Trump and the Russian Mafia, Splain’n to do

Posted on December 4, 2015December 4, 2015 by Denise Simon

Trump cant claim ignorance on this one.

Trump SoHo

At 45 stories, the Trump SoHo stands as the tallest building in SoHo, and one of the tallest in Manhattan. A five-star luxury condominium and hotel project between The Trump Organization and The Bayrock Group, the Trump SoHo exudes luxury at every turn.

Trump picked stock fraud felon as senior adviser

WASHINGTON (AP)— Donald Trump tapped a man to be a senior business adviser to his real-estate empire even after the man’s past involvement in a major Mafia-linked stock fraud scheme had become publicly known, according to Associated Press interviews and a review of court records.

Portions of Trump’s relationship with Felix Sater, a convicted felon and government informant, have been previously known. Trump worked with the company where Sater was an executive, Bayrock Group LLC, after it rented office space from the Trump Organization as early as 2003. Sater’s criminal history was effectively unknown to the public at the time, because a judge kept the relevant court records secret and Sater altered his name. When Sater’s criminal past and Mafia links came to light in 2007, Trump distanced himself from Sater.

But less than three years later, Trump renewed his ties with Sater. Sater presented business cards describing himself as a senior adviser to Donald Trump, and he had an office on the same floor as Trump’s own office in New York’s Trump Tower, The Associated Press learned through interviews and court records.

Deeper dive from the Courthouse News:

