Philadelphia Congressman's Son, Chaka Fattah Jr., Convicted of Fraud and Tax Charges

The U.S. Justice Department released the below link:

A federal jury today convicted Chaka Fattah Jr., 32, of Philadelphia, of 22 of 23 counts in connection with a scheme to defraud banks, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Philadelphia School District of hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Senior U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania scheduled a sentencing hearing for Feb. 3, 2015.  The defendant faces a substantial term of imprisonment, restitution to the IRS, fines, a special assessment and supervised release.

Between 2005 and 2012, Fattah Jr.: made false statements to banks to obtain loans; made false statements to banks and the Small Business Administration (SBA) to settle loans for less than what was owed; filed false federal income tax returns; failed to pay federal taxes; and stole from the Philadelphia School District, which had received federal funds for its operations.

The evidence at trial showed that Fattah Jr. obtained numerous business lines of credit through false and fraudulent statements to local banks and used the funds primarily for personal expenses – including car payments, gambling debts, restaurant and club expenses, utilities, clothing, electronics, retail purchases, charitable donations, jewelry, legal fees and personal credit card expenses – rather than business expenses, as the loan terms required.  These false statements involved fictitious earnings information that Fattah Jr. supplied for entrepreneurial companies which he claimed that he operated, including 259 Strategies LLC (259 Strategies) and Chaka Fattah Jr. & Associates.  Fattah Jr. claimed that 259 Strategies provided educational consulting, diversity consulting and audit services, technical assistance, community relations and organizational development services to a select group of clients.  He claimed that Chaka Fattah Jr. & Associates performed research and consulting concerning the development of computer centers. 

In 2011, Fattah Jr. received a loan from United Bank for $50,000 intended for “working capital to support business operations.”  Instead, he used the funds to make car payments, to pay down more than $15,000 in personal credit card debt and to pay more than $33,000 in gambling debts at area casinos.  The charges total approximately $206,000 in bank loans received through false misrepresentations or fraud. 

Fattah Jr. defaulted on several lines of credit and provided false information to two banks, to the SBA, which had insured the bank loans, and to an SBA investigator in order to attempt to settle the debts for less than what was owed.  Fattah Jr. falsely claimed that 259 Strategies was out of business at the time he was attempting to settle his debts in 2010, and that he was earning only $2,500 per month.  In fact, during 2010, 259 Strategies was intact and, through this company, Fattah Jr. was earning between $6,250 and approximately $37,500 per month.

Fattah Jr. also stole funds supplied by the federal government to the Philadelphia School District, while acting as the chief operating officer of a Philadelphia company that provided educational services to “at risk” and other students through contracts with the school district.  Fattah Jr. provided false expense information and inflated salary figures for teachers and administrative staff on budgets submitted to the school district, which made payments consistent with the budgets provided and concealed the theft of the funds from the school district.

For tax years 2005, 2006 and 2008, Fattah Jr. filed false federal income tax returns and failed to pay federal income tax on a timely basis of approximately $51,141 on more than $150,000 in reported income during 2010. 

The case was investigated by the FBI, IRS-Criminal Investigation and the U.S. Department of Education, with the cooperation of the Philadelphia School District’s Office of Inspector General.   It is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul L. Gray and Trial Attorney Eric Gibson of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section.

Quentin Tarantino Called Police To Investigate 'Home Intruder' Less Than Two Weeks Before Branding Them 'Murderers' During Controversial New York Rally

Darren Boyle at the Daily Mail reports that police critic Quentin Tarantino call the LAPD just two weeks before he offered a rant against police officers in New York.

Quentin Tarantino called police 13 days before his controversial appearance at a New York rally where he branded some officers 'murderers' over the killings of several unarmed black people. 

The Pulp Fiction director rang the LAPD when he found someone wandering around the back yard of his Los Angeles home. The 6'1-tall star asked the man to leave, but when he refused, the movie maker called 911. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3303431/Quentin-Tarantino-called-police-investigate-home-intruder-two-weeks-branding-murderers-controversial-New-York-rally.html#ixzz3qdKKVO1h

Secret Agents, From Babylonian Tablets To James Bond: How Ian Fleming’s Series Reflects The Real Spy World

British/American historian Amanda Foreman, author of World On Fire, offers a defense of Ian Fleming's James Bond thrillers for the Wall Street Journal.   

