[Abramoff is Jewish. Scanlon? More on the many Jewish-run rip-off "Indian casinos," here. (See Native American section down the page)]
U.S. Investigating GOP Lobbyists with Ties to Indian-Run Casinos,
BY JACK NEWFIELD, New York Sun, September 8, 2004
"A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., is hearing testimony and analyzing thousands of banking and billing records connected to two prominent Republican lobbyists and strategists as part of a racketeering probe involving Indian-run casinos. The men, Jack Abramoff and Mike Scanlon, have received a total of more than $45 million since 2001 from 11 tribes with gambling casinos ranging from Louisiana to Mississippi, to California to Michigan, and to Texas. They are under investigation for possible money-laundering, racketeering, and tax fraud, federal law enforcement and Senate sources say. The investigation is opening a window on the murky world of Indian gambling, Washington lobbying, money washing, and campaign finance. It also is a cautionary tale for New York, which has four Indian-run casinos and is considering adding at least four more. A task force that includes the FBI, IRS, and the Justice Department's public integrity section is running the criminal probe. Indictments are expected this fall, according to sources close to the task force. Mr. Abramoff was ousted from his prominent law firm - Greenberg Traurig - in March, reportedly after his partners discovered he took more than $10 million in payments from Mr. Scanlon without the firm's knowledge. Investigators say most of the $45 million was paid to Mr. Scanlon as a public relations consultant, meaning he did not have to make public disclosure. Mr. Abramoff, one of Washington's top lobbyists, must report such payments. Mr. Scanlon, 33, is the former press secretary to the House majority leader, Tom DeLay. Mr. Abramoff, 45, who was the registered lobbyist for the dictatorship of the late Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, received $7 million from the government of the Mariana Islands to keep the protectorate exempt from American minimum-wage laws ... The federal prosecutors, who have amassed a "war room" of more 100,000 documents, have subpoenaed the banking records of a foundation created by Mr. Abramoff and his wife and of a campaign consulting company and a "think tank" in Delaware run by Mr. Scanlon. These institutions are suspected of laundering large sums of money "donated" by the tribes for personal and political use by the lobbyists ... Mr. Scanlon's think tank - the American International Center - received a $556,000 donation from the 800-member Coushatta tribe of Louisiana. The AIC, was run by a former lifeguard and a former yoga instructor, produced no policy work, and went defunct after a year. The AIC, located on property owned by Mr. Scanlon, paid Mr. Abramoff $1.5 million in fees, much of it after it after it closed. Mr. Abramoff's Capitol Athletic Foundation received $1 million each from the Coushatta tribe of Louisiana, and the Choctaw tribe of Mississippi. This foundation then made a $1.8 million donation to an Orthodox Jewish private school founded by Mr. Abramoff. The school closed when Mr. Abramoff was expelled from his law firm. A 2003 audit of the Coushattas by the tribe's former controller, Erick LaRoque, found the tribe had a $40 million deficit, and that "operating equity and cash reserves have suffered significant decline. "The audit reported that $24 million had been taken from the tribe's education, health care, and housing funds, and, "There is no documented plan for reimbursement." Three dissident leaders of the tribe - secretary treasurer Harold John, tribal council member David Sickey, and Ben Langley - have told The New York Sun they were excluded from all meetings and decision-making involving the lobbyists, their fee structure, and what the men did to earn these fees. Mr. Sickey said he is "disgusted" by the donation of "sacred tribal education funds" to the foundation and think tank "without proper documentation." Law enforcement sources have told the Sun that one aspect of the "hydra headed" grand jury probe is that the Coushatta tribe paid Mr. Scanlon's company to spy on dissidents and their lawyers ... The Agua Caliente tribe of California, which has been resisting a union organizing drive, gave $100,000 to the Republican National Committee shortly after hiring Mr. Abramoff. The Agua Caliente tribe paid Mr. Abramoff $1.6 million in lobbying fees for one year and hired Mr. Scanlon to run a $7.4 million letter-writing campaign to then-governor, Gray Davis, a Democrat, for more slot machines. This failed effort generated 2,000 letters, at a cost of $3,700 per letter, according to tribal dissidents."
Perle says Hollinger bosses misled him,
by Chris Tryhorn, Guardian (UK), September 9, 2004
"Former Pentagon policy adviser Richard Perle yesterday moved to distance himself from the disgraced former Telegraph owner Conrad Black and the £220m alleged looting scandal that has engulfed Hollinger International. Mr Perle, who was a member of the Hollinger board along with other well-connected US people including Henry Kissinger, issued a statement last night declaring he was misled by the management into approving controversial deals. Lord Black was criticised last week for using Hollinger's finances as a personal "piggybank" and accused of "corporate kleptocracy" involving everything from charging personal expenses such as flights, apartments and lavish party bills to signing away millions on management fees for himself and other executives. Mr Perle hit out at claims in the report by fellow directors at Hollinger International, which until July owned the Daily Telegraph, that he breached his fiduciary duties to shareholders. He said that he "cannot agree with the committee's unwarranted and unsubstantiated suggestion" that in his capacity as an official with Hollinger's online division he put his own interests ahead of those of the company and its shareholders. The report, written by a special committee of Hollinger directors with Richard Breeden, the former chairman of the US securities and exchange commission, accused Mr Perle of enriching himself at the expense of the company. As the former chairman and chief executive of Hollinger Digital, which launched websites including price comparison service Shopping.com, Mr Perle received £1.8m in bonuses on top of his salary."
[Refresher: Conrad Black isn't Jewish, but his gaudy wife (Barbara Amiel) and his number one man, David Radler, are. All have a history of Zionist activisim. And let us not forget the omnipresent Richard Perle.]
Hollinger's Black `Victimized' Company, Report Says,
Bloomberg.com, Aug. 31, 2004
"Hollinger International Inc., publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, said former Chief Executive Conrad Black and controlling shareholders ``victimized'' the company by transferring $400 million of company funds to their own accounts. Directors of Chicago-based Hollinger said in a report issued today in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the company was ``systematically manipulated'' by Black ``in a manner that violated every fiduciary duty.'' A summary of the report was given the title ``A Corporate Kleptocracy.'' A board committee spent 14 months probing shareholders' claims that Black and top executives looted the company of more than $380 million through sham payments, excessive management fees and self-dealing. The board ousted Black as chairman in January and sued him in federal court in Chicago. In May, the company sought to triple damages to as much as $1.25 billion under the U.S. Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act. The suit says Black, a Canadian native who gave up his citizenship to become a British lord in 2001, used Hollinger International as ``a cash cow to be milked of every possible drop.'' Black spokesman Jim Badenhausen did not immediately return calls for comment left at his home and office. `Piggybank' ``Over the years success or failure at Hollinger was measured largely by how much cash -- and even chunks of the company -- could be transferred from Hollinger to Black,'' former Chief Operating Officer David Radler and their affiliates, the report said. Black and his wife, Barbara Amiel Black, a former Telegraph columnist, as well as the Radler family used Hollinger as a ``piggy bank'' for personal expenses, the panel said. The company bought a Challenger aircraft for Radler for $11.6 million and leased a Gulfstream IV jet at $3 million to $4 million a year for the Blacks. Hollinger allowed the Blacks to ``swap'' Park Avenue apartments with the company, which ``rigged'' the transaction so the Blacks could obtain Hollinger's apartment for $2.5 million below its market value, the report said. The apartment Hollinger took from the Blacks was used to house the family's domestic staff and personal friends. Hollinger also paid for food, cell phones, perfumes and other living expenses for Black and his wife, the report said. These included $2,463 on handbags for Amiel Black, $2,785 in opera tickets, $2,083 on exercise equipment and a $42,870 ``Happy Birthday Barbara dinner party'' at New York's La Grenouille restaurant attended by designer Oscar de la Renta and television broadcasters Peter Jennings, Charlie Rose and Barbara Walters. The meal, given for 80 guests, included beluga caviar, lobster ceviche and 69 bottles of wine. Perle's Actions For the first time Hollinger International also singled out for criticism certain members of Black's board, studded with political figures including former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Illinois Governor James Thompson and former U.S. defense adviser Richard Perle. The board panel said Perle and Radler helped Black evade disclosure of his actions to the audit committee and the board. Perle should be required to disgorge all the pay he received from the company, the report said. ``The Special Committee finds that Perle repeatedly placed his own interests ahead of those of Hollinger's public shareholders, which violated his duty of loyalty,'' the report said ... Perle resigned last year as chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a group that advises Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, after criticism from some members of Congress about his role as a paid adviser to Global Crossing Ltd. ... Black and his associates, including his wife, ``freely plundered the company's coffers to subsidize their own lifestyles,'' according to the suit. The company also seeks $1.4 million spent on butlers, chauffeurs and other personal staff for the couple's homes, which included a London townhouse, a New York apartment, a Toronto estate and a beachfront property in Florida. Amiel Black, who got $1.1 million in salary and bonuses from 1999 to 2003, billed the company for a tip to a doorman at Bergdorf-Goodman, a luxury clothing store in New York, the suit claims."