MANHATTAN (CN) – The Bayrock Group and Nixon Peabody are among 35 defendants sued for $1 billion, whom 13 plaintiffs, including estates of Holocaust survivors, accuse of “the illegal concealment of Felix Sater’s 1998 $40 million federal racketeering conviction, and subsequent 2009 sentencing.”
The summons and notice in New York County Supreme Court contains few details. Three of the six pages of the document are taken up with names of the parties, their attorneys, and the charges.
The Miami Herald reported last year that the CIA helped Sater conceal his conviction for securities fraud while using him to track down Stinger missiles for sale in his native Russia. This was “a decade before he launched the celebrated Fort Lauderdale Trump Tower,” the Herald reported in a Sept. 8, 2012 article.
But the Trump Tower failed, and “a legal battle has ensued between burned investors trying to reveal Sater’s background and federal agents who say national security is at stake,” the Herald reported.
Prosecutors in that case asked to keep Sater’s record sealed, in the national interest.
Sater was fined $25,000 for his original $40 million stock swindle, did no jail time and was not ordered to pay anything in restitution, according to the Herald.
In the new summons and notice in New York, a string of investors want to hold Sater and his attorneys and businesses responsible. The document does not mention the alleged CIA connection.
It states: “Plaintiffs seek relief against those directly and vicariously responsible for the perpetration of perhaps a billion dollars or more of fraud based on the illegal concealment of Felix Sater’s 1998 $40 million federal racketeering conviction, and subsequent 2009 sentencing, as well as related and other unrelated relief, and declaratory relief against those persons, primarily financial institution, insofar as to affix by liquidating judgment thereof such liability is owed to them.
“‘Bayrock,’ as used herein, refers to that certain association of juridical entities including, for example and without limitation, Bayrock Group LLC, Bayrock Camelback LLC, Bayrock Whitestone LLC, Bayrock Spring Street LLC, and Bayrock Merrimac LLC, in the last ten years variously engaged in the businesses of financial institution fraud, tax fraud, partnership fraud, insurance fraud, litigation fraud, bankruptcy fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, human trafficking, child prostitution, statutory rape, and, on occasion, real estate.
“One of the overarching, dominant themes of those Bayrock lines of business has been the fraudulent concealment of the substantial degree to which it was owned directly or equitably by Felix Sater, who was represented at various times at least during the period 2002 to 2008 to be its Chief Operating Officer and at times as its Managing Director.
“Another overarching, dominant theme of Bayrock’s lines has been the fraudulent concealment of Felix Sater’s conviction for racketeering, to which he secretly pled guilty in 1998, admitting to participating in the operation of a pump-and-dump stock fraud, along with members of Russian and Mafia organized crime, which defrauded investors, many of them senior citizens, including Holocaust survivors, of at a minimum $40,000,000, now in today’s dollars some $150,000,000 of stolen wealth as measured by the ‘well managed account’ theory.
“The Estates of Ernest and Judit Gottdiener; Ervin Tausky, a natural person, and Suan Investments, a Gottdiener family holding company, are some of those victims, survivors of the Nazi extermination of the Jews of Hungary and federally protected crime victims of Mr. Sater’s racketeering, as such his creditors. They were defrauded of their rights to restitution and, because the government illegally concealed Sater’s entire case, their rights to sue him. The Gottdieners claim damages for the fraud on them against everyone responsible for the 15-year delay and deprivation of their civil rights.
“Insofar as Sater used Bayrock as a personal piggybank to skim millions upon millions of its assets and hide them out of the reach (for now) of these and all the other hundreds if not thousands of victims to whom he now is liable over $500,000,000 in RICO damages, and would not have been able to do so without the facilitation of his concealment frauds by others, the Gottdieners sue all those for the damage they caused.
“Among those are corrupt attorneys who used fraudulent and sham court processes to hide Sater and his frauds for their own gain, as many of them did so with the specific intent, inter alia, of raking in fees from him, essentially taking the Gottdiener’s and all the others’ money for themselves by keeping it out of the hands of the victims, where it should have gone; they are sued, inter alia, for vicarious liability of all damages caused and for forfeiture of all such fees. …
“Finally, as Sater admitted at his sentencing he knew no banks would lend to Bayrock if they knew about his concealed conviction, a judicial estoppel and admission against penal interest, lenders and investors who were fraudulently induced to provide $1,000,000,000 or so to Bayrock by this concealment ought to get their money back, so they are sued in declaratory judgment to fix the liability of Bayrock and all those liable to them through Bayrock to them.
“All defendants except as noted are sued for all liability, that is, for example only, Kelly Moore, who stood in Sater’s sentencing as his attorney knowing it was illegally hidden, hearing him admit that he had been using that illegal concealment to perpetrate bank fraud, and without privilege to do so committed fraud and other actionable wrongs in maintaining sham litigation to stop those who learned of this from revealing it for years, thus knowingly facilitating the cover-ups, shall expect to have plenary liability asserted against her by every Plaintiff in every theory for every cause in the scope of the overarching conspiracy. It is the express intent of Plaintiffs to assert all liability to the fullest scope of the state law vicarious liability equivalent of civil federal Pinkerton liability against everyone participating in any identifiable and well-pled conspiracy. Those who thought nothing of helping Sater and his co-conspirators defraud, the littlest senior citizens and Holocaust survivors or the biggest banks and lenders, who thought nothing of helping him and others steal those victims’ money, must be made to pay with their own.”
Here are the defendants: Bayrock Group LLC; Tevrik Arif; Julius Schwarz; Felix Satter; Brian Halberg; Salvatore Lauria; Alex Salomon; Jerry Weinrich; Salomon & Co. PC; Akerman Senterfitt LLP; Martin Domb; Craig Brown; Duval & Stachenfeld LLP; Bruce Stachenfeld; David Granin; Nixon Peabody LLP; Adam Gilbert; Roberts & Holland LLP; Elliot Pisem; Michael Samuel; Mel Dogan; Bayrock Spring Street LLC; Does; Bayrock Whitestone LLC; Bayrock Camelback LLC; Bayrock Merrimac LLC; Bayrock Group Inc.; Tamir Sapir; Alex Sapir; Does; Walter Saurack; Satterlee Stephens Burke & Burke LLP; Kelly Moore; Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP; Nader Mobargha; Michael Beys; Beys Stein & Mobargha LLP; and Todd Kaminsky.Here are the plaintiffs: J Kriss; Michael Ejekam; Bayrock Merrimac LLC; Bayrock Group LLC; Bayrock Spring Street LLC; Bayrock Whitestone LLC; Bayrock Spring Street LLC; Bayrock Whitestone LLC; Bayrock Camelback LLC; E/O Ernest; E/Ojudit Gottdiener; Ervin Tausky; Suan Investments.

