2017

Monday. I wonder if anything happened over the weekend, or earlier today.

DISASTER DU JOUR: THE NFL AND NORTH KOREA.

We’ve already established that Trump craves attention the way a junkie craves a hit.

Combine being an attention whore with being a racist, and not being able to admit being wrong, or letting any slight against him go, what do you get?

The NFL uniting against him in solidarity.

Oh, and North Korea is at it again, because of Trump.

I’m not going into too much detail since these are distractions from the disasters.

I hope.

JARED AND IVANKA BOTH CAUGHT USING PERSONAL EMAIL ADDRESS FOR OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE BUSINESS.

Hypocrisy has a name. Earlier today, Ivanka and Jared Kushner have both been accused of using personal emails to conduct White House business.

Someone say something about buttery males?

WEINER GETS 21 MONTHS IN PRISON.

Yep. Anthony Weiner was sentenced to 21 months for sending dick pics to an underage girl.

I’ll describe his story in more detail another day, but for a primer, check out Louise Mensch’s work about him at Patribotics.

RUSSIANS ATTEMPTED TO HACK PENNSYLVANIA VOTER SYSTEM.

One that hits a little closer to home, Pennsylvania was targeted by the Russians. I covered this in detail last Friday, but this report confirms that the Keystone State was targeted for hacking.

PUERTO RICO NEEDS HELP. DON’T EXPECT IT FROM THE RACIST.

Puerto Rico is about to become Trump’s Katrina. Hell, its about to be worse. While Trump argues on Twitter with football players, Americans are dying.

Now, that daughter fucker wants to blame Puerto Rico for being hit by hurricane?

Fuck you, Donald Trump!

I refuse to give him a link and stroke his pathetic ego.

FACEBOOK HAS SOME SERIOUS PROBLEMS.

There’s a lot going on with Facebook right now. Russians used it to sow hatred between Blacks and Muslims. President Obama warned Zuckerberg about what could happen. On top of all that, Steve Bannon tried to infiltrate Facebook.

Facebook is in the middle of the storm now. From what it looks like, Mark Zuckerberg has been helping recently, but the question remains how much did he know, and when? Especially since their statements earlier this year denying Russian activity were countered by reports they contacted the FBI in June 2016.

That’s it for today. I’ll do some work on the home page in the next couple days. Maybe I’ll calm down a little bit.

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Thank you, and have a good one.

Money Laundering

Let’s talk about Money Laundering, the process of taking money and profits gained from a criminal activity and converting it to legally clean cash.

WARNING: This is NOT a How-To guide, nor an instructional document. I do not condone nor encourage any of the illegal activities described. Everything described is from research, supposition, and investigation. Plus, I’ve watched a lot of movies.

WHAT IS MONEY LAUNDERING?

Per Wikipedia money laundering is the process of converting illegally gained assets to something that at least appears legitimate.

WHY IS IT NEEDED?

Ever heard of the phrase “crime doesn’t pay”?

Well, that’s not completely true. Crime does pay, quite well sometimes. It’s just difficult to spend the money. Why? Even criminals need to pay taxes.

That might sound a little counter-intuitive, but let me explain.

Let’s say that there is a mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher, who decides to make crystal meth. Why isn’t important to this example, but let’s call him… Walter. Walter makes a lot of money from making drugs, but he has a problem. He has to explain on his taxes where the money came from.

Something that attracts the attention of Law Enforcement is when a high school teacher making $50,000 a year suddenly has half a million bucks in the bank. Even more suspicious when his tax forms only list the $50,000.

If Walter wants to keep his money from making drugs, and not go to jail, he needs to find a way to launder his money.

WHO DOES IT?

Pretty much any criminal that wants to use their money in “polite society” needs to launder their assets, at least a little. Bank robbers, drug dealers, mobsters, embezzlers, they all need to wash their cash.

WHERE CAN I LAUNDER MONEY?

Why did you just ask that question? Are you trying to get me in trouble?

Ok, I’ll talk hypotheticals in the next section.

HOW IS IT DONE?

This section is completely hypothetical. All people and events are made up. Poorly.

There and several factors that determine how one would launder money. The biggest ones are amount, frequency, location, currency, and turn-around time.

How much, how often, where, what form, and how fast.

Each of those variables can easily affect the answer. Moving $10,000 once is different than moving $1,000 a month.

The most important thing to remember with money laundering is that it has to look normal on taxes. It’s not crazy if Walter made an extra $1,000 a month, but and extra $50,000 will raise some eyebrows.

The easiest way to split this up is by frequency. How often. Is this a one-time cash windfall, or is it a steady stream?

If it’s a one time event, the biggest factor is how much needs laundered. Hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions? Billions?

If it’s less than a set amount, which I think is $10,000, then banks and casinos don’t have to report it to the IRS. Easiest way to launder small amounts, historically, has been the casino. Walk in with a few thousand bucks in dirty money, buy some chips, play a few hands of blackjack, lose a little money, then cash out the chips for clean money.

But what if it’s more money?