Hollinger money opened society's doors for Lord Black, report shows,
by Geraldine Fabrikant, International Herald Tribune, September 3, 2004
"How much does it cost to become a lion on the social scenes in New York, London, and Toronto?Not as much as one might think, particularly if you take public credit for donations made with corporate funds. According to a scathing report issued this week by a special committee of the publishing company Hollinger International, Conrad Black, a controlling shareholder and former chief executive, used the company's coffers to smooth and solidify his and his wife's positions in elite society. In New York, for $15,000, Black and his wife, Barbara Amiel Black, became part of a committee for the Costume Institute Benefit at the Metropolitan Museum in 2003. The Breast Cancer Research Foundation 2001 Gala received $20,000 when the Blacks, and a board member at the time, Marie-Josée Kravis, were the vice chairman and chairwomen. And a pledge of $100,000 made to the New York Public Library last year coincided with Lord and Lady Black being asked to serve as the chairman and chairwoman of last year's Literary Lions dinner ... One of the company's largest donations was a $283,000 contribution to the Metropolitan Opera, where a plaque honoring Lord and Lady Black was placed, the report says. Perhaps the gift that promised the greatest prestige in New York was the $100,000 pledge to the New York Public Library."
[Yet another in the kaleidescope of professional Jewish scamsters and it's the usual: skimming off millions somewhere to fund a private Jewish school.]
Records Detail Spending By GOP Lobbyist Abramoff,
by R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post, September 28, 2004; Page A01
"T
by Robert Schroeder, CBS Marketplace, Oct 11, 2004
"The Securities and Exchange Commission will not bring insider trading charges against a former Lehman Brothers analyst and her husband, a hedge fund trader, according to a report Monday. The SEC notified the couple of its decision late last week, the Wall Street Journal reported. Regulators had been investigating whether Michael Zimmerman had attempted to profit from trading based on knowledge of unpublished stock-research reports at Lehman, where his wife, Holly Becker, worked."
The head of a Raleigh investment firm that bilked customers out of more than $20 million was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison, a term prosecutors called one of the most significant among white-collar criminals nationwide. Ruined customers from across North Carolina shamed Texas resident Louis Michael Lazorwitz, 58, in a Wilmington courtroom Tuesday, describing savings that have vanished and businesses swallowed up by debt. "You took my retirement," said Carolyn Dorning of Pamlico County. "You raped us. I could kill you. You are lucky you live in the States. Anywhere else, they would kill you." Lazorwitz, a senior partner in Tri-Star Investment Group, also heard stinging words from Senior U.S. District Judge James C. Fox, who gave him the maximum sentence but spared him a fine ... Earlier this year, Lazorwitz pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud and securities fraud, the commission of securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Prosecutors said his firm sought $10,000 donations and promised a 20 percent return from off-shore investments. Tri-Star recruited about 950 investors nationwide and created a pyramid scheme in which each round of investors was paid with money from the next round. Many were issued bogus statements showing 20 percent returns."
Business Analysis: The father, the sons, and an insurance scandal that has rocked America. How a leading business family was dragged into Eliot Spitzer's commissions inquiry,
by Katherine Griffiths, The Independent (UK), Ocotber 20, 2004
"America's powerful Greenberg family, which dominates the US insurance industry, are planning to gather to celebrate Thanksgiving next month, conversation over the dinner table could be somewhat gloomy. Jeffrey Greenberg, the chief executive of the giant insurance broker Marsh & McLennan, is fighting an $800m lawsuit brought by New York's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer. Shares in Marsh fell further yesterday, leaving its value nearly cut in half since Mr Spitzer's case was launched last week, and calls are growing for Mr Greenberg to step down. His father's company, American International Group (AIG), has been named in the suit, which alleges Marsh masterminded a scam with certain insurance companies to cream off millions of dollars from customers in inappropriate fees. Ace, the Bermuda-based insurer, is also named in the suit. Ace's position has begun to look difficult, with reports that the pugnacious government lawyer has e-mails from Ace employees acknowledging its dealings with Marsh could be seen as anti-competitive. And the chief executive of Ace who must investigate whether his underlings did carry out actions which could breach antitrust laws is, strangely enough, another family member. Evan, the brother of Jeffrey and the son of the AIG chief, Maurice, or "Hank", took the top job at Ace earlier this year. If the stock market was shocked by the wide-ranging nature of Mr Spitzer's allegations, analysts were surprised to find America's first family of the insurance sector so firmly in the firing line. While the suit also names other insurers outside the close-knit clan, and could be widened even further, it seems likely that the Greenbergs will need to use all of their formidable reputations to put this scandal behind them. Several analysts say that they may not be able to, hastening the retirement of the formidable Mr Greenberg, 79, after 36 years at the helm of AIG, and possibly removing altogether the Greenberg name from the ruling ranks of America's insurance industry ... But Mr Greenberg is used to things not going smoothly within his family. He had been planning to hand over the family business - AIG has 50 million customers in 130 countries - to Jeffrey when he stepped down. That plan went off the rails when his 53-year-old son, who had worked his way up the ranks at AIG, quit without warning to join Marsh. Another plan to hand over to Evan, 49, also backfired as he too suddenly abandoned a career at his father's company four years ago ... Even before last week, AIG was in the sights of government investigators. The Securities and Exchange Commission said last month it was considering bringing civil charges against AIG for allegedly helping PNC Financial Services hide underperforming loans. Before that, AIG was entangled in a separate investigation by the SEC into whether it helped Brightpoint, a distributor of mobile-phone data, hide $12m in losses through an unusual insurance contract. The SEC fined AIG $10m, though the company did not admit any guilt. At Marsh, Jeffrey Greenberg is under even more pressure. It is on his watch that Marsh's subsidiary fund management company, Putnam Investments, was the first money manager to be charged with the controversial trading practice of market timing. And earlier this year another Marsh company, Mercer, admitted it had not given the board of the New York Stock Exchange the full picture about the $140m pay package of its chairman, Dick Grasso. The latest controversy under the spotlight allegedly involved two types of inappropriate behaviour. One of the areas targeted - "contingent commissions" - is widespread in the insurance industry and is seen by many as perfectly legitimate as long as the commissions are disclosed to customers. The commissions are paid by insurers to brokers on the basis of the volume of business directed their way, and also on how profitable that business is likely to be. The other subject of the investigation - whereby a broker persuades a customer to take out a particular policy by comparing it with bogus, higher quotes from other underwriters - is more controversial. The Spitzer lawsuit alleges Ace and AIG were complicit in bid rigging with Marsh, but it suggests that there were plenty of other insurers outside the clan who also took part. While Mr Spitzer has lashed out at the highest echelons of Marsh's management, saying its senior executives are "not a leadership I will talk to", he has not accused Jeffrey Greenberg of orchestrating the alleged scam. He has also chosen not to highlight the personal connection between the two insurance companies and the broker. Yet if one of the Greenberg dynasty is tainted by the outcome of the Spitzer case, it is likely to hurt the others, at a time when the influential family has already lost much of the business world's reverence. The Greenberg Dynasty: Jeffrey Greenberg -- Chief executive of Marsh & McLennan since 1999 and its chairman since 2000, Jeffrey Greenberg, 53, joined the insurance broker in 1995. Before that he was at AIG. On the day Hurricane Andrew hit Florida, he caused embarrassment by calling the storm an "opportunity to get price increases". Maurice 'Hank' Greenberg -- Hank Greenberg built his own record as one of America's iconic long-standing businessmen. Since joining in 1960, he transformed AIG from a small holding company with scattered overseas holdings to the largest insurance company in the world, with $81.3bn in revenues and $9.3bn in earnings last year. Evan Greenberg -- The younger son of Hank, 49-year-old Evan also learned the insurance trade at AIG. He headed up its Japanese and Korean business by 1991 and became AIG president in 1997. He quit without warning in 2000, not naming where he would go. Evan joined Ace in 2001."
[Question: What kind of religion is this?]
Plead not guilty in synagogue scuffle,
by Nancie L. Katz, New York Daily News, October 22, 2004
"Three men involved in a wild brawl over control of a prominent Brooklyn synagogue pleaded not guilty to assault charges yesterday as a fourth suspect was expected to be arraigned today. The arrests of Abraham Braun, 38, Abraham Mendlowitz, 28, and Chaim Roth, 35, grew out of an angry dispute in the borough's Satmar community. The dispute turned violent two weeks ago, when backers of two feuding rabbi brothers vying for control of the Yatev Lev temple in Williamsburg brawled inside the synagogue.A fourth suspect, Lipa Krause, 37, is expected be arraigned today on felony assault charges for the Oct. 6 brawl. The four men face up to nine years in prison, if convicted. Attorneys for the defendants arraigned yesterday told Criminal Court Justice Wayne Saitta that thousands of worshipers went berserk when Jacob Brach burst into the temple and sat in a seat reserved for the Rabbi Zalmen Teitelbaum. Teitelbaum was appointed by his father, Grand Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum, to run the congregation. But Brach is among a group of worshipers who believe Zalman's older brother, Rabbi Aron Teitelbaum, should lead the synagogue.The defendants "took offense" when Brach moved in, said prosecutor John Omara. All three allegedly attacked Brach with a door. Braun battered him with a baton, Roth choked him and Mendlowitz repeatedly kicked and punched him, according to a complaint."
