Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

Nazis on Social Security got Millions

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On Nazis and Nazi collaborators getting visas to the United States

In the early months, and first few years after the war, beginning in mid-1945, [there were] only a very limited number of immigration visas to get into the United States.

Filing for refugee status in the United States and being approved is a stage for entitlement abuse, years ago and especially today. One of the most quiet and effective investigative Senators in Congress is Chuck Grassley. He worked the Fast and Furious operation, the Security and Exchange Commission abuses and even Medicare fraud. One of his recent investigations is in to Nazis getting Social Security benefits.

After so many years?

The Ex-Nazis Collecting Social Security

They reportedly received millions of dollars in government benefits even after being expelled from the United States.

On Monday, an exhaustive two-year Associated Press investigation concluded in which it was determined that dozens of former Nazis collectively received millions of dollars in Social Security benefits from the United States. Worse yet, according to the report, once these former Nazis were discovered, payments continued after they were expelled from the country in a bid to encourage them to leave the United States peacefully.

“Since 1979,” the AP analysis found, “at least 38 of 66 suspects removed from the country kept their Social Security benefits,” the report read. These weren’t lightweights either. Suspected activities of the recipients range from participation in the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto to the use of slave labor and the round-up and killing of thousands of Jews. At least four of these men are said to still be alive and receiving money from American taxpayers.

One of the many unsettling revelations from the AP report:

The Justice Department denied using Social Security payments as a tool for removing Nazi suspects. But records show the U.S. State Department and the Social Security Administration voiced grave concerns over the methods used by the Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations.

State officials derogatorily called the practice “Nazi dumping” and claimed the OSI was bargaining with suspects so they would leave voluntarily.

One enduring criticism of the American response to World War II is the belated enactment of a rescue policy for Jewish refugees seeking to emigrate to the United States. It wasn’t until 1944, roughly two years after the systematic deportation and extermination of Europe’s Jews had begun, that President Franklin D. Roosevelt took the most aggressive action to aid the persecuted millions by creating the War Refugee Board.

Decades later, historians continue to debate what more could have been done beyond the military effort that ultimately brought about the war’s end. The unfilled immigration quotas from Roosevelt’s first term continue to haunt his record. In 1942, in another symbolic step, Roosevelt promised that all war criminals would be pursued at the war’s end.

That unfortunate history only adds to the messy dimensions of this story. It’s not just the idea that former Nazis found safe haven in the United States, and it’s not just that the former Nazis were able to flourish and pay enough into the American system to ultimately receive benefits, although that’s certainly part of it as well.

Beyond all this, and the fact that thousands of people were denied this opportunity in America, the loophole that allows the payments is still open. Meanwhile, according to the Office of Special Investigations’ own figures, only ten of the men who were removed from the United States were ever actually prosecuted for their crimes.

Here it Comes: ATF Regs Unified Agenda

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As Obama begins to finalize his regime in the White House, he is reviewing his to-do list and checking it twice. Several items remain unfinished and he aims to get his gold star to complete all of them. One of them is moving to deeper restrictions on gun-ownership.

Barack Obama has a new chief lawyer at the Justice Department, Loretta Lynch and she is in full lock step to lead the ATF, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division to complete the Unified Agenda. ( You will note if you click Unified Agenda, the .pdf document is not there….hummm). For some real lengthy reading here is the full federal government Unified Agenda.

ATF weapons definitions are here and updated as of 2011.

Administration preps new gun regulations

The Justice Department plans to move forward this year with more than a dozen new gun-related regulations, according to list of rules the agency has proposed to enact before the end of the Obama administration.

The regulations range from new restrictions on high-powered pistols to gun storage requirements. Chief among them is a renewed effort to keep guns out of the hands of people who are mentally unstable or have been convicted of domestic abuse.

Gun safety advocates have been calling for such reforms since the Sandy Hook school shooting nearly three years ago in Newtown, Conn. They say keeping guns away from dangerous people is of primary importance.

But the gun lobby contends that such a sweeping ban would unfairly root out a number of prospective gun owners who are not a danger to society.

“It’s clear President Obama is beginning his final assault on our Second Amendment rights by forcing his anti-gun agenda on honest law-abiding citizens through executive force,” said Luke O’Dell, vice president of political affairs at the National Association for Gun Rights.