James Bond may have won the hearts and wallets of audiences world-wide—“Spectre,” the latest movie in the series, opens Friday after shattering box-office records in the U.K.—but armchair experts have always grumbled that Ian Fleming’s world of spies is too exciting to have any relationship to reality or history.

The critics are wrong. Fleming, who died in 1964, packed his books and plots with real historical allusions, beginning with the secrecy classification “for your eyes only.” The origins of the term go back to the Mesopotamians.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/secret-agents-from-babylon-tablets-to-james-bond-1446654155

Note: I highly recommend Amanda Foreman's book on the British role in the American Civil War. 

Stranger Than Fiction: Illinois Police Officer Whose Death Prompted A Manhunt Was Killed In ‘Carefully Staged Suicide,’ Officials Say

Mark Berman and Mark Guarino at the Washington Post offer a strange twist to a police officer thought to be killed in the line of duty.

In September, Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz (seen above in his official photo) , a police officer in Fox Lake, Ill., radioed in one morning to say he was pursuing three possible suspects. A short time later, he was found with a fatal gunshot wound, sparking a massive manhunt that sent scores of police officers and federal agents sweeping through the area.

Two months later, police now say that Gliniewicz, a man known to many as “G.I. Joe,” was not among the handful of police officers shot and killed by a suspect this year. Instead, investigators say they determined that he took his own life after a long run of stealing money from his own police force.

Gliniewicz’s death “was a carefully staged suicide,” Cmdr. George Filenko of the task force said during a news conference Wednesday morning. “We have determined that this suicide was the end result of extensive criminal acts that Gliniewicz had committed.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/11/04/illinois-police-officer-whose-death-prompted-a-manhunt-was-killed-in-a-carefully-staged-suicide-officials-say/?wpisrc=al_alert-national

DEA Releases 2015 Drug Threat Assessment: Heroin and Painkiller Abuse Continue To Concern

The DEA released the below information:

 (WASHINGTON) – DEA Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg today announced results from the 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA), which finds that drug overdose deaths are the leading cause of injury death in the United States, ahead of motor vehicle deaths and firearms.  In 2013, over 46,000 people in the United States died from drug overdose and more than half of those were caused by prescription painkillers and heroin.

“Sadly this report confirms what we’ve known for some time: drug abuse is ending too many lives while destroying families and communities,” Acting Administrator Rosenberg said. “We must stop drug abuse before it begins by teaching young people at an even earlier age about its many dangers and horrors. Law enforcement must continue to have the tools it needs to attack criminal groups who facilitate drug addiction. More Americans need treatment options so they can move forward living drug-free lives. We cannot continue to accept these lives lost without serious future action.”

The 2015 NDTA also found that Mexican transnational criminal organizations are the biggest criminal threat to the United States, and are the primary suppliers of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana. These groups are responsible for the extreme violence seen in Mexico, as they battle for turf and attack public officials and innocent civilians.  Here in the U.S., affiliated and violent gangs are increasingly a threat to the safety and security of our communities. They profit by buying drugs from regional Mexican criminal affiliates and then supply American streets and communities with these dangerous drugs, particularly heroin.  

Other 2015 NDTA findings:

·         Heroin availability is up across the country, as are abusers, overdoses, and overdose deaths. Law enforcement nationwide report a significant spike in heroin abuse as a result of prescription opioid addiction.

·         Heroin overdose deaths are also a result of high-purity batches unknown to the user, as well as heroin adulterants such as fentanyl.

·         Since 2002, prescription drug deaths have outpaced those of cocaine and heroin combined. Abuse of controlled prescription drugs is higher than that of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, MDMA, and PCP combined.

·         Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 25 to 40 times more potent than heroin, has caused over 700 deaths in the U.S. between late 2013 and early 2015. Fentanyl is sometimes added to heroin batches, or sold by itself as heroin, unknown to the user.

·         Synthetic designer drugs from China continue to wreak havoc in the United States, particular synthetic cannabinoids, cathinones, and phenethylamines. Much of the proceeds of the sale of designer synthetic drugs from China flow to Middle Eastern countries such as Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.