Rahm Takes Family to Cuba for Vacation, Huh?

Posted on December 2, 2015December 2, 2015 by Denise Simon

Emanuel Snaps at Politico Reporter for Revealing His Plans to Vacation in Cuba

In part WSJ: Should he call it a vacation? Lawyers said it was ok, so long as Mr. Emanuel and his family fall under one of the 12 categories.

“There are people who go on an archaeological dig on vacation, or harvest wine or go take classes,” said Augosto Maxwell, head of the Cuba practice at Miami-based law firm Akerman. “I don’t think it’s inappropriate at all to call it a vacation.”

A likely way for the Emanuels to travel to Cuba would be through a people-to-people exchange. They could travel with a group, or a travel company could arrange a private schedule for their family with activities that would fall under the “people-to-people” category.

People who travel to Cuba under the people-to-people category currently can’t go on their own and must go on organized trips with full schedules that usually include meetings, lectures, visits to small businesses, community projects, etc.

Before the regulations were loosened, Beyonce and Jay-Z took a much criticized trip to the island, but ultimately the Treasury Department determined their travel was legal as it was organized by a nonprofit with a license to organize “people-to-people” trips. Since the policy shift, organizations no longer need special licenses to organize such trips.

Other celebrities who have traveled to Cuba since the loosening of rules include Rihanna, Usher, Mick Jagger, Katy Perry, Paris Hilton and Naomi Campbell. The island has also received visits this year from three cabinet secretaries, three governors and scores of lawmakers. President Barack Obama hopes to travel to Cuba before leaving office.

Cuba needs cows and sugar, perhaps that is why Rahm Emanuel is really going there to represent some crony business opportunities. The black market thrives in Cuba, so Rahm should be quite familiar with that.

Meanwhile, we have normalized relations with Cuba, well kinda sorta. So who is part of that team to continue nurturing the relationship?

A lingering chapter of the Cold War closed in December 2014, when the United States announced it would re-establish full relations with Cuba. Leading the reconciliation were two White House aides, Ben Rhodes and Ricardo Zuniga, who spearheaded more than 70 hours of secret talks with Havana on previously intractable issues such as prisoner swaps and easing economic sanctions.

In 2015, the State Department’s Roberta Jacobson and the Cuban Foreign Ministry’s Josefina Vidal seized the diplomacy baton, meeting to hash out the détente’s nuts and bolts. They sometimes clashed (on both countries’ harboring of fugitives, for instance) and faced complex politics (for example, Fidel Castro’s public call for the relinquishing of U.S. control of Guantánamo Bay, which the United States isn’t prepared to accept). Yet they still laid the groundwork for a new era of cooperation: In July, the United States and Cuba reopened their respective embassies in Havana and Washington for the first time in a half-century.

Unaccompanied Immigrant Children Placed With Convicted Criminals

Posted on December 1, 2015December 1, 2015 by Denise Simon

FoxLatino: “Although the whistle-blower claims to have relayed these concerns to supervisors in August of 2015,” the senators wrote in a letter to the secretaries of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, whose departments are responsible for processing the youths, according to the Los Angeles Times, “apparently these individuals have no immediate plans to remove [unaccompanied minors] from their criminal sponsors, but are ‘discussing options.'”

In August reports emerged that federal authorities had placed a half a dozen teenage Guatemalan boys in the care of human traffickers in Ohio. The boys were forced to live trailers and work 12 hours a day at an egg farm, while having their paychecks confiscated and threatened with death if they sought help.

“Based on what I’ve learned to date, I am concerned that the child placement process failure that contributed to the Ohio trafficking case is part of a systemic problem rather than a one-off incident,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said. “We continue to demand answers from the administration with the goal of uncovering how this abuse occurred and reforming the system to protect all minors against human trafficking.”