The Justice Department plans to issue new rules expanding criteria for people who do not qualify for gun ownership, according to the recently released Unified Agenda, which is a list of rules that federal agencies are developing.

Some of the rules come in response to President Obama’s call to reduce gun violence in the wake of Sandy Hook. He issued 23 executive actions shortly after the shooting aimed at keeping guns away from dangerous people, and some of those items remain incomplete.

“If America worked harder to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, there would be fewer atrocities like the one that occurred in Newtown,” Obama said at the time.

“We can respect the Second Amendment while keeping an irresponsible, law-breaking few from inflicting harm on a massive scale,” he added.

Gun control groups have rallied around Obama’s call to action, zeroing in on polices that would keep guns away from the mentally ill and domestic abusers.

Congressional efforts to expand background checks and keep guns away from dangerous people have failed in recent years, but the legislative defeats won’t stop the Justice Department from regulating.

The Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is looking to revive a rule proposed way back in 1998 that would block domestic abusers from owning guns.

As proposed, the regulation makes it illegal for some who has been convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence offense to own a gun.

The ATF plans to finalize the rule by November, according to the Unified Agenda.
But gun rights advocates are concerned the Obama administration will use this rule to unfairly target certain gun owners.

“That could be a person who spanked his kid, or yelled at his wife, or slapped her husband,” warned Michael Hammond, legislative counsel for the Gun Owners of America.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Americans for Responsible Solutions did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

But Everytown, a group financially backed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has argued that keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers can be a matter of life or death.

“American women are 11 times more likely to be shot and killed than women in other developed countries,” the group argues. “The high rate of domestic violence deaths in America is directly related to our weak gun laws. But we know that smart gun laws can—and do—stop domestic abuse from turning into murder.”

The ATF is also looking to prohibit the mentally ill from owning firearms, which is attracting even more criticism from gun rights groups.

“The Obama administration is trying very hard to disqualify people from owning a gun on the basis that they are seeing a psychologist,” Hammond argued.

The NRA contends that many people who are mentally ill may not necessarily pose a danger to society — or as the gun lobby puts it, the policy “snares masses of mostly harmless individuals.”

Gun rights advocates argue it would be more effective to ban people on an individual basis, as opposed to banning all people who are mentally ill.

“A person who experienced a temporary reaction to a traumatic event or who has trouble handling household finances may well be treated the same as a violent psychopath,” the NRA wrote.
“Not only is this unjust and stigmatizing, it creates disincentives for those who need mental health treatment to seek it, increasing whatever risks are associated with untreated mental illness,” it added.

Aside from these issues, some gun rights advocates have also raised concerns about upcoming ATF rules that would require gun dealers to report gun thefts, provide gun storage and safety devices, and place restrictions on high-powered pistols, among other things.

“The Obama administration hates the Second Amendment, and it’s clear that every place where it can push, it will,” said Hammond. “This is an indication of an anti-gun administration trying to annoy us in any way it can.”

Surveillance State, Your Touch and Your Smartphone

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There was a Rand Paul filibuster last week over the NSA broad sweep of citizen’s private affairs. Senator Paul does have a major point in his efforts to protect our privacy yet to what ends when it comes to national security? He pledges to take the matter of the vote on the NSA to see the Patriot Act end.

There is yet another piece of legislation that is important to understand. The USA Freedom Act. In part:

Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet Collection, and Online Monitoring Act

H.R. 3361/ S. 1599

Purpose:  To rein in the dragnet collection of data by the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies, increase transparency of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), provide businesses the ability to release information regarding FISA requests, and create an independent constitutional advocate to argue cases before the FISC.

End bulk collection of Americans’ communications records

• The USA Freedom Act ends bulk collection under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
• The bill would strengthen the prohibition on “reverse targeting” of Americans—that is, targeting a foreigner with the goal of obtaining communications involving an American.
• The bill requires the government to more aggressively filter and discard information about Americans accidentally collected through PRISM and related programs.

Reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

• The USA Freedom Act creates an Office of the Special Advocate (OSA) tasked with promoting privacy interests before the FISA court’s closed proceedings. The OSA will have the authority to appeal decisions of the FISA court.
• The bill creates new and more robust reporting requirements to ensure that Congress is aware of actions by the FISC and intelligence community as a whole.
• The bill would grant the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight  Board subpoena authority to investigate issues related to privacy and national security.