The National Drug Threat Assessment provides an up-to-date look at the many challenges local communities face related to drug abuse and drug trafficking. Highlights in the report include drug abuse and trafficking trends for drugs such as heroin, prescription drugs, and the many ever-changing synthetic drugs manufactured overseas and imported to the United States.

In the preparation of this report, DEA intelligence analysts considered quantitative data from various sources (seizures, investigations, arrests, drug purity or potency, and drug prices; law enforcement surveys; laboratory analyses; and interagency production and cultivation estimates) and qualitative information (subjective views of individual agencies on drug availability, information on smuggling and transportation trends, and indicators of changes in smuggling and transportation methods).

The 2013 NDTA factors information provided by more than 1,100 state and local law enforcement agencies that responded to our 2015 National Drug Threat Survey.

The National Drug Threat Assessment can be found at www.dea.gov

Goodfellas' Victim Knew He Was Going To Be Whacked, Son Says

Selim Algar is covering the Vincent Asaro/Goodfellas trial for the New York Post.

Paul Katz knew he was in trouble. “If I’m not back in two hours, call the cops,” the mob associate told his wife before he headed out the door the night of Dec. 6, 1969.

He’d never be seen again.

On Tuesday, Katz’s son Lawrence, who was 5 years old at the time, told jurors in the Brooklyn federal court trial of accused Lufthansa heist plannerVincent Asaro, that his dad had a bad feeling about his meeting with the Bonanno wiseguy that night.

Prosecutors say Katz owned a warehouse that served as a stash house for stolen goods hijacked by Asaro and Lucchese associate James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke, who was famously played by Robert De Niro in the film “Goodfellas.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://nypost.com/2015/11/03/goodfellas-victim-knew-he-was-going-to-be-whacked-son/ 

Book Review: Frederick Forsyth's 'The Outsider" My Life In Intrique'

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review of Frederick Forsyth's The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue for the Washington Times. 

Let us hope that certain passages in this memoir by British thriller writer Frederick Forsyth do not cause trouble — perhaps fatal trouble — for authors who follow his example and use their profession as a cover for work for intelligence agencies.

For those of you unfamiliar with the thriller genre, Mr. Forsyth is at the top of the pack. He has succeeded because his 15 novels, most of them best-sellers, have a definite ring of authenticity. Mr. Forsyth spent his early years as a journalist, beginning with a provincial British newspaper, then with the Reuters news agency and BBC, with assignments throughout Europe and Africa.

A shrewd reporter, Mr. Forsyth eschewed the egotism endemic among too many journalists. He developed what he termed his “Bertie Wooster mode, an adopted persona based on P.G. Wodehouse’s witless hero: helpless, well-meaning, affable, but as dim as a five-watt bulb.” The contrived bumbler pose enabled Mr. Forsyth to mingle with African war lords, mercenary soldiers, and drug dealers who took him as “the harmless fool with a British passport.” Despite his innocent guise, Mr. Forsyth never lacked bravery — at age 19, he had been the youngest pilot in the Royal Air Force, and his girlfriends included the mistress of the East German defense minister.

Drinking late-night beers in the 9th Arrondissment of Paris, a red-light district, the young reporter was an unnoticed presence who “stared vacantly at the wall” and listened to military dissidents rant about their idea of killing former President Charles de Gaulle, who had decided to end France’s domination of Algeria. Once he left the BBC, Mr. Forsyth holed up in a friend’s apartment and, in 35 days, wrote a novel on a plot to kill de Gaulle, “The Day of the Jackal.” A string of subsequent best-sellers brought him international fame.

Mr. Forsyth also had developed a reputation as a hard-nosed reporter with both a conscience and a zest for the truth. He recognized early-on the mass starvations in strife-torn Biafra, a human tragedy which the British foreign office chose to ignore.

But the government included a strong dissenting voice — the Secret Intelligence Service — he called it “the Firm” — which preferred to deal in hard facts rather than political opinion. Mr. Forsyth’s reporting from Biafra attracted the attention of an SIS officer who shared his disdain for what he called the “cowardice” of the government. The officer needed a trusted “source on the ground” whose eyes-on evidence could rebut charge of media exaggeration. Mr. Forsyth willingly became the SIS’s source, continuing his journalistic work all the while.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/1/book-review-the-outsider-my-life-in-intrigue/