The Secret World Of Marsh Mac. CEO Jeff Greenberg presides over the arrogant and tight-lipped culture of Marsh & McLennan, where conflicts of interest abound. There's more trouble coming for the world's largest insurance broker,
by Marcia Vickers, Business Week, November 1, 2004"
"When Jeffrey W. Greenberg took the helm of notoriously secretive Marsh & McLennan Cos., a $12 billion financial-services company, on Nov. 18, 1999, analysts were happily buzzing that Greenberg was a gregarious, outgoing executive ... They couldn't have been more wrong. In the past four years, Greenberg sightings have been scarce. The company, true to its secretive history, became even more cloistered. But on Oct. 14, Marsh & McLennan was forced into a harsh public spotlight when New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer charged its insurance brokerage with fraud. In a civil complaint filed in New York State Supreme Court, Spitzer alleges that the company engaged in bid-rigging, price-fixing, and accepting payoffs from insurance companies.Marsh & McLennan, the world's largest insurance broker, is paid millions annually to manage clients' risks and crises. Now it's having epic problems of the same nature itself. In a three-month investigation, BusinessWeek spoke with some 50 former and current MMC employees, insurance industry executives, and investigators -- and discovered that the firm's problems may well go far beyond Spitzer's initial charges. BusinessWeek has learned that MMC and its executives could face a raft of further legal and regulatory problems. Spitzer's office is mulling criminal charges against several execs connected with the insurance brokering scandal. It is also looking into whether Mercer, MMC's pension-consulting arm, and Putnam Investments, MMC's mutual-fund company, push clients into buying Marsh insurance products. As part of an industrywide sweep, the Securities & Exchange Commission is probing Mercer's alleged "pay to play" practices of requiring payoffs from money managers who want it to recommend them to pension clients. At the same time regulators are examining payments Putnam and other mutual-fund outfits make to companies to ensure that their funds are featured in corporate 401(k) plans. As if that's not enough, several class actions have sprung up -- at least one regarding the alleged fraud at Marsh Inc., as the insurance brokerage is known, and others involving Putnam. Already, the legal onslaught is taking a toll. On Oct. 19, Moody's Investors Service downgraded the firm's debt, citing concerns about "financial consequences" arising from Spitzer's lawsuit. And fear that some of MMC's revenue streams could dry up has knocked down its share price. In the four trading days following Spitzer's Oct. 14 announcement, the stock plummeted 48%, wiping out $11.5 billion in market cap. At the center of the storm stands Jeff Greenberg, 53 ... His company has a business model of aggressively cross-selling the products of its various divisions, which, say former and current employees and investigators, can lead to serious conflicts of interest. The potential for new conflicts rose as Greenberg pursued a policy of growth by acquisition. Add the tough financial goals that Greenberg sets for senior managers, and the pressure to bend the rules grows ... The day after Spitzer announced his charges, MMC's board expressed full confidence in the CEO. That's no surprise: Greenberg chairs the board, which Nell Minow, editor and corporate governance expert at the Corporate Library, says is fiercely loyal and "rife with cronyism." ... Perhaps William Gilman, Marsh Global Broking's executive director of marketing and a managing director, was doing the worrying ... Gilman, says Spitzer's complaints, strictly enforced the system of rigged bids and payoffs from insurers. He also rated insurers by how much they paid Marsh in contingent commissions. A September, 2003, e-mail from his office released by Spitzer reads: "We need to place our business in 2004 with those that...pay us the most." A source close to the investigation told BusinessWeek that Gilman will likely face criminal charges... Gilman may have enjoyed such power because Marsh already dominated insurance brokering. By the late '90s, Marsh had cornered 40% of the global business thanks to aggressive acquisitions. Marsh's grip tightened when it centralized control of broking activities in New York. Analysts say Marsh's dominance allows it to control pricing, the way insurance products are structured, and how premiums and payouts are disbursed. "They have both their clients and insurers by the cojones," says a competitor. But now it's MMC's top brass who are squirming. Being in the spotlight is highly uncomfortable for MMC -- long known as a patrician, white-shoe firm with an air so understated and secretive that at least one former exec likened it to working at the CIA. Its ranks have included Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, former Presidential Envoy to Iraq, who recently ran MMC's crisis-consulting business; Stephen Friedman, President George W. Bush's top economic adviser and former Goldman, Sachs & Co. co-chairman, who was an MMC senior principal; Craig Stapleton, the husband of George W. Bush's cousin Dorothy, who was an MMC president; and Lord Lang of Monkton, a former British Member of Parliament who still sits on the board. Many Marsh and Putnam execs summer by the sea in ultra-wealthy and clubby Watch Hill, R.I. ... And despite the unfolding scandals, most industry players still seem to respect Greenberg. He certainly got high marks in his early days as MMC CEO for his handling of the aftermath of the September 11 World Trade Center attacks. Three years earlier, Marsh had leased floors 93 to 100 in Tower One, and 294 MMC employees -- mostly salesmen, secretaries, and analysts in their 20s and 30s -- lost their lives after the first airplane hit. At services, Greenberg spoke movingly about the makeshift memorial that had occupied an entire wall next to the cafeteria at MMC's Sixth Avenue headquarters. Still, just days after September 11, Greenberg and top MMC execs met to figure out how to profit from the disaster. They formed a subsidiary -- Axis Specialty Ltd. -- to sell insurance to corporate customers at three or four times the rates before September 11. MMC says that it was merely "meeting market demands."For some industry players the move recalled what Greenberg did in 1992 after Hurricane Andrew slammed into South Florida and wiped out some $15 billion worth of property. Jeff, who was working for dad at AIG, sent out an internal memo stating: "This is an opportunity to get price increases now." It was leaked to the press, which had a field day -- with one newspaper branding him "a vulture." The memo moved Ralph Nader to complain and Florida regulators to freeze rates. People close to Jeff say he was humiliated by the incident. "That's a major reason why he avoids the press these days," says one ... Even if Greenberg did inherit the Marsh Mac mess, he's under fire for how he handled it. "Despite seeming like a hero for ousting [former Putnam CEO Lawrence J. ] Lasser and moving toward cleaning up Putnam, the truth is, Greenberg didn't address things until he absolutely had to," says a former colleague. In November, 2003, after Putnam was slapped with a securities-fraud charge, longtime CEO Lasser, 61, was forced to resign. Regulators alleged that company brass had been aware of illegal trading in Putnam funds since 2000 ... Earlier this year Greenberg asked mentor Smith, 69, to come out of retirement to help him. Insiders say Greenberg was intimidated by Lasser and needed Smith to negotiate with the former Putnam CEO. Smith, who has an office close to Greenberg's, was named chairman of Putnam. Greenberg also promoted Steven Spiegel, Lasser's right-hand man, to vice-chairman of Putnam."
[Another Zionist "terrorist."]
Arrested for Threats,
by Robyn Dolittle, The Eyeopener (Ryerson's Independent newspaper), October 19, 2004
"A man has been arrested in connection with death threats and hate literature found at Ryerson. Kevin Haas, 21, has been charged with two counts of threatening death, and seven counts of mischief under $5,000. The Crown is seeking the attorney general's approval to also charge Haas with hate crimes Haas is not a student at Ryerson, nor is he a member of the Ryerson community. "Haas has been a person of interest because of his relationship with a couple of people on campus," said Det. Matt Moyer, the lead investigator in the case, at a press conference held at Ryerson yesterday. Throughout the years, members of Ryerson's Jewish student group, Hillel knew of Haas from various non-Ryerson events. But the group is not acquainted with him Ryerson security had been on alert since late last week, when both the Arab and Muslim Student Associations found death threats slipped under their office doors."
[Justice in Jewish Roca Baton (a town in Florida). Our only question is: "Is the weekend prison food kosher and is there a jacuzzi?"]
West Boca man cops deal in shooting of teen prankster,
By PETER FRANCESCHINA, Sun-Sentinel, October 22, 2004
"In a surprise move, Boca Raton accountant Jay Levin pleaded guilty to manslaughter with a firearm Friday morning and was promptly sentenced to 10 years of probation by Circuit Judge Jorge LaBarga. The plea deal came less than 24 hours after a circuit jury was seated on Thursday after four days of selection. Levin's trial was supposed to start Friday morning. Under the deal, Levin will serve one year in the county jail – but on weekends only. He will also have to fulfill community service conditions and will be on probation for a number of years. Levin was charged with fatally shooting 16-year-old Mark Drewes, a neighbor, a year ago this month as Drewes and a friend played a prank in which they rang doorbells at homes in West Boca and ran away on Oct. 25. Jurors would have had to decide whether they believe Levin thought that Drewes could have been armed, as Levin told investigators. Levin, 41, told investigators he heard noises at his front door while trying to sleep. He said he got a .40-caliber semiautomatic from his closet, loaded a clip of bullets and went to the front door naked. He said when he opened the door he saw a large man with what he thought was a gun in his hand. He said he fired a shot because Drewes turned toward him and he thought he was going to be killed. The 6-foot, 2-inch Drewes died from a single gunshot to the back. The teen with Drewes, Anatoly Martynenko, initially didn't tell police that Drewes tried to tie fishing line to the door knocker, and that the knocker slipped and banged on the door. Martynenko told police Drewes didn't have anything in his hands. It was only later that Martynenko said Drewes had fishing line in his hand, but not a spool of line. High-profile Miami defense lawyer Roy Black was hired by Levin."
The rabbi and the hit men,
Court TV
"Imprisoned rabbi feels 'rage' Rabbi Fred Neulander tells ABC's Barbara Walters in an interview scheduled to air April 11 that he feels enraged that he is spending the rest of his life in prison for a crime he insists he had nothing to do with. "You have no idea how much rage I have,” Neulander told Walters during an interview taped at a New Jersey prison. Neulander was convicted in November of hiring hit man Len Jenoff, who along with an accomplice killed Neulander's wife of 28 years in 1994. Neulander also expressed his disappointment and hurt over the fact that two of his three adult children testified him against him. Hit men get 23 years Leonard Jenoff and Paul Daniels, who confessed to fatally beating Carol Neulander at the request of her husband, Rabbi Fred Neulander, were each sentenced Thursday to 23 years in prison. While Neulander is currently serving a life sentence for contracting the murder, Daniels and Jenoff will be eligible for parole in seven years."
[Real Jewish history laid bare. More "Nazi" screed from Israel's Haaretz newspaper. When a Jew squealed to non-Jews about what was going on in the Jewish community in Eastern Europe, Jews contracted to kill him and that, we learn, was institutionalized. Jews and crime syndicates have been synonymous in many places throughout the world, including today's "Russian mafia." Today it has morphed into the world apartheid movement of Zionism. Why is there "anti-Semitism?" What is it? Where does it come from? Tell it true: "anti-Semitism" has always been the reaction to widespread Jewish corruption, exploitation, racism, and tribalism. Here's the 56 millionth piece of evidence. Sweet Jewish innocents of endemic persecution through history? Think again. Look and ye shall see.]
World of our (god)fathers,
By Kobi Ben-Simhon, Haaretz (Israel), October 28, 2004
"Dr. Mordechai Zalkin, senior lecturer in the Department of the History of the Jewish People at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva, is sitting opposite shelves crammed with books. On the top shelf is a hefty collection of vodka bottles that he has brought back from his travels, during which he looked for documentary material on Jewish criminal organizations in Eastern Europe. His studies indicate that until World War II, the underworld in Warsaw, Vilna, Odessa and other large cities was controlled largely by Jewish syndicates. By "our" people ... The mystery surrounding the identity of "harodef hane'alam" (literally, the "pursuer who disappeared") remains intact. The so-called "pursuer" belonged to the realm of institutionalized crimes that were perpetrated in the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe 150 years ago. His identity was one of the communities' best-kept secrets. His task: to hire mercenary killers to operate against people who threatened the community. He was chosen from within a small leadership group and only the group's members knew his identity. The local leadership entrusted him with responsibility for the community's internal security. This man left behind a great many traces and thereby became an intriguing Jewish legend. "Every community of the time had its informers," Dr. Zalkin says. "It was a profession - just as there was a rabbi and a shoemaker, there was also an informer. As long as the informing concerned only `small' matters, everything proceeded smoothly - the informer earned his pay and nothing happened. The problem arose when the informers gave the authorities information that was liable to harm the integrity of the community concretely." This was why the communities established a security apparatus headed by an official anonymous "pursuer." There is very little documentation on the subject, Zalkin notes: "The Slonim community in White Russia inserted regulations concerning the `pursuer who disappeared' into their charter. The man's position is also mentioned in the ledger of the Minsk community. In 1836 the body of a Jew was found in the river next to the town of Oshitz, in the Ukraine. The investigation turned up the fact that his name was Yitzhak Oxman. He was an informer, usually passing on information about Jews who evaded military service or tax payments. Some people in the community decided that Oxman had gone too far and that he, along with another Jew, Shmuel Schwartzman, had to be liquidated. The police investigation got nowhere. No one in the community revealed who gave the order to murder the two Jews, but the person responsible was probably the unknown `pursuer.'" In another case, a member of the Jewish community broke under police interrogation, revealing the existence of the secret apparatus. Hirsch Ben Wolf, whose father was a well-known rabbi in Vilna, left home and converted to Christianity. The view was that a convert was liable to endanger the community he sprang from, so it was decided to kidnap Ben Wolf ... While the "pursuer" remained in the shadows, Jewish underworld figures roamed the streets without fear. Everyone knew them, they even entered Jewish literature. In his work, "In the Vale of Tears," Mendele Mocher Sforim (penname of Shalom Jacob Abramovitsch, 1835 - 1917) provides an exceptional description of one type of Jewish criminal organization, cruel and dark. In the novel Jewish mobsters use underhanded methods to kidnap Jewish girls from poor, remote towns and then force them to work as prostitutes. This was a fairly common phenomenon. The Jewish society described here by Mendele is perverted and rotten ... Dr. Zalkin is familiar with the phenomenon. He pulls a book by an American researcher from one of the shelves. The entire volume is about Jewish organizations that rounded up Jewish girls and sold them into prostitution. Zalkin says he can map the network of Jewish brothels in 19th-century Eastern Europe, but immediately reneges. "That plum I won't give you," he says with pleasure. Rubles and jewelry One of the major episodes in which a Jewish criminal organization was involved occurred in Vilna in February 1923. It received unusual coverage in the local Yiddish paper. For four consecutive days the paper's lead stories dealt with the events. A Jewish gang that called itself the "Gold Flag" kidnapped a boy from a wealthy family for ransom. According to the police, the man behind the kidnapping, Berl Kravitz, had belonged to the Capone gang in the United States a few years earlier. Zelig Levinson, the head of Gold Flag, gave the green light for the operation to proceed despite objections by some of the gang's members. The kidnap victim was Yossele Leibovitch, a student in the Hebrew Gymnasium in Vilna. His father was a money lender. The kidnapping was done by Abba Vitkin and his assistant Reuven Kantor. The two grabbed Yossele as he left school, bundling him into a peasant cart. The ransom note sent to the family declared: "Money or death." The kidnappers demanded 15,000 rubles plus gold, diamonds and pearls in return for the boy ... The rival organization to Gold Flag was the "Brothers Society," the federation of the Jewish thieves in Vilna - they even had a secretary who represented the society vis-a-vis the community's institutions. One of the society's missions was to provide legal assistance to members that were arrested and placed on trial, and to smuggle people who were wanted by the police out of the city. The Brothers Society was known for the original names its members were given - such as "Yankele the Pipe," "Avraham the Anarchist," "Tall Elinke" and "Arka Moneybags." "The thieves and criminals were part of the local folklore, part of the daily reality. The Jewish underworld was also reflected in song, in literature and in the press," Zalkin says as he takes out a book of old folk songs and recites one of them. "There is music for it, too," he says. "Here, this song tells about someone whose mother is a thief and whose father is a thief, whose sister does what she does and whose brother is a smuggler." Looking up from the page, Zalkin explains that historians ascribe great importance to folk songs. "They spring from the actual situation, they are very authentic, a very important way to express social feelings." A report dated February 1905 from the Hebrew paper Hazman ("The Time"), which was published in Vilna, sheds light on one of the sophisticated methods of operation of the Jewish criminals. They seem to have had no shame. According to the item, Gershon Sirota, one of the world's leading cantors, was robbed. "They did steal clothing and other items," the paper states, adding that the thieves let it be known to the cantor that they were ready to return the property, on one condition: "That he pay them a ransom of 25 rubles in cash and pray in the synagogue twice out of turn ... Because the prayer leader has been stingy with prayers and thus their profits were reduced and they couldn't make money." Zalkin explains: "They wanted something very precise from him. The thieves asked Sirota to give cantorial concerts in midweek, because on Shabbat people didn't bring their wallets with them to the synagogue, and the thieves needed a crowd with wallets and purses. The two concerts in fact took place, the pickpockets had plenty of work and the cantor's property was returned to him." School for thieves Vilna was not an exceptional hothouse of crime. Organizations like Gold Flag and the Brothers Society operated also in Warsaw, Odessa, Bialystok and Lvov ... The biggest gangster in Odessa, a huge city, was none other than Benya Krik" - the same one from the title of the book by the Soviet-Jewish author Isaac Babel: "Benya Krik, The Gangster, and Other Stories." Jews could be found at almost all levels of underworld activity, from the individual thief to gangs that numbered more than 100 members. The large organizations operated in the cities, which they divided into sectors among themselves. Each organization had a charter, a clear hierarchy and internal courts, and its work was divided according to different areas, such as theft, protection money, prostitution, pickpocketing and murder. The art of crime was treated seriously, as it was a major source of livelihood for many people. Between the world wars the idea was even raised of establishing a school for thieves in Vilna. It's not known if the idea was put into practice. In 19th-century Russia the best place to rob people was on the roads. There weren't enough policemen and there were a great many forests. The convoys that traveled the roads were easy pickings. Saul Ginzburg, one of the important historians of Russian Jewry, describes groups of Jewish thieves, whom he calls "toughs and predators." After the heist the thieves slipped away into the woods. A typical gang of roadside robbers numbered between 10 and 15 men, who provided for themselves and their families by means of their booty. One of the most famous roadmen, Dan Barzilai, a Jew by all accounts, who ran a well-known gang of thieves in the Warsaw area, was captured in 1874. His gang had 27 members, 14 of them Jews. They descended upon estates around Warsaw and attacked merchants' coaches on the roads, making off with furs, jewelry and horses. A Polish researcher found statements made by the accused men after their arrest, as preserved in the files of the police ... Mordechai Zalkin has spent much of the past 13 years burrowing in Eastern European archives. They are his laboratory, the place where he looks for the remote margins of Jewish history and brings them to life in his academic work. "When I work in an archive in Eastern Europe, and it doesn't matter whether it's in St. Petersburg or Moscow, one of the things that interests me is the collection of police files," he says. "What used to be classified intelligence files are now open. The police collected information as part of their work, and when I open the files, from 150 years ago, I find detailed reports about Jewish criminals. The archives have enough material for 100 historians and for 100 years, and even then they won't finish."