Increase Transparency

• The USA Freedom Act would end secret laws by requiring the Attorney General to publicly disclose all FISC decisions issued after July 10, 2003 that contain a significant construction or interpretation of law.
• Under the bill, Internet and telecom companies would be allowed to publicly report an estimate of (1) the number of FISA orders and national security letters received, (2) the number of such orders and letters complied with, and (3) the number of users or accounts on whom information was demanded under the orders and letters.
• The bill would require the government to make annual or semiannual public reports estimating the total number of individuals and U.S. persons that were subject to FISA orders authorizing electronic surveillance, pen/trap devices, and access to business records.

DONT APPLAUD JUST YET…this next introduction of technology is very chilling. When does it all stop with surveillance?

NSA will Track Your Smartphone Finger Strokes

Smartphone technology built by Lockheed Martin promises to verify a user’s identity based on the swiftness and shape of the individual’s finger strokes on a touch screen. The mobile device feature, created by Lockheed Martin, verifies a user’s identity based on the swiftness and shape of the individual’s finger strokes on a touch screen. The technology is but one incarnation of handwriting-motion recognition, sometimes called “dynamic signature” biometrics, that has roots in the Air Force. “Nobody else has the same strokes,” said John Mears, senior fellow for Lockheed IT and Security Solutions. “People can forge your handwriting in two dimensions, but they couldn’t forge it in three or four dimensions. Three is the pressure you put in, in addition to the two dimensions on the paper. The fourth dimension is time. The most advanced handwriting-type authentication tracks you in four dimensions.”  The biometric factors measured by Lockheed’s technology, dubbed “Mandrake,” are speed, acceleration and the curve of an individual’s strokes. “We’ve done work with the NSA with that for secure gesture authentication as a technique for using smartphones,” Mears said. “They are actually able to use it.” According to Defense One . Lockheed officials said they do not know how or if the agency has operationally deployed the Mandrake smartphone doodling-recognition tool. The company also is the architect of the FBI’s recently completed $1 billion facial, fingerprint, palm print, retina scan and tattoo image biometric ID system. That project, called the Next Generation Identification system, could tie in voice and “gait matching” (how a person walks) in the future, the bureau has said. Mandrake potentially might be useful for emergency responders who often do not have the time or capability to access an incident command website, Mears said.

Lynch To Open IRS Investigation?

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Department of Justice to finally open an investigation into the IRS targeting? Congressman Paul Ryan transmits letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

To read the letter and see the signatures click here. Key section of letter in part:

Ms. Lerner used her position to improperly influence agency action against only conservative organizations, denying these groups due process and equal protection rights under the law.

Ms. Lerner impeded official investigations by providing misleading statements in response to questions from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

Ms. Lerner risked exposing, and may actually have disclosed, confidential taxpayer information, in apparent violation of Internal Revenue Code section 6103 by using her personal email to conduct official business.

Paul Ryan on Thursday sent his first official letter to Loretta Lynch, the new U.S. attorney general. With luck, Ms. Lynch will take a few moments out of her international soccer crackdown to give it a glance.

Signed by every Republican member of the House Ways and Means Committee, which Mr. Ryan heads, the letter is a forceful request that Ms. Lynch channel just a smidgen of her famed prosecutorial skill into the largest abuse of government power in decades: the IRS targeting scandal. It’s now been two full years since a little-known IRS bureaucrat named Lois Lerner admitted that her agency systematically collected the names of conservative groups, harassed them, and denied their right to participate in elections. It’s been two full years since the Justice Department opened an investigation. And it’s been two full years of crickets.

While Ms. Lynch was this week orchestrating a dramatic dawn raid and the arrest of seven international soccer officials, the IRS’s offices continued to operate as if nothing ever happened. Two years ago, in the days following the targeting revelations, the administration sacked Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller only because it had to. Ms. Lerner, who had led the exempt organizations division, was allowed to retire with full pension benefits. Holly Paz, her effective deputy, was put on administrative leave. Everyone else is still at their desks. Not a single official—there or gone—has faced prosecution.

The Ryan letter asks Ms. Lynch to finally answer his committee’s 2014 referral of Ms. Lerner to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. That referral has been largely lost to time and other headlines. Most of the focus last year was on the House’s decision to issue a contempt citation against Ms. Lerner, for improperly asserting her Fifth Amendment rights and refusing to answer its questions about her time at the IRS. In March of this year, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald Machen, who has since resigned, informed Speaker John Boehner that he was refusing to bring that contempt citation before a grand jury.

