of dollars in contracts and grants.

But two years later, the company is the subject of a federal criminal investigation alleging that its executives bilked taxpayers out of those millions.

According to affidavits filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a federal court in Tennessee in October and February, the Textile Corporation of America (TCA) fabricated evidence of work performed at a Pikeville, Tennessee, textile plant in order to draw grants from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)—a federally owned corporation—and the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development.

The FBI alleges that the company’s owners pocketed much of that money for personal use.

But more than a million dollars of the grant money, investigators say, went towards the purchase of tarps to fulfill a $30 million Federal Emergency Management Agency hurricane relief contract. The TCA sister company to which FEMA awarded that contract, Master Group USA (MGUSA), used more fraudulent paperwork, including fabricated copies of invoices and wire transfers, to conceal the fact that it was purchasing those tarps from China, in violation of federal sourcing laws, the FBI alleges. FEMA awarded MGUSA nearly $4 million before canceling the contract, after the tarps failed to meet quality requirements.

Some information about the scheme has trickled into public view over the past year. But the existence of a federal criminal investigation into TCA and MGUSA, and the full extent of their alleged fraud, as spelled out in a pair of FBI affidavits, has not been previously reported. Those affidavits, filed in November and February, sought the seizure of millions of dollars from the companies’ Pakistani-American owners, brothers Karim and Rahim Sadruddin, and search warrants for their email accounts and those of a number of family members allegedly involved in the scheme.

No criminal charges have yet been filed, and the Justice Department declined to comment. But the allegations against the Sadruddin brothers go beyond a typical case of procurement fraud, given the roster of high-profile politicians who lent their support to their companies over the past two years.

The Sadruddin brothers, and the family members allegedly party to the scheme, did not respond to requests for comment on the investigation. Nor did Troy King, the former attorney general of Alabama and TCA’s chief counsel.

King was one of a number of high-profile public figures who lined up to support TCA’s plans to buy, renovate, and revitalize the Pikeville textile plant. At an unveiling ceremony in July 2017, King, flanked by then-Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam (R) and an aide to Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN), said the project “represents the renaissance of America, the return of America as a global manufacturing center.”

“This is a great story,” DesJarlais said of the project. “A local entrepreneur made an investment in his community.”

“Textile Corporation of America’s commitment to create 1,000 jobs in Bledsoe County, a Tier 4 Distressed county, will have an incredible impact on the community and surrounding area,” promised Haslam. “We appreciate the company’s investment in our state and look forward to building a lasting partnership in the future.”

As of early this year, no work had been done at the site, and its gates had been padlocked.

A month before the ribbon-cutting ceremony, TCA received a $3 million “fast track” development grant from the state, $850,000 of which was to go towards purchasing the Pikeville facility, with the rest earmarked for redeveloping it. The company brought on a local contractor, Cagle Development, to assist with the project.

The structure of the grant stipulated that TCA would finance its own work at the site, then submit paperwork to a local development agency, which was charged with administering the grant funds. The agency would then use those funds to reimburse TCA for work performed.

In October 2017, TCA submitted its first tranche of paperwork for reimbursement: a $1.4 million invoice for work performed by Cagle on the site and records of a wire transfer from TCA’s bank account to Cagle’s. “

Ed Cagle, the contractor’s owner, recalled seeing a copy of the invoice in the company’s records and immediately recognizing that it was fraudulent. “He made up the invoice and put Cagle Development up top,” Cagle told The Daily Beast in an interview on Friday.

Cagle immediately called up the Pikeville mayor, who was one of TCA’s biggest boosters at the time and whom Cagle knew personally. “I never did receive this money,” Cagle told him. “I don’t know why somebody fabricated this but this is not me.”

Cagle would eventually tip off federal and state authorities to the apparent fabrication as well. “The FBI got involved, they came in and checked all my records,” he recalled. “They saw that I never did get the money,”

The FBI checked bank records as well and concluded that “the wire transfer record submitted by Karim Sadruddin to obtain a reimbursement… is, in fact, fraudulent.”

By the time authorities realized that TCA had already received reimbursement checks for both that $1.4 million and another $850,000 for the purchase of the Pikeville facility. In November 2017, Karim Sadruddin drove from his home in Atlanta to Pikeville, picked up the checks, and deposited them in a bank account with a prior balance of just $500.

Later that month, he submitted another invoice—also fraudulent, according to the FBI—for work ostensibly performed by Cagle and financed by TCA. In January, the company received a check for $728,000, every last penny available under the Pikeville grant.

Around the same time, the Sadruddins began hitting up the TVA for money as well. TCA had received a $230,000 performance grant from the federally owned company, and in January 2018, Rahim Sadruddin sent an email to the agency falsely claiming that the Pikeville facility was “in operation from this week onwards,” and that he wanted “to get in touch with you regarding the grant funds.”

In June, the Sadruddins officially certified that the Pikeville plant had been up and running for months. They secured the $230,000 in TVA grant money as a result.

In fact, according to the FBI, “the Pikeville facility was not commercially operational as a textile manufacturing plant. No textiles were being produced.” Instead, the affidavits allege, they were simply using the Pikeville facility as a warehouse to store tarps purchased to supply their sister company MGUSA’s $30.8 million FEMA contract, under which the company agreed to provide 475,000 tarps to areas hit by hurricanes in 2017, chiefly in Puerto Rico.

The Sadruddins had already begun transferring TCA’s grant money to MGUSA in order to purchase those tarps, according to the FBI. FEMA awarded the contract in November 2017, as TCA was drawing down its Pikeville grants. The FBI estimates that more than $1 million of TCA’s grant funds, or more than a third of the total, eventually went towards the purchase of tarps under the FEMA contract.

Soon after the contract was awarded, a FEMA representative reached out to MGUSA to verify that the tarps being provided complied with the Trade Agreements Act, which contains restrictions on countries of origin for such purchases. MGUSA documentation showed the tarps were being shipped from China, a nation barred by those sourcing restrictions.

To allay FEMA’s concerns, MGUSA provided copies of purchase orders and wire transfers designed to show that the tarps were purchased from a company in Taiwan and simply shipped through China to minimize transit costs. Those documents, the FBI alleges, were also fraudulent.

The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, which conducted its own investigation into the FEMA contract, determined that the Taiwanese company listed on those purchase orders didn’t actually exist. The IG also determined that the wire transfer records submitted to the agency were fraudulent.

The tarps were, in fact, coming from China. FBI investigators determined that the Sadruddins even visited the Chinese facility where they were being produced. Investigators interviewed that supplier, who told them that, “Karim wanted the tarps to be from a TAA compliant country, but the supplier explained to Karim that a factory in China was the only source which could produce the tarps in the needed time period, and after a couple of days, Karim Sadruddin agreed to take the tarps from China.”

MGUSA eventually provided more than 58,000 tarps under the contract, for which the company was paid more than $3.7 million, before FEMA suspended the work, citing concerns about the quality of the goods provided, and their Chinese sourcing. It’s not clear how many actually made it to Puerto Rico.

As it pursues a criminal investigation against the Sadruddins, the FBI has also sought to recoup the millions of dollars they say were illegally extracted by their two companies. But the frequent transfers of money between various bank accounts owned by the Sadruddin brothers and the family has apparently made recouping that money difficult.

The FBI attempted to seize more than $815,000, for instance, from a bank account in the name of Rahim Sadruddin’s wife, Fatima. But according to court filings, the bank could only locate about $130,000 of those funds.

For the residents of Pikeville, the cost of the Sadruddins’ alleged fraud can’t be measured just in dollar terms.

“What really upset me was offering people over there 1,000 jobs,” said Cagle of TCA’s textile project. “These people really put a lot of hope into that. So to see somebody come in and steal all their grant money, and them living like kings, that’s what bothers me the most.”

Cagle sighed. “I wish I’d never met them.”