Immigration News: Unaccompanied Immigrant Children Placed With Convicted Criminals, Says Whistleblower

TheLatinPost: Two Republican senators have questioned if the Obama administration placed unaccompanied immigrant children with convicted criminals.

Republicans Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and John Cornyn of Texas have asked U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson if “unaccompanied alien children” (UAC) were released to sponsors with criminal records. The senators said a whistleblower alerted the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Grassley chairs, and made the allegation.

“According to the whistleblower, data compiled on a subset of UAC sponsors demonstrated that at least 3,400 sponsors of 29,000 listed in a UAC database have later been determined to have criminal convictions including re-entry after deportation, DUI, burglary, distribution of narcotics, domestic violence, homicide, child molestation, and sexual assault. Several of these criminal sponsors are even associated with, or actively engaged in, the practice of sex trafficking and human smuggling,” wrote Cornyn and Grassley in a letter to the HHS and DHS secretaries.

As the senators noted in their letter, an apprehended immigrant child is first processed by DHS’ law enforcement, and then transferred to HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to conduct background checks with the DHS’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in hopes to find a sponsor. The “whistleblower” alleged the background checks were “not thoroughly performed and sponsors are not properly vetted or even fingerprinted.”

Grassley and Cornyn wrote several questions for the DHS and HHS secretaries to respond until Dec. 7. Questions include:

– Of the sponsors currently listed in the UAC portal (database), how many have criminal records?

– Are background checks conducted and fingerprints taken on all potential UAC sponsors? Please explain.

– If a sponsor’s criminal record is discovered after the sponsor has already accepted UACs, what processes or procedures do the agencies have to ensure the UACs are not left in the criminal sponsor’s care? Please explain.

– How many UAC sponsors have been convicted of child molestation? How many UAC sponsors have been convicted of homicide? How many UAC sponsors have been convicted of crimes of violence including sexual assault and domestic violence?

– Do background checks of UAC sponsors include running the sponsor’s name through the National Crime Information Center? If not, why not? Please provide a list of all databases and background checks that are queried for all UAC sponsors.

“It is not the practice of the Office of Refugee Resettlement to place unaccompanied children with sponsors who have serious criminal convictions,” ORR spokesman Mark Weber said in a statement. “The safety of the children is our primary concern and any allegation of even potential harm is taken seriously and will be investigated.”

Weber added that the ORR maintains a database for staffers to monitor sponsor’s names, addresses and assessments in addition to the number of time the sponsor requested a UAC.

According to the ORR, and based on info as of September, 27,520 unaccompanied minors have been released to sponsors during the 2015 fiscal year, which began in October 2014.

Seizing Chapo Guzman’s Assets or Not

Posted on November 30, 2015November 30, 2015 by Denise Simon

The highways in the United States belonged to El Chapo.

CatholicOnline: The cartel has such momentum trafficking heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana from Mexico to the United States, that despite El Chapo’s incarceration in a Mexican prison, the cartel continued all operations.

The DEA report shows the Sinaloa cartel “maintains the most significant presence in the United States,” adding, “Mexican TCOs pose the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States; no other group is currently positioned to challenge them.”

Mexico seizes El Chapo’s planes, cars, houses

MEXICO CITY — As the hunt for fugitive drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán intensifies, Mexican authorities recently announced they have confiscated 11 planes, eight vehicles and six houses belonging to the kingpin in the past five months.

That’s likely just a fraction of the assets Guzmán has accumulated during his life of crime. The Sinaloa Cartel he oversees traffics billions of dollars worth of narcotics to the United States every year, according to estimates from the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The yawning gap between the seizures and Guzmán’s potential riches underscores a growing concern here: Why the Mexican government can’t or won’t seize more of Guzman’s ill-gotten gains. The problem, critics say, is a lack of laws with teeth, and the motivation to change that.

“Mexico is a weak state that has yet to form a political will around the implementation of such laws,” said lawyer Edgardo Buscaglia, who has addressed the Mexican Senate on asset forfeitures.