That’s a pity. Note, though, that the citation dealt only with Ms. Lerner’s after-the-fact behavior in front of Congress. Investigators have also compiled compelling evidence that she may have broken the law while overseeing the targeting of conservative groups. Nearly a month before Mr. Boehner sent out the citation, the Ways and Means Committee (then under Rep. Dave Camp) sent a letter to Justice making the case that Ms. Lerner should be criminally prosecuted for her time at the IRS. The Justice Department has never responded to that letter.

Specifically, the committee provided documents that show three acts by Ms. Lerner that may have violated criminal statutes. One, she helped to target only conservative organizations, thereby robbing them of equal protection and due process. Two, she may have impeded the Treasury inspector general’s investigation of the matter by giving misleading statements. Three, she risked exposing (and may have exposed) confidential taxpayer information by using her personal email address to conduct official business.

And that’s only what we know so far. Congress’s problem is that the IRS has stonewalled it at every turn. The Treasury inspector general, J. Russell George, has become tentative after all the Democratic criticism of his probe. It seems the Justice Department is the only body with the powers to shake loose some answers about what happened.

The Ryan letter asks Ms. Lynch to tell him the status of that referral, and Speaker Boehner chimed in with a statement calling for the new attorney general to prove to Americans that “justice will be served.”

Ms. Lynch’s response will be enormously telling about her view of her job. Well before the IRS scandal broke, former Attorney General Eric Holder had already built a reputation as one of the most partisan and political holders of the office in history. It was never really a surprise that Justice assigned the IRS probe to a staff attorney who was a Obama donor, or that the FBI early on leaked that it didn’t intend any prosecutions, or that Mr. Holder ignored calls for a special prosecutor. The likelihood that he’d act dropped further as evidence came out that his own Justice attorneys were implicated in Ms. Lerner’s targeting.

Meanwhile, today’s IRS commissioner, John Koskinen, has been unable to acknowledge that someone at his agency might have engaged in intentional wrongdoing. This attitude, combined with Justice’s inaction, creates the scary potential of an IRS targeting repeat. When nobody in a position of authority or with police power is willing to even question whether some in the IRS might be bad actors, there is no guard whatsoever against a Lerner 2.0.

One of Ms. Lynch’s specialties in her previous post as U.S. attorney for the eastern district of New York was political corruption. She knows that government officials can and do break the law. If she ignores or skirts the Ryan letter, the country will see that it has another Obama partisan sitting in the attorney general seat. If she acts, she might instead restore some public faith in two of the nation’s least respected institutions: the Justice Department and the IRS. It doesn’t seem such a hard choice.

 

 

Meanwhile, Mexico Still Corrupt

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You hear very little about the corruption, the massacres and the crimes in Mexico mostly because the cartels and criminals have killed or bought off the media. Once in a while some items are passed on for publication. Do you ever wonder what the president of Mexico is doing? Do you wonder if the United States or the United Nations pays attention to Mexico?

Mexico is a failed state, examples below.

US Banks Close Branches Along Mexico Border to Prevent Money Laundering

Major US banks have recently closed branches along the southern border with Mexico in an attempt to crack down on money laundering, a reflection of the ease with which Mexican drug traffickers can legitimize illicit proceeds north of the border.

In recent months, major banks such J.P. Morgan and Bank of America have closed their branches in the border town of Nogales, Arizona, reported The Wall Street Journal. Other banks, including Wells Fargo and Chase, have reportedly closed hundreds of customer accounts, many of which belonged to Mexican nationals.

The anti-money laundering measures come amid tightening regulations stipulating that banks can be hit with stiff fines if they fail to adequately monitor suspicious accounts, reported National Public Radio.

Banks on the Mexican side of the border have also recently stepped up their efforts to combat money laundering operations. Some Mexican banks have started refusing to accept US dollars, according to The Associated Press.

InSight Crime Analysis

US banks have real reason to fear criminal networks will use their financial services to launder money. Arizona has previously been singled out as a principal money laundering destination for Mexican drug cartels, and bank executives told The Wall Street Journal that Southern California and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas are also high-risk border areas. As evidenced by the recent decisions, in some cases it is easier for banks to simply close accounts and branches rather than attempting to keep criminals from using their financial services.