Zalkin is respectful of every document he finds. "This, for example, is a document from 1820, from the archives in Lithuania," he says, holding it up. It's a leaflet, in Yiddish and Polish, published by the rabbinical and political leaderships of one of the Jewish communities, threatening a boycott of anyone who engages in smuggling or gives shelter to smugglers. "At that time the Jews smuggled everything that moved and in some places the Russian authorities pressured the leaders to take action before they intervened," Zalkin relates. "A leaflet like this shows that smuggling was a concrete social phenomenon that characterized the Jewish community, not a marginal issue' ... The Haganah connection The Jewish mobsters in the United States are far more widely known than those of Eastern Europe and have been the subjects of quite a few films and books. The gangsters Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky have become legendary figures. Ten years ago Prof. Robert Rockaway, from the department of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, published the first important study of these criminal organizations (in English: "But He Was Good to His Mother: The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters," Gefen Publishing House, paperback edition, 2000). According to Rockaway's findings, the vast majority of the Jewish criminals in America were from Eastern Europe or the sons of immigrants from there. They did not continue a tradition of crime, but created a home-grown tradition in their new homeland. Generally, the reason for their criminal activity was not to obtain bread, but butter. Most of the Jewish criminals in the U.S. were from working-class families and grasped at a very early age that hard work was not a recipe for economic advancement. They didn't have capital to invest, and the underworld offered a way to get rich quick. Jews were among the biggest criminals in the U.S. at the beginning of the last century. "In terms of crime they did everything," Rockaway says. "Drugs, murder, smuggling alcohol. They had no limits. A Jew, Arnold Rothstein, was the head of the New York underworld in the 1920s. He created the largest gambling empire the U.S. have ever seen until then. He controlled most of the gangs in New York, including drugs and liquor. Rothstein was the first entrepreneur in the U.S. who created a well-oiled organization to smuggle liquor during Prohibition." Another Jew, Abner Zwillman, ruled the crime syndicate in New Jersey for 30 years from his Newark base. As a boy he acquired the nickname "Der Langer," "the Tall One" in Yiddish, or "Longy" in the Jersey version. Together with another Jew, Joseph Reinfeld, he ran the largest and most profitable contraband organization in the U.S. The two imported about 40 percent of the alcohol that entered the country during the Prohibition era. U.S. Treasury officials stated that between 1926 and 1933 Zwillman took in more than $40 million from his smuggling operation (more than half-a-billion dollars in today's terms). He translated his vast economic clout into political power. In the 1940s, the mayor of Newark, three of his deputies and four city councilmen needed his approval to get the nod for their posts. Jewish-American gangsters also helped in the struggle for Israel's creation during the 1940s. In his book, Rockaway describes how an emissary of the pre-state Haganah defense organization (the forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces) approached Meyer Lansky, one of the major players in the crime scene in America, and with his intervention, shipments of weapons and military equipment were smuggled out of New York harbor, bound for Palestine. Lansky wasn't the only one. According to Rockaway, other Jews from the underworld donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Haganah. Shmuel Isser's bunker Members of the Jewish underworld are absent from the well-known narrative of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943, but were involved in the day-to-day life of the ghetto, and their connection to the Jewish underground groups during the uprising is a fascinating episode. The Nazi Aktion to liquidate the ghetto was launched on the eve of Passover, 1943. When the Nazis encountered resistance they used flamethrowers to set fire systematically to building after building in the ghetto. On May 8 they uncovered the central bunker of the Jewish Fighting Organization, at 18 Mila Street. What is less known is that this symbol of tenacity of the revolt, the fighters' headquarters, where the commander of the uprising, Mordechai Anielewicz, fought until his death, belonged to the Jewish criminal Shmuel Isser ... The professional smugglers - a euphemism for underworld figures - lived a debauched life in the ghetto. They made a great deal of money very quickly and became the social elite. They brought in luxury items such as sweets or other goods that earned them large profits. In the book, Gutman quotes one person's testimony: "The smugglers had enormous revenues ... most of them accumulated millions. The smugglers were the richest class in the ghetto and were glaringly set apart from the gray, meager and hungry Jewish quarter. The easy profits and the uncertainty about tomorrow led the smugglers to spend all their spare time drinking, visiting night clubs and in the company of women." In the end, the admired fighters and the members of the underworld liniked up. Based on their ideological approach, the members of the Jewish Fighting Organization did not build bunkers. Their basic assumption was that they would fight to the end, so no withdrawal or escape routes were planned (the other underground group in the ghetto, the Jewish Military Organization, led by the Revisionists, built a protected, well-equipped bunker with an underground passage out of the ghetto). When the members of the Jewish Fighting Organization found that they could no longer move about and hide aboveground, because of the Germans' flamethrowers, they had no choice but to take cover in underground bunkers. The largest and best equipped of these fortified sites were those of the underworld. According to Havi Ben Sasson, 32, a doctoral student who works at the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem, the Jewish criminal organizations were part of the Warsaw landscape. In the course of a few hours of archival research and reading of testimonies, she was able to come up with a great deal of information ... False image This is actually a war of images. Dr. Zalkin wants to draw us a different social portrait. "What interests me is the ordinary person," he says. "I am not interested so much in the great rabbis and the philosophers. I am interested in the society, the people. My studies go in that direction. As a social historian, I map and classify the society, and when I came to all the places that have to do with the social history of the Jews in the 19th century and in the period between the world wars, I didn't have to go looking for crime. It was simply there, leaping up everywhere' ..."After the Holocaust," Zalkin says, "there was an inclination to view the Jewish world through a rosier prism. Zionist historiography had a vested interest in drawing a distinction between the `new Jew,' the pioneer-farmer, and the wretched, pale ghetto Jew who studied in the yeshiva and was a moneylender. The image today is that they were all righteous and saintly. But it just wasn't so."
[Abramoff is yet another sordid, wealthy Jewish scamster. Scanlon may also be Jewish.]
Abramoff Allies Keeping Distance. Lobbyist under scrutiny for dealing with Indian tribes,
by Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post, November 8, 2004
"Shortly after Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, tribal leaders of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians approached lobbyist Jack Abramoff with a problem. The tribe's Silver Star Hotel & Casino had barely opened and already legislation was moving forward in Congress calling for Indian casinos to be taxed in the same manner as Las Vegas gambling facilities. Abramoff knew how to take care of the Choctaws. He convinced the House Republican leadership that it had violated a core principle of the new conservative majority: It had raised taxes. The legislation was scuttled. With Indian gambling revenue now exceeding $16 billion annually, Abramoff's success saved the tribes hundreds of millions of dollars. Soon, he was representing half a dozen other Indian tribes, some paying his firm $2 million or more a year. In less than a decade, Abramoff's ties to Republican congressional leaders and powerbrokers in the conservative movement catapulted him into the highest ranks of Washington lobbyists. By 2003, Abramoff's clients -- including the Business Roundtable, Atofina Chemicals, Humana, Primedia Inc. and tribal clients -- paid his law firm $11.57 million in fees, one of the highest such sums in Washington. Paving the way for Abramoff's rise were his ties to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist and former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed. Abramoff's success lay in his ability to portray clients as exemplars of successful free market competition under attack by overzealous Democrats. On behalf of Indian tribes and other clients, Abramoff convinced the GOP majority that Democrats were bent on regulating and taxing the entrepreneurial vitality out of the U.S. economy. In effect, he turned conservative orthodoxy into a cash spigot ... Now, however, the $66 million that Abramoff and his business partner, public affairs consultant Michael Scanlon, charged Indian tribes has become the focus of separate investigations by a federal grand jury and Congress. The controversy has produced disclosures embarrassing to some of Abramoff's political allies. Already, the inquiries have revealed that Abramoff and Scanlon -- DeLay's former spokesman -- channeled money to Reed and Norquist's organizations. Reed has been forced to explain receipt of money channeled from casinos through Abramoff; Norquist, in turn, has denied that the payments he received drove the pro-tribe agenda of Americans for Tax Reform ... The 1994 Republican takeover of the House and Senate was a crucial moment in Abramoff's transformation from a conservative ideologue into an influential lobbyist. He became a valuable commodity, a conservative K Street figure with direct access to the newly powerful right wing of the Republican Party ... Two years later, Abramoff and Norquist took over Citizens for America, a conservative advocacy group created by drugstore magnate Lewis Lehrman. After the two arranged a costly "summit meeting" of anti-communist leaders in Angola, Lehrman, according to media accounts, let Abramoff and Norquist go. In 1986, Abramoff became chairman of the International Freedom Foundation, which was secretly financed with $1.5 million a year from the white South African government, according to sworn testimony to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Mirijanian said Abramoff denies receiving money from the South African government. Between 1986 and 1994, Abramoff was president of Regency Entertainment Group, a company that financed ideologically conservative movies, including the 1989 film "Red Scorpion' ... In 1995, Abramoff took on another major client, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, an American protectorate in the Pacific. Again, he capitalized on his ability to exploit conservative ideology. The Marianas sought to retain exemptions from U.S. immigration and labor laws to import laborers from China at $3.05 an hour -- $2 under the federal minimum wage -- to make garments labeled "Made in the U.S.A." Abramoff portrayed the Marianas as a case study of the success of the free market unfettered by wage and immigration laws."
[JTR contributor's note: "It may be necessary to add 'Jewed up' to go beside 'Jewed down' in the vocabulary of Jewish business practices." Our note: another side benefit of Jewish/Israeli immigration to America. Let's see, all these Israeli moving company predators, the Jewish "Russian mafia," etc.]
Movers go on trial for alleged extortion,
By Peter Lewis, Seattle Times, November 15, 2004
"Four people go on trial in federal court in Tacoma today on charges they extorted customers in a household-moving scam by luring them with low prices, then jacking up costs and holding their goods hostage until they paid. Now defunct, Woodinville-based Nationwide Moving Systems harmed more than 50 people, the government alleges. Actual and intended losses — including the amount the defendants tried to defraud customers out of — exceeded $1 million, prosecutors contend.
According to the government, the defendants would delay notifying customers of the inflated prices until after their goods were loaded. This had the effect of squeezing customers, the prosecutors say. Some customers, for example, faced penalties from airlines if they canceled previously scheduled travel arrangements; some were under pressure because they had to relocate for a new job. Others were stuck because their leases had expired or their homes had been sold and so they had nowhere to stay, the government alleges. Of seven people originally charged, three — Martin Kirk II, 25, and Michael Airgood and Kristen Klein, both 24 — have pleaded guilty and have agreed to testify against the remaining defendants. They are: Erik Deri, 33; Yosef Nahum, 55; and Yuval Derei, 30, all of whom are Israeli nationals facing deportation if convicted. Yuval Derei is Erik Deri's brother. The fourth defendant, American-born Tanya Deri, 29, is Deri's wife. According to charging papers, the investigation was sparked after a March 2003 Seattle Times article described customer experiences with Nationwide. Each of the defendants is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and interfere with commerce by extortion, which carries up to five years' imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. In addition, they face multiple counts of fraud and attempted extortion, each of which carries up to 20 years and a $250,000 fine. Some of the defendants face additional charges ... The Seattle prosecution is similar to other recent federal extortion cases that implicated Israeli-run moving companies around the country, including California, New York and Florida. In virtually every instance, the defendants pleaded guilty or were convicted by jurors, officials said."
[James Jackson (above), Sony lawyer and vice president of legal affairs. Look at his photograph. What do you think? Japanese? Or Korean?]
Filipina awarded 551,000 for being 'enslaved' by Hollywood executive,
News Designerz, August 27, 2004
"A Californian jury awarded 551,000 dollars in damages to Filipina immigrant who claimed she was kept as a domestic slave for a year by a Hollywood movie executive. Former schoolteacher Nena Ruiz testified in a civil trial that James Jackson, Sony Pictures Entertainment's vice president of legal affairs, and his wife refused to allow her leave their employ, paid her a pittance and made her sleep in a dog's bed. "We're very pleased," said Dan Stormer, a lawyer who represented Ruiz at the trial in the Los Angeles area of Santa Monica. "This will send a message to all employers that they cannot exploit workers. Juries will have no hesitation in finding them liable for their bad deeds," he added. Movie studio boss Jackson denied the allegations during the trial, telling the jury that he and his wife, Elizabeth, tried to send 61-year-old Ruiz, back to the Philippines several times but that she begged to stay ... Ruiz told the court she had wanted to go home but that the Jacksons forced her to stay and threatened to notify a law enforcement agency if she left, the Daily Journal newspaper reported. She also alleged the couple made her sleep in a bed designed for a dog, paid her 300 dollars for an entire year's work and locked up her passport, the paper reported earlier in the trial. US federal prosecutors said earlier this month that a criminal investigation into the claims by Ruiz was underway. Attorney Stormer said the Los Angeles Superior Court jury decided in his client's favour on all of her claims, including involuntary servitude, false imprisonment, invasion of privacy, negligence and wage violations. Of the total financial award made to Ruiz, 275,000 dollars was to compensate her for the Jacksons' failure to pay her adequately for her services, Stormer said. The jury is scheduled to begin deliberating on whether to award any punitive damages on Friday."
Jewish Prisoner Services International (JPSI),
"Provide[s] an international network for individuals and organizations serving Jewish prisoners and their families ... Raise[s] the consciousness of Jewish communities about the issue of Jews in prison."
The Einhorn Affair
[Web site detailing the story of a Jewish murderer who fled the U.S. to France]
Einhorn's Flight from Justice,
Court TV
[A couple things about this next article. Shall we take it from the Horse's Mouth: as self-described below, Jews aren't part of America? So, Jews who hear this woman have a choice. They can refute her, or their silence is tacit acknowledgement that her assessment of an absolute Jewish otherness and estrangement from their non-Jewish neighbors is true. Second point: Ms. Cardin, the so-called "Jewish hero" who has been the head of so many Jewish Lobby organizations, has an interesting husband. Here's the Jewish Lobby crowd, from the top: In 1994, in the (Jewish) Forward's list of the most important Jewish American leaders, Shoshana Cardin was noted as "chief of staff of American Jewry" and "past chairman of almost everything," from the United Jewish Appeal to the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. The Forward also noted that she "stood by her husband [Jerome Cardin] with dignity when he went to prison for his role in a Maryland savings-and-loan scandal." [FORWARD, p. 11-18-94, p. 11] Cardin was released from prison early for medical reasons, but an associate -- Jeffrey Levitt -- spent seven years behind bars.
Cardin Makes Waves at GA,
by Neil Rubin, Baltimore Jewish Times, November 19, 2004
"A day before she was slated to once again address the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities — the continent's largest annual gathering of Jewish leaders — Baltimore's Shoshana S. Cardin predicted that her comments would create a stir. Once again, she hit the mark. "I have always felt that we are guests in a host country," she said during her 20-minute address to one of the most well-attended sessions of the Nov. 14-16 conference, a Monday afternoon plenary focusing on the 2004 presidential election. "The calendar is Christian. We are guests in a wonderful, wonderful society because we are free to worship as we feel. "But once again, we are afraid." Then, clearly irritating some Jewish Republicans in the crowd, she noted that President Bush has said that he is willing to "reach out to all who share my goal." Mrs. Cardin paused and said, "That doesn't exactly include me, but I don't know if it includes you. ... To reach out means to all, not only to those who share his goals. That picture I painted is disconcerting, but it's realistic' ... At the rest of the G.A., break-out sessions offered the usual retinue of virtually every Jewish issue — ranging from combating divestment in Israel by the Presbyterians to "raising money on Mars," from Israel's Machiavellian politics to feeding the poor at home, from promoting women leaders to welcoming gays and lesbians ... The candid comments were characteristic for someone known nationally as the First Lady of Jewish volunteers, and part of why Mrs. Cardin was honored the next morning as the first lay leader to have an issue of the Journal of Jewish Communal Service dedicated in his or her honor, which was made possible by a gift from her children and several Jewish groups, including the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore ... Dr. Huberman noted Mrs. Cardin's "star-studded resume." Indeed, her many titles — often the first time such positions were held by a woman — have included being the top volunteer at the Associated, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, CLAL: The Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Council of Jewish Federations and Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Today, she is actively helping direct the growth of the Shoshana S. Cardin Jewish Community High School, now in its second academic year. Her most publicized leadership moments came in both Jerusalem and Washington, D.C. In 1989, she told Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, then contemplating whether to change the Jewish state's definition of "Who Is A Jew?," that he should not "interfere with laws of personal status." Then, two years later, she told President George H.W. Bush that he was unknowingly fomenting anti-Semitism by the way in which he commented on roughly 1,000 Jewish lobbyists who converged on Capitol Hill to lobby against the administration's desires to withhold loan guarantees over disagreements with the Israeli government. Marc B. Terrill, president of the Associated, in co-presenting the award with Dr. Huberman, referred to Mrs. Cardin as "a Jewish hero" and "the embodiment, the personification of everything that is good. She stands for honor, intelligence, passion and eloquence' ... In ending, Mrs. Cardin noted that her three children are Jewish communal professionals "because we believe in it so deeply, and they are so wonderful."
[Another Jewish Internet Sleazeball Department. This article is a few months old. But the next time your computer freezes up with spyware/adware garbage, and it's impossible to get rid of, tip your hat to the likes of WhenU.com CEO Avi Naider.]
High-tech Issue: Rooting Out The Spy In Your Computer,
by John Schwartz and Saul Hansell, The Financial Express, April 27, 2004
"People came from all over to attend a recent Federal Trade Commission workshop in Washington on spyware, one more plague of the digital age. They all agreed on one thing: They could not define spyware. "Spyware is in the eye of the beholder,” said Ari Schwartz, associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a policy research group in Washington. In general, spyware - called adware by its proponents - is software that shows up on a computer unannounced, often because the owner has signed up for a free service like a file-sharing network or has agreed to receive messages in return for gaining access to a Web site. The software usually delivers pop-up ads, but sometimes performs other actions without the owner understanding what is going on or how to stop it. The controversy involves more than consumer inconvenience, technology companies say. Such software is now the No 1 reason that consumers call Dell for technical support, Maureen Cushman, legal counsel to Dell’s consumer division, told a meeting of the trade commission. “It damages the Dell brand,” she said. The activities of spyware programs can be relatively benign, obnoxious or even blatantly illegal. Computer users may be driven to distraction by pop-up ads, some pornographic, or find that their PCs become sluggish, laboring under the computing burden of the unwanted programs. Some programs monitor Internet use or even record keystrokes, such as password entries. Given its range of activities, fighting spyware is a minefield for lawmakers and regulators, but that did not stop one state, Utah, from stepping in. On March 23, Governor Olene S Walker signed the nation’s first anti-spyware law, which prohibits software that is installed without the user’s consent and programs that send personal information. The anti-spyware efforts, like the recent federal move to regulate spam, are following what has become an increasingly familiar pattern in online technology. In the first phase, after a honeymoon period of increasing popularity, unpleasant practices emerge: Once a broad swath of the public had been introduced to the wonders of the Internet, it found itself bombarded with spam, advertising pop-ups and full-blown spyware. In the second phase, consumers howl and politicians get concerned, but the affected industries urge caution, arguing that regulation will stifle innovation and hurt legitimate business. Eventually, phase three arrives: States begin to enact laws against the offending practice. Faced with the prospect of a patchwork of possibly conflicting legislation, the industry asks Congress for a uniform, but often less stringent, federal law. Three other states - California, Iowa and Virginia - are considering legislation aimed at spyware, so it is no surprise that federal legislation has been introduced ... Online companies greeted Utah’s move with apprehension ... The new law was immediately challenged by WhenU.com, a company based in New York that puts Internet advertising software on people’s machines. “If the statute goes into effect it’s going to outlaw what WhenU does,” said Jeffrey D Neuburger, a lawyer in New York who deals with high-technology issues but does not represent anybody involved in the case. Neuburger said that he was no fan of the practices of WhenU and its chief competitor, the Claria Corp., once known as Gator. But he argued that the Utah law was drafted too broadly and would lead to “frivolous litigation” by companies that say they have been victimized by adware. The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Stephen H Urquhart, said that the law focused on giving computer owners notice of what was being done to their machines and the opportunity to refuse the software or remove it easily. “I’m convinced over 75 per cent of the people who have this on their computers have no idea it’s there,” he said ... The chief executive of WhenU, Avi Z. Naider, said that the issue should be resolved in Congress, not on a state-by-state basis. He also said that any law should focus on stopping “rogue behavior,” not outlawing technologies like his company’s software-based advertising. He said that WhenU’s software had been installed on 100 million machines, and was no longer active on 80 million, indicating it was easy to remove. Naider’s argument is not convincing to Zeidner. “His business model, and Gator’s business model,” Zeidner said, “is to put this on computers faster than the public is being educated and removing it from their computers.”
[While we're on the subject of Jews destroying the civil protocols of the Internet to make a buck, here's another older article. Where do you think "spam" came from? Surprise!]
The father of modern spam speaks,
by Sharael Feist, C Net, March 22, 2002
"On April 12, 1994, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, two immigration lawyers from Arizona, flooded the Internet with a mass mailing promoting their law firm's advisory services. In doing so, this unknown husband and wife team changed the Internet with one keystroke. The "Green Card Lottery" notice they sent out reached thousands of people using Usenet newsgroups and, on one level, qualified as an unqualified success. But it also triggered a firestorm of criticism from purists outraged at a breach of the informal rules prohibiting the transmission of unsolicited junk mail and advertising over the Internet. Until then, government and academic researchers used the Internet to correspond and share information. But with the emergence of hypertext and Web browsers, the commercial possibilities had attracted the attention of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Indeed, for Canter and Siegel, it was simply business. But along the way, they inadvertently opened a Pandora's box. Subsequent copycats around the globe seized upon the example to use--some would say abuse--the Internet to promote unwanted commercial solicitations. Modern Internet spam had arrived. Much has changed since then. The spamming duo, who wrote a book, "How to Make a Fortune on the Internet Superhighway," divorced in 1996, and Siegel died in 2000. Canter was disbarred from practicing law by the Supreme Court of Tennessee in 1997, partly because of his e-mail advertising campaign." Canter hasn't practiced law since 1995. Six years ago, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he's been developing software to help traders analyze stock options. With the eight-year anniversary of that signal event just over the bend, CNET News.com caught up with Canter to get his thoughts on the role he played in helping introduce Internet-based spam into the modern lexicon."
I didn't kill rabbi, says transvestite,
by Nancie L. Katz, New York Daily News, November 30, 2004
"A cross-dressing Orthodox Jew pleaded not guilty yesterday to killing an elderly Brooklyn rabbi. Howard Goldstein was arrested last month at the victim's apartment wearing pink pumps, blue eye shadow and red lipstick. He is suspected of using a baseball bat to kill 75-year-old Rabbi Rahamin Sultan, and then living with the man's decomposing body for five days. Goldstein, who is undergoing psychiatric evaluation at Bellevue Hospital, showed up yesterday in Brooklyn Supreme Court in a white T-shirt, khaki paints and rubber-soled, blue canvas shoes. He could face up to 26 years to life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder and other charges. Goldstein's attorney, Jay Cohen, said he hopes to show that the Army veteran, who relatives say has a long history of psychiatric trouble, is insane."
Ex-workers detail tactics of movers,
by Peter Lewis, Seattle Times, December 1, 2004
"A former moving-company foreman told jurors yesterday that he and his co-workers used to brag and laugh about how they had fleeced customers by overcharging for household moving jobs. "We were happy," recounted Michael Airgood, referring to how much extra money they brought in by cheating people. Airgood testified as part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors. The potentially damaging testimony came at the start of week three in the government's case against now-defunct Nationwide Moving Systems of Woodinville and four people charged with extorting customers. They are accused of luring customers with low prices, then jacking up costs and holding their goods hostage until they paid. Airgood, 24, of Lynnwood said his superiors taught him to get the customer's signature on certain forms as soon as the moving crew showed up and before the forms were fully filled out. He also would tell them the move could not start unless they signed. Then, after their stuff was loaded and the truck was locked, he would present customers with a significantly higher price than the original estimate and point to the signed forms, which gave the movers permission to charge more than the original quote and to hold the goods until the price was paid, Airgood testified. The government has identified more than 50 customers who were harmed between the time Nationwide was formed in May 2002 and was shut down in July 2003. Actual and intended losses — including the amount the defendants tried to defraud customers out of — exceeded $1 million, prosecutors contend. "Unhappy customers" In opening statements, defense attorneys denied that the business was trying to defraud customers. They contended that moving-company customers themselves were to blame for the higher prices because they underestimated how much stuff they had. "All businesses have unhappy customers," said defense attorney Bob Leen, who represents Erik Deri, who ran the company. On trial along with Deri, 33, are Yosef Nahum, 55, and Yuval Derei, 30. All are Israeli nationals facing deportation if convicted. Yuval Derei is Erik Deri's brother but spells his name differently. The fourth defendant, American-born Tanya Deri, 29, is Deri's wife.
Airgood is one of three other people, including Kristen Klein and Martin Kirk II, who were also charged but reached deals with the government and agreed to testify against their former associates. Yesterday, Airgood said Deri, Nahum and Derei taught him how to drive up prices. Those techniques included underpacking boxes, leaving gaps inside trucks when furniture and boxes were loaded and lying to customers about the size of the trucks into which their stuff was loaded, Airgood testified. Airgood, who worked for Nationwide as a packer and later as a foreman, has pleaded guilty to six counts of extortion. His sentencing won't occur until the trial is over. His common-law wife, Klein, also 24, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud. She testified that she worked as a secretary and that her superiors taught her how to lure customers with phony estimates. For example, if a customer said they had a sofa, she would indicate they had a love seat when she entered an inventory of their items into a computer program. By indicating a smaller piece of furniture, the program would give a lower estimate. Then when the movers showed up to load the goods, the belongings would take up more room. The point was to "reel in" customers by offering unbeatable prices, Klein testified."
[Agriprocessors is the notorious Chabad slaughterhouse highlighted in Stephen Bloom's 2000 book, Postville, about the Chabad takeover over of that that town. And won't it be intriguing if Rabbi Chaim Kohn discovers, to his shock, that Hindus have it right about reincarnation, and the dear rabbi returns as a one-legged steer to be horrifically tortured in his own slaughterhouse. That's karma: what goes around, comes around -- a premise Jewry has apparently never grasped.]
Videos Cited in Calling Kosher Slaughterhouse Inhumane,
by Donald G. McNeil, Jr., New York Times, December 1, 2004
"An animal rights group released grisly undercover videotapes yesterday showing steers in a major kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa staggering and bellowing long after their throats were cut. The plant, run by AgriProcessors Inc. in Postville, Iowa, is being denounced as inhumane by the group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and by several experts on animal science and kosher practice. But the plant's supervising rabbi said the tapes were "testimony that this is being done right." And representatives of the Orthodox Union, the leading organization that certifies kosher products, said that while the pictures were not pretty, they did not make the case that the slaughterhouse had violated kosher law. The plant is the country's largest producer of meat certified as glatt kosher, the highest standard for cleanliness under kosher law. ("Glatt" means smooth, or free of the lung blemishes that might indicate disease.) Employing 600 people and selling under the popular Aaron's Best brand, it is the only American plant allowed to export to Israel. On the 30-minute tape, each animal is placed in a rotating drum so it can be killed while upside down, as required by Orthodox rabbis in Israel. Immediately after the ritual slaughterer, or shochet, has slit the throat, another worker tears open each steer's neck with a hook and pulls out the trachea and esophagus. The drum turns, and the steer is dumped on the floor. One after another, animals with dangling windpipes stand up or try to; in one case, death takes three minutes. In most kosher plants, animals are tightly penned while their throats are slashed, and the organs are not torn; tearing by the shochet is forbidden under Jewish law. In nonkosher plants, animals by law must be made unconscious before they are killed ... Federal law views properly conducted religious slaughter as humane, and so allows Jewish and Muslim slaughterhouses to forgo stunning. But the rules outlaw leaving animals killed that way conscious "for an extended period of time." Rabbi Chaim Kohn, of the AgriProcessors plant, says the steers feel nothing, even as they struggle on the floor and slam their heads into walls. "Unconsciousness and the external behavior of the animal have nothing to do with shechita," he said. Because the throat-tearing happens after the shochet's cut, the rabbi said, it does not render the animal nonkosher. Other experts in kosher law were divided on the issue. Rabbis Menachem Genack and Yisroel Belsky, the chief experts for the Orthodox Union, which certifies more than 600,000 products as kosher, including Aaron's Best meats, said the killings on the tape, while "gruesome," appeared kosher because the shochet checked to make sure he had severed both the trachea and esophagus ...But a spokesman for Shechita U.K., a British group that defends ritual slaughter against the protests of animal rights advocates, said after watching the tape with a rabbi and a British shochet that he "felt queasy," and added, "I don't know what that is, but it's not shechita." The spokesman, Shimon Cohen, said that in Britain an animal must be restrained for 30 seconds to bleed, and no second cut is allowed. Done correctly, Mr. Cohen said, a shochet's cut must produce instantaneous unconsciousness, so AgriProcessors' meat could not be considered kosher. Asked how top authorities could disagree over such a fundamental issue, he replied: "Well, we don't have a pope. You do find rabbis who interpret things in different ways." Dr. Temple Grandin, a veterinarian at Colorado State University who designs humane slaughter plants, viewed the tape last week without knowing the location. She called it "an atrocious abomination, nothing like I've seen in 30 kosher plants I've visited here and in England, France, Ireland and Canada." Dr. Grandin said the throat-tearing violated federal anticruelty law. "Nothing in the Humane Slaughter Act says you can start dismembering an animal while it's still conscious," she said ... The plant is at the center of a 2000 book, "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America," by Stephen G. Bloom, which described the tensions in the tiny farming town between residents and Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn who took over its defunct slaughterhouse in 1987."
PETA Undercover: Terrified Cows Stagger to Their Feet After Workers Rip Their Throat. Investigations Reveal Slaughter Horrors at Agriprocessors,
GoVeg
"Every day, hundreds of animals endure unimaginable cruelty at an Iowa slaughterhouse. Maybe after seeing the fear and pain on the faces of the animals we captured on videotape, you will go vegetarian and persuade family and friends to join you. If you are already vegetarian or vegan, there’s still a lot you can do to help. And please don’t think that if you don’t eat kosher meat, this doesn’t apply to you: Kosher slaughter is more than twice as well regulated as conventional slaughter and is supposed to be more humane. Also, most meat from kosher slaughterhouses is sold as conventional, not kosher meat ... Kosher slaughter is supposed to be kinder and quicker than standard slaughter methods, but our latest investigation shows that, at least at one kosher slaughterhouse, that is definitely not the case. PETA's Request for Reforms Go Unheeded ... In early 2003, PETA received complaints alleging violations of kosher and federal law at AgriProcessors, the world’s largest glatt kosher slaughterhouse and the producer of Rubashkin’s and Aaron’s Best meats. In May 2003, PETA wrote to officials at the company and asked them to investigate and take steps to make certain that cruelty was not occurring there. We suggested that the plant hire Dr. Temple Grandin, the country’s leading slaughter expert, who has helped advise on matters of kosher slaughter systems, to advise them on how to avoid some of the worst abuses. AgriProcessors had its attorneys write back to us asserting, “Kosher slaughter is being conducted in accordance with the letter and spirit of Jewish law, which prescribes the most humane treatment of animals that has been known throughout human history.” The tone of the letter was not persuasive, so we took a look ourselves ... AgriProcessor workers ignore the suffering of cows who are still sensible to pain after having their throats slit by the ritual slaughterer. The animals stagger and slip in blood while their tracheas dangle from their necks ... Watch the five-minute video ... Watch the full-length video."
[The ADL pops up behind these news stories like a satire of itself, cartoon-like -- a great black, smothering shadow. Criticize Jewish behavior somewhere, say, uh, in a slaughterhouse? The ADL sends out a news release to its Judeocentric media lackies: Beware the vegetarian "terrorists"]
Anti-Defamation League Report Defines Ecoterrorism Threat in U.S.,
U.S. Newswire, December 1, 2004
"Terrorism in the name of animal and environmental protection is a growing concern for U.S. law enforcement. Radical environmental and animal rights groups have claimed responsibility for hundreds of crimes and acts of terrorism, including arson, bombings, vandalism and harassment. A new report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) examines the threat currently posed by ecoterrorists, including the major organizations and individuals behind the trend. Ecoterrorism: Extremism in the Animal Rights and Environmental Movements, describes the motives, strategies and activities of this violent crusade, which federal authorities describe as the most active form of domestic terrorism in recent years. The report is the latest entry in the League's comprehensive online encyclopedia of extremist individuals, groups and movements in the United States, Extremism in America, available at http://www.adl.org/Extremism."
[Another angle on Chabad's wonderful Agriprocessors company in the town the racist, tribalist, ultra-Orthodox Jew Klux Klan is destroying: Postville, Iowa. Insofar as the Jews of Postville are in a continuous war against the local non-Jewish community, and Iraqi Arabs across the world haven't done a thing to harm the United States, why not send a few marine divisions to clean up Agriprocessors?]
EPA files suit against Agriprocessors,
by Orlan Love, The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), November 1, 2004
"The Environmental Protection Agency filed suit Wednesday against Agriprocessors Inc., claiming the Postville meat packer has repeatedly exceeded limitations on the pollutants it can legally discharge from its plant into the municipal wastewater treatment facility. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Cedar Rapids, alleges that Agriprocessors has repeatedly violated the federal Clean Water Act and related pre-treatment regulations by exceeding limitations on total flow, biochemical oxygen demand, total suspended solids and chloride. The federal government seeks an injunction against further violations and unspecified civil penalties. The suit also alleges that discharges from Agriprocessors have caused the city to violate effluent limits specified in its wastewater discharge permit. It also alleges that Agriprocessors failed to meet reporting requirements for anhydrous ammonia used at the plant ... Agriprocessors, Allamakee County's leading employer with more than 600 workers, came under attack earlier this week when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, urging the agency to prosecute the kosher and standard meat processor for alleged violations of the federal Humane Methods of Livestock Slaughter Act."
Federal prosecutors want doctor to forfeit $2 million,
by Peter Shinkle, Chronic Pain Mission, June 18, 2004
"Prosecutors are seeking to seize $2 million from an elderly physician in
Jefferson County who was arrested Friday on federal charges that he got the
money by writing 50,000 illegal prescriptions for 2.5 million doses of
controlled drugs. Dr. Harry Meyer Katz, 78, who practices in Cedar Hill, is charged in 14 counts with causing the illegal dispensation of prescription drugs, including diazapam, commonly called Valium, and alprazolam, commonly called Xanax. His attorney, Vernon Dawdy, rejected the charges and said Katz will plead not guilty. "It's not the facts, and I don't think they can prove that," Dawdy said. Prosecutors said the maximum penalty on conviction would be three to five years in prison, with a $250,000 fine on each count. In a separate inquiry, the Missouri Administrative Hearing Commission reported last year that Katz, who was convicted of five counts of Medicare fraud in Florida in 1971, routinely saw up to 500 patients per week. It also alleged that he overprescribed painkillers to several patients whom he did not evaluate properly, and was repeatedly negligent. After Katz prescribed a painkiller nine times to one patient, called "PH," the patient's mother complained that "PH" had no medical condition and was abusing the drug, the commission said. But in 1998 and 1999, Katz issued 10 prescriptions for the anti-anxiety drug Xanax to the same patient under an assumed name, it said. The commission reported that Katz lived in his office - which was so small that it had no room for an examination table - and received patients there for 12 hours a day on Mondays through Saturdays, and 10 hours on Sundays. It also reported that Katz lost his license in three other states as a result of his criminal conviction but that Missouri renewed his license in 1973 ... According to the indictment, from June 1, 1999, to the present, Katz wrote 50,000 prescriptions and received about $2 million ... U.S. Attorney Jim Martin said his office and the Drug Enforcement Administration will "aggressively" prosecute any doctor who illegally prescribes controlled substances. "The illegal distribution of prescription drugs can be just as dangerous as the sale of street drugs," he said."