One issue is a 2009 law that was meant to give authorities broader powers to seize drug cartel members’ assets. Instead, the law allows only the attorney general — as opposed to local prosecutors — to confiscate assets, meaning that federal authorities are overburdened and cases routinely slip through the net.

The overall result is far fewer successfully prosecuted cases against organized crime — a total of 43 in the past six years in Mexico, about the same number neighboring Guatemala achieves each year, according to a Mexican Senate report.

The law also requires property owners to be sentenced before authorities can take their assets, delaying seizures by months or even years. Many cases collapse.

“Attacking criminal groups financially by pursuing the properties and firms that provide them with financial and logistical support is an essential part of the fight against organized crime,” said Antonio Mazzitelli, Latin American representative of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. “In Mexico, they put a criminal in jail, and nothing happens.”

Since 2007, the Treasury Department has banned 95 Mexican companies and hundreds more individuals linked to El Chapo’s drug empire from operating in the United States. All continue to operate freely in Mexico, however.

Last year, an American grand jury indicted Ignacio Muñoz Orozco, the owner of a Mexican clothing chain, on money laundering charges related to the Sinaloa Cartel. Orozco served as a higher-level official in the federal Social Development Ministry in the mid-2000s and has yet to be charged with a crime in Mexico.

“There are thousands of such cases that Mexican prosecutors decline to pursue,” Buscaglia said.

Guzman’s case underscores the nature of corruption in the country, where watchdog group Transparency International reports criminals have “captured” public institutions.

The drug kingpin escaped from a maximum security prison in July using a mile-long tunnel. Police have arrested the prison governor and several guards in connection with the breakout.

Emerging Drug Cartels and Powerbases

Posted on November 28, 2015November 28, 2015 by Denise Simon

BusinessInsider: Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (PGR) has identified seven new criminal organizations that it has identified as cartels for their range of criminal exploits.

The new organizations are smaller, less entrenched, and are less powerful than the older generation of Mexican cartels, which were massive criminal enterprises.

Instead the new cartels, Insight Crime notes, have largely spawned from mid-ranking members of former Mexican cartels, such as the Zetas.

Mexico is currently carrying out a “kingpin strategy” against criminal organizations in the country.

The strategy has largely been successful in apprehending the country’s top cartel members. However, it has done little to alleviate the underlying conditions which spawned the cartels. As such, the kingpin strategy has done little other than cause the previous Mexican cartels to implode leading to the creation of multiple new criminal organizations.

“Cartel del Estado” (“The State Cartel”)

Eduardo Verdugo/AP

Federal police escort who they identify as Servando “La Tuta” Gomez, leader of the Knights Templar cartel, as he sits inside a helicopter at a federal hanger in Mexico City, February 27.

The State Cartel operates primarily in the State Mexico, in the center of the country. It draws its income from diverse sources, including charging other organizations for the transport of drugs through its territory, local drug dealing, and kidnapping, the PGR notes.

The State first formed as a faction within the now defunct Familia Michoacana cartel, Insight Crime notes.

The fall of the Familia previously gave rise to a number of gangs, including the Knights Templar cartel.

“Cartel de los Precursores Quimicos” (“The Precursor Chemical Cartel”)

Thomson Reuters

Federal policemen in Apatzingan look at seized barrels they suspect contain the ingredients to make crystal methamphetamines.

The Precursor Chemical Cartel, as its name implies, deals largely with the sourcing and distribution of the precursor chemicals needed for large-scale drug production, PGR writes.

This group’s specialization in the dealing of only precursor chemicals is illustrative of the balkanization of the cartels.

Whereas the larger cartels in Mexico would have previously attempted to control all facets of drug production, the implosion of the cartels has allowed the Precursor Chemical Cartel to flourish.

“Cartel de los Mazatlecos” (“Mazatlecos Cartel”)

Alexandre Meneghini/AP

Soldiers escort five alleged members of the Zetas drug gang during their presentation to the press in Mexico City, June 9, 2011.

The Mazatlecos Cartel, Insight Crime notes, was first formed by the crippled Beltran Leyva Organization and the Zetas Cartel.

The Mazatlecos was largely a local gang in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, started specifically to disrupt the Sinaloa cartel’s operations in their home state.

The Mazatlecos has since grown in power. It’s now involved in drug dealing, kidnapping, and extortion. The group also makes use of training camps to prepare its members, and it has large-scale associations with street gangs throughout its areas of operation.

“Cartel del Chapo Isidro” (“Chapo Isidro Cartel”)

AFP

The Mexican army presents confiscated guns, drugs, and money from Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa Cartel.

The Chapo Isidro Cartel, the PGR notes, is responsible for large-scale drug distribution networks. The cartel specializes in methamphetamines, heroin, and marijuana.

The cartel aims to deal drugs largely in the US, but its larger international operations have led to the cartel’s leader being wanted by the US and the EU for extradition.

“Cartel de la Oficina” (“The Office Cartel”)

Jorge Lopez/REUTERS

Weapons are displayed on the floor before being presented to a judge as evidence during a trial against nine alleged members of the Zetas drug cartel.

The Office Cartel is comprised of defected members from the armed portions of the Beltran Leyva Organization, Zetas, and Sinaloa Cartel.

The group is known for its extremely violent tactics, the PGR notes, including kidnapping and murders that are intended to scare the local population into compliance.

“Cartel Gente Nueva del Sur” (“New Southern People Cartel”)

Reuters/Henry Romero

A police officer stands guard at an entrance to a ranch where a firefight took place May 22 in Tanhuato, Michoacan. Government security forces killed 42 suspected drug-cartel henchmen and suffered one fatality in a firefight in western Mexico, an official said, one of the bloodiest shootouts in a decade of gang violence racking the country.

The New Southern People Cartel is one of the most operationally diverse cartels to have formed.

Based throughout large portions of southeast Mexico, the PGR notes that the group is involved in drug dealing, kidnapping, extortion, and the theft and sale of oil.

Additionally, Insight Crime notes that the cartel also raises funds by charging other gangs to move supplies through its territory.

“Cartel del Aeropuerto” (“Airport Cartel”)

AP

A private jet.

The PGR admits that it has little information about the Airport Cartel, but the group is thought to be spread across Mexico and is the most technically proficient at smuggling drugs through aerial operations.

Insight Crime notes that the cartel likely uses commercial airports and private airstrips to smuggle drugs throughout the country and to an international audience.

DEA Assessment of Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations’ Areas of Dominant Control

The attached graphic provides an update to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) assessment of the areas of dominant control for the major drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) operating in Mexico based on a comprehensive review of current DEA reporting, input from DEA offices in Mexico and open source information.

DEA continues to identify eight major cartels currently operating in Mexico: Sinaloa, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (New Generation Jalisco Cartel or CJNG), Beltran-Leyva Organization (BLO), Los Zetas, Gulf, Juarez/La Linea, La Familia Michoacana (LFM), and Los Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar or LCT); however, leadership losses for LFM and LCT over the last year have significantly degraded their operational capabilities and organizational cohesion. The attached graphic illustrates fluctuations in the areas of dominant control for Mexico’s major DTOs, most notably the significant expansion of CJNG.

After splintering from the Sinaloa Cartel in 2010, the CJNG has become the fastest growing DTO in Mexico. From its stronghold in Jalisco, Mexico, the organization’s influence extends to Nayarit, Colima, Guerrero, Veracruz, Michoacán, and other Mexican states. DEA reporting indicates the organization has recently expanded its dominion to the Mexican States of Guanajuato and San Luis Potosi, in addition to an increased presence along the southern Mexican coast States of Oaxaca and Chiapas.

The CJNG uses its alliances and exploits weaknesses of rival cartels to take over new territories or increase its presence in areas already under CJNG control. The disintegration of the LCT in 2015, paved the way for the CJNG to flourish and expand its territorial presence in Michoacán. The internal power struggles and disarray suffered by the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas are also likely contributing to the CJNG expansion. With additional territory and reach, the CJNG is in a prime position to increase its drug trafficking operations, wealth, and influence in Mexico.