 

Several high-profile cases point to the ability of Mexican drug traffickers to legalize their illicit funds via the US banking system. In 2010, Wachovia (which is now Wells Fargo) reached an agreement with the US government after prosecutors found that at least $110 million in drug proceeds had been laundered through the bank. In 2012, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also uncovered a scheme in which Mexico‘s Zetas cartel laundered money through a horse racing enterprise by using Bank of America accounts.

In addition, the decisions by major banks to close their border branches suggest that putting pressure on banks — rather than going after individuals or criminal networks — may be the most effective way to combat money laundering. A recent legal decision, in which a conviction was overturned in the Zetas horse racing case, demonstrates just how difficult it can be for prosecutors to go after the money launderers themselves.

The case of 43 the missing/dead students:

He said three alleged gang members claimed the students were handed over to them by police.

They said some were already asphyxiated and they shot the others dead, before setting fire to all the bodies.

A total of 43 students went missing after clashing with police on 26 September in the town of Iguala.

A spokesman for their families said they would not accept they were dead until it had been officially confirmed by Argentine forensic scientists working on the case.

Bags found near river

The suspects from the Guerreros Unidos drug gang were recently arrested in connection with the disappearances.

Relatives of the missing said they had been told that six bags of unidentified human remains had been found along a river near where the students vanished.

There was this case in 2013 in Mexico:

MEXICO CITY — He admitted being a salaried killer for a drug cartel, the kind of assassin who preferred slashing his victims’ throats.

On Tuesday, after serving three years behind bars, he was released from a Mexican detention center and was on his way to the United States — where he would soon live as a free man.

Or, rather, a free boy.

The killer, Edgar Jimenez Lugo, known to Mexican crime reporters as “El Ponchis,” is 17 years old. He was 11 when he killed his first victim, and he was 14 when he was arrested, in December 2010, at the Cuernavaca airport, along with luggage containing two handguns and packets of cocaine.

Back then, Jimenez’s tender age transformed him into a media phenomenon, one that shocked Mexico, and the world, into recognizing the extent to which the country’s brutal drug war was consuming its young. And now it is one of the reasons why Jimenez — who claims to have killed four people at an age before most kids get their learner’s permit to drive — will soon be mingling with the residents of San Antonio.

Under the laws at the time in the Mexican state of Morelos, where he was prosecuted, Jimenez could be sentenced to a maximum of only three years of incarceration because he was a minor. A judge ordered him released Tuesday, a few days before his three years were up.

And because he is a U.S. citizen, born in San Diego, he has every right to return to his home country.

“Apparently he’s paid his debt for whatever crimes he was convicted of [in Mexico], and I’m not aware of any charges the U.S., federal or state, has against him,” Michelle Lee, an FBI special agent based in San Antonio, said Tuesday. “The situation with him is really no different than any other U.S. national who commits a crime, completes their sentence and is released.”

Jimenez, who had lived, and killed, in Jiutepec, a town near the popular resort city of Cuernavaca, was on a plane headed to San Antonio, where he has family, Jorge Vicente Messeguer Guillen, the Morelos government secretary, said in a TV interview.

Once in San Antonio, Messeguer said, Jimenez would be sent to what he referred to as a “support center” but would not be locked up.

Graco Ramirez, the Morelos governor, said in a separate TV interview that Jimenez’s rehabilitation in the Mexican penal system had been “notable.” He also said that Jimenez had to leave Mexico because his life might be in danger.

U.S. State Department officials would not elaborate on what Jimenez’s living arrangements would be when he arrived in Texas. Nor did they clarify what Messeguer meant by a “support center.”

“We are aware of Edgar Lugo’s upcoming release by the Mexican authorities following completion of his sentence,” a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said in a statement Tuesday. “We are closely coordinating with our Mexican counterparts and appropriate authorities in the United States regarding Edgar Lugo’s release.

“Due to privacy considerations, we do not publicly discuss details of matters involving U.S. citizens,” he said.

Jimenez’s case is far from unique. In February, a 13-year-old boy was arrested in the state of Zacatecas along with a group of gunmen. The boy, identified as Armando, confessed to participating in at least 10 slayings. He was freed because the state criminal code does not prosecute minors younger than 14. A month later, the boy and his mother were found slain along with four other people.

In 2011, a 15-year-old who went by the name Erick was arrested and said he worked for the same group that Jimenez did, participating with other teenagers in kidnappings and drug dealing. He was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison.