Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

Paid Cash for Real Estate or via LLC, Read on…

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Note, there are other cities where real estate money laundering occurs with frequency. They include San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Las Vegas, Chicago and Atlanta.

There are guidelines for real estate professionals, click here.

Money laundering also occurs in commercial real estate, click here.

The official 21 page document on real estate money laundering is here.

Click here to see an actual case that involved a Russian.

U.S. targets money laundering in all-cash home sales in Miami, Manhattan

Reuters: The United States is hunting down international criminals who launder money through real estate deals, with the Treasury Department ordering title insurance companies to report the identities of people paying cash for high-end properties in Miami and Manhattan.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, an arm of the U.S. Treasury, said on Wednesday it is concerned that individuals buy residential real estate in cash through shell companies to hide their assets and veil their identities.

“We are seeking to understand the risk that corrupt foreign officials, or transnational criminals, may be using premium U.S. real estate to secretly invest millions in dirty money,” FinCEN Director Jennifer Shasky Calvery said in a statement.

FinCEN has issued rules aimed at preventing laundering through the mortgage market, but “cash purchases present a more complex gap that we seek to address,” Calvery added.

Title insurers will have to disclose buyer identities in deals of at least $1 million in Miami and at least $3 million for Manhattan, the Miami Herald reported. FinCEN did not answer Reuters’ requests for details.

Research conducted by the Homeland Security officials suggests that the majority of real estate purchases of at least $1 million in Florida’s Miami-Dade and Broward counties are made through shell companies, said John Tobon, deputy special agent in charge at Homeland Security Investigations in Miami.

Money trails linked to drug trafficking, foreign corruption and other criminal activity often lead to luxury real estate properties, but when agents try to determine the true, or “beneficial” owners, they find only documents listing shell companies, many of which in turn are owned by other shell companies, Tobon said.

“It is a part of every single significant investigation that we have ongoing right now,” he added.

But the threshold for reporting cash purchases is so low in the two markets that it will include many mainstream buyers, said Terrence Oved, lawyer with Manhattan real estate and commercial litigation firm Oved & Oved LLP.

“You’re going to get a lot of small fish caught up in this net,” he said.

The temporary orders begin on March 1 and last 180 days, and Oved expects a surge in deals to be completed March. Buyers may turn to other major metropolitan markets such as Los Angeles, as well, he added.

In November 2015, the most recent month for which data is available, 17 percent of the 82,595 all-cash purchases of single family homes and condos went to buyers with an “LLC” in the name, according to the housing data company RealtyTrac, indicating they were purchased by companies. Altogether, a third of home purchases in the United States since 2011 were all-cash.

Meanwhile, there were about $104 billion in transactions involving foreign investors in the U.S. real estate market between April 2014 and March 2015. More than half the buyers in those deals were from China, Canada, India, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, and the majority of transactions involving overseas buyers were in cash, said Deborah Friedman, who works in the FBI’s money laundering intelligence unit, in September.

Those purchases were concentrated in Florida, Texas, Arizona and California, she said.

The Patriot Act of 2001 required the Treasury to either issue rules on anti-money laundering controls and reporting of suspicious activity by real estate professionals or grant an exemption. The exemption has been in place now for more than a decade.

POTUS in 2016, No Lame Duck, Cure Cancer?

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What about what Barack Obama said at the 2015 State of the Union? Fact checking:

#LastSOTU FACT CHECK: A Disastrous Foreign PolicyJanuary 12, 2016|Speaker Ryan Press Office

State of the Union: President Obama pushes for cancer cure

 CBS: |In his final State of the Union address, President Obama announced a new national effort to find a cure for cancer and put Vice President Joe Biden, who lost his son to the disease, “in charge of Mission Control.”

State of the Union 2016 ~ Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, my fellow Americans:

Tonight marks the eighth year I’ve come here to report on the State of the Union. And for this final one, I’m going to try to make it shorter. I know some of you are antsy to get back to Iowa.

I also understand that because it’s an election season, expectations for what we’ll achieve this year are low. Still, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the constructive approach you and the other leaders took at the end of last year to pass a budget and make tax cuts permanent for working families. So I hope we can work together this year on bipartisan priorities like criminal justice reform, and helping people who are battling prescription drug abuse. We just might surprise the cynics again.

But tonight, I want to go easy on the traditional list of proposals for the year ahead. Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty, from helping students learn to write computer code to personalizing medical treatments for patients. And I’ll keep pushing for progress on the work that still needs doing. Fixing a broken immigration system. Protecting our kids from gun violence. Equal pay for equal work, paid leave, raising the minimum wage. All these things still matter to hardworking families; they are still the right thing to do; and I will not let up until they get done.

Who attended as the First Lady, Michelle Obama’s guests? Click here to find out. The DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz instructed several in Congress to bring a Muslim along as a guest and they did. A few of them were associated with terrorism.

The we have retired Army Colonel Allen West as he wrote his summary on the SOTU.

Townhall:  My assessment is that Obama spoke much about nothing that is pertinent to where we find ourselves today in America. His defined policy objectives were criminal justice reform, heroin abuse, our immigration system (meaning amnesty for illegals), gun violence, equal pay, paid leave, and raising the minimum wage.

President Obama talked about giving everyone a “fair shot” at opportunity in a new economy. First of all, who defines what a “fair shot” is? It appears that this is just more coded language for government-guaranteed equality of outcomes. The “every kid gets a trophy mentality” is not what America is about. That ideology is what gave us Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act, and eventually, the financial crisis and meltdown. Government decided that it was their mandate to give a “fair shot” to everyone who wanted to buy a home, and it did not end well. Government works best when it creates the policies that advance individual sovereignty so individuals may pursue their own defined dreams, the pursuit of happiness. Anything else, as we have seen and as President Obama champions, is antithetical to who we are.

Somehow, President Obama failed to address the 40-year low workforce participation rate and the fact that more Americans have been dropped from the workforce under his “fair shot” policies. Obama said nothing about a national debt that threatens the future of America. The poverty and food stamp rolls have exploded in these past seven years. That is not the best of America. It is certainly not the best that we can do. We must grow this economy and we can do so, along with reforming government spending, and eliminating crony capitalism and corporate welfare.

Obama’s vision of the future is centered on an ideological agenda that puts in peril the hopes and aspirations of our children and grandchildren. They will have less economic freedom and certainly less liberty if the Islamic terrorists prevail.

I have additional concerns from President Obama’s final SOTU address. First of all, if our military was so very strong then why did we have 10 U.S. Navy Sailors detained by the Iranians because the engines on two riverine assault boats malfunctioned? That makes no real sense to me. Nor have we taken care of our Veterans. I wear a ring on my salute hand trigger finger to remind me about the 22 Veterans a day who are committing suicide in America. While we know there are problems in our VA system, no major reform has been made and many perpetrators of this heinous wrong still hold their positions.

Obama said nothing about the Taliban’s resurgence and their hold on more territory than any time since 2001. It was just last week that the Taliban had an American Special Forces team trapped in Helmand province, yet Obama cannot bring himself to refer to this as “combat.” Obama’s own former acting CIA Director Mike Morrell testified Tuesday during a House Armed Services Committee that ISIS affiliations have grown far more Al Qaeda’s and that they comprise a legitimate strategic threat to the world and our homeland. There was no mention of ISIS’ most recent attacks in Baghdad and Istanbul. Again, Obama just could not bring himself to say Islamic terrorists or jihadists. In Obama’s mind, they are just “killers and fanatics,” and shutting down GITMO will reduce their recruiting efforts. No, Mr. President, your fecklessness and exhibited weakness emboldens ISIS and their allies which are growing from Boko Haram in Nigeria to Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines. Obama asked for Congress to vote on an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) but first we need a strategic plan to defeat ISIS. He could have articulated that but chose more lofty rhetoric and lecturing instead.

Russia has expanded and is in Crimea, Ukraine and Syria. China is building manmade islands by destroying reef systems and landing planes on these islands. Where are the environmentalists? China is also about to open up its first military base in Africa in Djibouti, as we have announced we are departing. The Iranian nuclear deal is a failure and has only served to empower and fund the number one state sponsor of Islamic terrorism. Iran is now exploiting their new-found strength and becoming a regional hegemony. Hence, the very open schism between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

President Obama talks about “protecting the American people” yet we had the biggest Islamic terrorist attack since 9-11 on his watch, San Bernardino. Before that it was Ft. Hood. And in the U.S., the enemy attacks our men and women in uniform with impunity, such as at the Naval Reserve Support Facility in Chattanooga. In the last week, we have arrested former refugee ISIS supporters in Sacramento and Houston. And who can forget the video of the horrific attempt to assassinate Philadelphia Police Officer Hartnett by an admitted Islamic jihadist. The American people are kind and willing to open up our arms to embrace those fleeing persecution, such as the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Coptics, and Yazidis, but those were not mentioned by President Obama. What the American people will not allow is what is happening in Germany and the rest of Europe. We will not allow a war on our women, as we are seeing there due to a clash of civilizational values, principles, and morals.

I can only wish that President Obama saw the enemy for who it is, and not the ideologically driven “threat” of climate change. Please read his entire response here.

RapeFugee Operation Coordinated on Social Media

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It is a game and it has a name: ‘Taharrush gamea’

German Justice Minister: Cologne attacks planned in advance

Minister of Justice Heiko Maas has said he believes the sexual assaults in Cologne were ‘coordinated and prepared’ ahead of time. He also accused xenophobic groups of using the crimes to stir up hatred.

DW: Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas was the latest high-profile politician to speak out about the string of sexual assaults in Cologne on Sunday. In an interview with the popular “Bild am Sonntag” newspaper, Maas voiced his suspicions that the crimes which have the whole country reeling were not the result of an opportunistic mob mentality but a thought-out, planned attack on the city’s women.

“No one can tell me that it wasn’t coordinated and prepared,” the minister said. “My suspicion is that this specific date was picked, and a certain number of people expected. This would again add another dimension [to the crimes].”

The newspaper provided details from official police reports citing the use of social networks by some north African migrant communities to encourage their fellows to join them in the square between the Cologne train station and the cathedral, where the now hundreds of incidents of molestation and pick-pocketing took place.

Maas was careful to echo his colleagues, however, when it came to warning the public against placing blame on the country’s immigrants, saying “to assume from somebody’s origin whether or not they are delinquent is quite reckless.” The minister added that it is “complete nonsense” to take these crimes as evidence that foreigners cannot be integrated into German society.

Maas lashes out at PEGIDA, AfD

In the interview, Maas also accused the far-right populists of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, along with the organizers of the xenophobic PEGIDA marches, of using Cologne for propaganda purposes.

“There is the only way they can explain how shamelessly they operate their sweeping campaign against foreigners,” Maas said, referring to Saturday’s PEGIDA demonstration at the Cologne train station, which was itself met with a flashmob of counter-protesters condemning racism and sexism.

All that being said, Maas added that “cultural background justifies or excuses nothing. There is no acceptable explanation [for the assaults]. For us, men and women have equal rights in all matters. Everyone who lives here must accept that.”

In the coming days, Maas’ Social Democrats (SPD) are expected to join coalition partners, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s (CDU) in presenting new laws to the Bundestag that would expedite the deportation of asylum seekers and migrants who commit crimes . The administration has received a hefty amount of criticism for ill-preparedness when dealing with the open-door policy it has adopted towards Europe’s migrant crisis.

Istanbul Suicide Bomber Entered Country as Syrian Refugee, Officials Say

Bomber identified as Nabil Fadli was fingerprinted, but information didn’t set off security alerts

WSJ: ISTANBUL—The Islamic State suicide bomber who killed 10 German tourists in the heart of Istanbul entered the country as a Syrian refugee without setting off security alerts, Turkish officials said Wednesday, highlighting concerns that extremists are using the migrant crisis to move around and carry out terrorist attacks.

Just to our North, comes 10,000 Syrian refugees in Canada.

Canada welcomes 10,000th Syrian refugee

Ottawa (AFP) – Canada has welcomed its 10,000th Syrian refugee, the government announced Wednesday, although almost two weeks behind schedule and far fewer than it had originally planned to resettle by now.

A planeload landed in Toronto late Tuesday, putting the number of arrivals of asylum seekers at 10,121 since November when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals took office.

In a statement, Immigration Minister John McCallum called it a “significant milestone” on the way to meeting the Liberal’s overall pledge to take in 25,000 Syrians.

“Many people have worked day and night to bring these refugees to Canada,” he said, “and Canadians have opened their communities and their hearts to welcome them.

“Canada continues to set an international example with its response to the worst refugee crisis of our time.”

Trudeau had promised during an election campaign last year to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees by December 31.

But after assuming power the target date was pushed to the end of February, following criticism that the government was moving too fast amid security concerns in the aftermath of deadly attacks in Paris, as well as due to logistical issues.

A new interim target of taking in 10,000 by December 31 was set, but only 6,000 Syrians travelling from camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey made it onto Canadian soil by year’s end.

The UN refugee agency estimates that more than four million Syrians have fled the civil war ravaging their country. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights puts the total number of dead at more than 260,000 people.

 

No Rules of Engagement Leads to U.S. Humiliation by IRGC

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Never fire unless fired upon, not even warning shots. It is alleged that 2 U.S. Navy ‘riverines’ had strayed into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf. Exactly how do 2 boats ‘drift’ when those waters are in fact well known to all U.S. naval vessels? Don’t believe the story…. The United States is humiliated by Iran and John Kerry says thank you. Additional statements from VP Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

In part from NYT’s: The waters in question are a frequent site of intelligence collection by the United States, Iran and many gulf countries. The American and Iranian Navies frequently encounter each other there.

The detention and release of the sailors comes at a particularly delicate moment in the tense American-Iranian relationship, just days before a nuclear deal is to be formally put in place, and under which the United States is to unfreeze about $100 billion in Iranian assets.

That step is to be made after international nuclear inspectors verify that Iran has shipped 98 percent of its nuclear fuel out of the country, has disabled and removed centrifuges, and has taken a large plutonium reactor permanently offline.

Riverines are valued at $3.0 million each and are fast boats complete with very advanced communications gear and guns including .50 cal weapons.

At 12:30 PM, EST, word came into the Pentagon that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which reports directly to the Iranian mullahs had arrested 10 U.S. sailors near Farsi Island, a small island of several in the Persian Gulf. Farsi island is exclusively an IRGC base and is surrounded by mines in the water and gunboats. Drifting is the excuse but hardly likely while there were other naval vessels in those exact waters. The ten sailors were 9 males and 1 female. The female sailor was forced to cover her head.

Negotiation began as soon as the Pentagon was notified and further contacted the State Department Secretary, John Kerry and the White House situation room. The official statement was Iran was cooperating and the sailors were being treated with mercy.

In part from FreeBeacon: Iran asserts the sailors were released after the United States apologized, prompting a flurry of denials from senior Obama administration officials.

Ali Fadavi, commander of the IRGC Navy, said that Tehran had missiles locked on the United States at the time of the incident.

“They were in sight of our missiles,” Fadavi said in Persian, according to a statement carried by the IRGC’s official news outlet. “If this had happened, it would have led to their annihilation.

“We had high preparedness with coast-to-sea missiles, rocket-firing fast boats, and various capabilities,” he said. “We prevented their additional irresponsible movement with the statements we broadcasted internationally. It was proven to them that the IRGC Navy has the first and final word.”

The U.S. cannot stand up to Iran, according to Fadavi.

It appears our sailors were stripped of all communications gear as were the boats as the IRGC said the USS Truman, a carrier strike group was not behaving so a hostile arrest was made. John Kerry groveled, likely pledged other promises, offered profound apologies. Humiliating.

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Much more perspective from Michael Rubin:

Iran seizing sailors and the rogue delusion

AEI: There’s a common delusion out there that when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fires off ballistic missiles or kidnaps sailors it’s either hardline elements trying to embarrass moderates, or rogue actors. It may be a comforting conceit to believe that any element of the Iranian government is on “our side” but evidence suggests that at best, the Islamic Republic is playing a game of good cop-bad cop, and that outrages such as taking American sailors hostage are welcome, not rogue actions.

A riverine command boat operates during a maritime air support operations center exercise in the Arabia Gulf in this June 12, 2012 handout photo, provided by the U.S. Navy, January 12, 2016. U.S. Navy/Handout via Reuters .

A riverine command boat operates during a maritime air support operations center exercise in the Arabia Gulf in this June 12, 2012 handout photo, provided by the U.S. Navy, January 12, 2016. U.S. Navy/Handout via Reuters .

Let’s put aside the fact that Article 110 of the Iranian constitution (backed by practice and the statue of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) makes the Supreme Leader the “supreme commander of the armed forces” with the power to appoint and dismiss the chief of the general staff, IRGC commanders, and the commanders of the army, navy, and air force. In other words, if Supreme Leader wanted to make heads roll in response to such provocations, he could.

There’s a history here of Western diplomats excusing bad Iranian behavior out of a desire to exculpate “reformers” or to dismiss provocations as the action of rogues.

  • In 1989, for example, there was the Ghassemlou assassination, when Iranian officials — meeting an Iranian Kurdish leader and his aides to negotiate an end to strife between Iranian Kurds and the central government — ended up assassinating the Kurdish team at an apartment in downtown Vienna.
  • Then, in 1992, after the German foreign minister announced a policy to re-integrate Iran into the global community and increase trade, the Iranian government responded by assassinating another Kurdish delegation at a restaurant in Berlin.
  • In 1994, an Iranian terrorist team blew up the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.
  • Beginning in 2003, the IRGC (despite the promises of then UN ambassador and now Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif) began infiltrating Iraq and equipping militias to murder American soldiers.

In each case, Western diplomats sought to deny Iranian government responsibility. What they did not realize until later was that in each case, the gunman or chief planner ended up with a promotion. Mohammad Jaafari Sahraroudi, for example, the man behind Abdol-Rahman Ghassemlou’s murder, subsequently became a brigadier-general in the Qods Force and was placed in charge of its intelligence directorate. Ahmad Vahidi, the mastermind of the 1994 Buenos Aires bombing, became President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s defense minister. Hassan Kazemi Qomi, a Qods Force operating serving as ‘ambassador’ to Iraq later won promotion to the Supreme Leader’s office, and Col. Amangah, the commander of the operation that seized the British sailors, later was decorated as soldier of the year. Promotions are hardly the punishment one would expect if the Iranian behavior really was not blessed, encouraged, and supported from the very top.

It’s time to stop deluding ourselves, and to judge Iran by what its actions are rather than what we would wish them to be.

 

ODNI Chief Clapper, Hacked Again

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Teen Who Hacked CIA Email Is Back to Prank US Spy Chief

Motherboard: One of the “teenage hackers” who broke into the CIA director’s AOL email account last year hasn’t given up targeting government intelligence officials. His latest victim is the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Motherboard has learned.

A group of hackers calling themselves “Crackas With Attitude” or CWA made headlines in October, hacking into CIA Director John Brennan’s email account and apparently getting access to several online tools and portals used by US law enforcement agencies.The hackers’ exploits prompted the FBI to issue an alert warning government officials of their attacks.

One of the group’s hackers, who’s known as “Cracka,” contacted me on Monday, claiming to have broken into a series of accounts connected to Clapper, including his home telephone and internet, his personal email, and his wife’s Yahoo email. While in control of Clapper’s Verizon FiOS account, Cracka claimed to have changed the settings so that every call to his house number would get forwarded to the Free Palestine Movement. When they gained notoriety last year, Cracka and CWA claimed their actions were all in support of the Palestine cause.

“I’m pretty sure they don’t even know they’ve been hacked,” Cracka told me in an online chat.

But Brian Hale, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, confirmed the hack to Motherboard on Tuesday.

“We’re aware of the matter and we reported it to the appropriate authorities,” Hale said, declining to answer any other questions on the record. (The FBI declined to comment.)

Cracka, or whoever is pretending to be him, taunted authorities on Twitter (the hacker used a new Twitter account, not the same one he used at the time of the Brennan hack. But the hacker also is in control of a chat app account who’s been using to communicate with me since last October).
Cracka provided me with what he claimed to be Clapper’s home number. When I called it on Monday evening, I got an answer from Paul Larudee, the co-founder of the Free Palestine Movement. Larudee told me that he had been getting calls for Clapper for the last hour, after an anonymous caller told him that he had set Clapper’s number to forward calls to him. Larudee said that one of the callers said he was sitting in Clapper’s house next to his wife.

According to public records, the phone number does belong to James Clapper’s household. Cracka also provided another number, a cellphone, which he said belonged to either Clapper or Clapper’s wife, Susan. When I called, a woman picked up and I asked if this was Susan Clapper. The woman responded that Susan wasn’t there, but that she’d tell her to call me back. But nobody ever did.

Cracka also claimed to have gotten into Susan’s Yahoo email account, as well as Clapper’s email account. He provided a series of screenshots to prove he had control of their Verizon FiOS account, as well as Susan’s Yahoo account. Motherboard couldn’t independently verify the authenticity of the screenshots.

The hacker also sent me a list of call logs to Clapper’s home number. In the log, there was a number listed as belonging to Vonna Heaton, an executive at Ball Aerospace and a former senior executive at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. When I called that number, the woman who picked up identified as Vonna Heaton. When I told her who I was, she declined to answer any questions.

“A journalist? Oh my gosh” she said, laughing uncomfortably. “I have somebody on the line, I’m sorry, I have no insight into that. But that’s really unfortunate, have a great day.”

“I just wanted the gov to know people aren’t fucking around, people know what they’re doing and people don’t agree #FreePalestine.”
Michael Adams, an information security expert who served more than two decades in the US Special Operations Command, said that this looks “more of a social engineering hack than a real hack,” but also added that “every serious hack starts with social engineering.”

Adams also said that it’s “insane” that Clapper doesn’t do more to hide his home address and phone number (both can be found with a Google search).

“If I’m the Director of National Intelligence of the United States of America nobody is going to know where the fuck I live, nobody is going to have my goddamn phone number or address,” Adams told me in a phone interview.

On Tuesday, Cracka asked me not to name him in the article, saying he “doesn’t like the attention.”

“You Asked why I did it,” he added. “I just wanted the gov to know people aren’t fucking around, people know what they’re doing and people don’t agree #FreePalestine.”