Let’s say Rob robs a bank, and gets away with a million dollars. It’ll be a little obvious if he goes to the casino a few hundred times. Plus, it gets a little suspicious if someone doesn’t work at all, yet pays all of his bills?

Break it up into smaller pieces, and sit on it. Feed a few installments in over time until there’s enough saved up to purchase a revenue stream that makes it easier to launder the rest. Once there’s a front set up, slide the rest of the money in to stream over time.

There are some tax loopholes like gifts from relatives and other windfall windows that let someone keep their mom, but I’m not as familiar with those. Talk to a lawyer about that.

Now, what if there’s a revenue stream.

Let’s say Joe makes $20,000 a month, each month from running a brothel. Profit after expenses.

In this case, Joe might want to open a cash-heavy business, like a laundromat, nail salon, contractor, or take-out restaurant.

Here’s how it works…

Joe sets up a business, like general contractor. He hires a small crew, like a cousin who can keep his mouth shut and is good at fixing things. He pays his cousin to work some jobs, while Joe “cooks the books.” He adds some extra made up jobs, like a kitchen remodel for $10,000 or a bathroom repair for $5,000. He pays his share in taxes, but the rest is cleaned. As long as he doesn’t get too greedy, he should be ok.

By hiding the money with a legitimate revenue stream, and keeping it realistic in numbers, that $20,000 can easily be mixed in with the real sales.

One way to make the money trail harder to trace is the use of shell companies. A shell company is a company, often fake, that exists as a separate entity. They exist to confuse and distract, just like the shells in the shell game or the extra cards in Three Card Monte.

Let’s say Joe wants to move his money around a little bit. He already owns a construction company. Why not make some shell companies related to his contractor company? Joe would start a roofing business, a plumbing business, and a building supply business. He would then send money from one company to another. On paper, this cleans up the money a little more.

Maybe Joe wants to put some money away for a rainy day. He could do that with a bank or credit union, but if the law comes calling, they can freeze his bank accounts. In that case, Joe would buy some art, or collectible cars, property, or anything else that people put value in.

Now, let’s say Joe starts building up too much money, and he needs to move more of it. The best way to launder large sums of money is with real estate.

Why real estate? Because it has no value except what people agree to. The numbers are large, inexact, and it’s easy to hide money.

So, Joe buys a condominium in a luxury apartment building, or a couple houses. He sits on those for a couple years, then sells those at a profit. Completely clean. This could take a while, but it will get Joe’s money clean without the use of armies of accountants.

Now, let’s say Joe needs to get some of his dirty money into Euros, or Rubles, or Pounds. What then?

There are two options available.

The traditional method is to route the money using shell companies and banks in various countries like Cyprus and Panama, to move the money from one place to another until it finally arrives in a bank in the destination country.

The newest method is with cryptocurrency like BitCoin. Joe sets up a BTC transaction between himself in the United States, to convert dollars to BTC, then purchases that BTC using Rubles. Back and forth this goes, until Joe gets the money where he needs it to be.

WHAT ARE THE PENALTIES?

Each state has their own laws on this, as does the Federal government. Fines, imprisonment, and asset forfeiture are options the government can use.

WHAT ARE SOME OBVIOUS THINGS TO LOOK FOR?

If you’re looking for a path of money laundering, the first place to look are for shell companies. Several companies using the same address is an obvious place to start. Also, if they do have different addresses, but those addresses all belong to one party.

Another place to look for money laundering is in art sales, or other collectible communities. Ever wonder why someone would pay millions for an ugly painting? Because they know someone will buy it in a few years, and they’ll get their money back.

Real estate is the easiest way to launder large sums of money. I’ve said that so often my phone just auto filled that sentence. Remember those stories about some rich person buying apartments for their pets? Don’t be surprised if you find out they were laundering money.

WHO INVESTIGATES MONEY LAUNDERING?

Every state has their own financial crimes units, but at the federal level, the heavy lifting is done by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network or FinCEN, and the IRS Criminal Investigation unit, or CI.

If they’re coming after you, expect to have some very bad days in the future.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH TRUMP AND RUSSIA?

Good question.

For awhile, I was a little confused on this as well. Then, thinking of The Producers. It’s a movie about an accountant and a broadway producer who figure out that they could make a fortune if they produced a flop. An utter disaster. An abortion on stage. So they created “Springtime for Hitler”, a love story about Adolf Hitler. This is one of the greatest movies of all time. Watch it.

Thinking of this movie made me realize something.

Donald Trump is The Producers.

His business isn’t real estate, or casinos. Not even politics. It’s money laundering.

He may very well be the world’s premier money launderer. When billionaires need their money cleaned, he’s the go-to.

Think about it for a moment. How does one lose money running casinos? Why does he have so many connections to organized crime? Why do so many of his development deals fall through? Why do so many of his buildings get foreclosed on after only a couple of years? Why do so many of his properties get sold to Russians with ties to organized crime? Why does Trump have so many LLC’s (limited liability corporations) to his name,his family, and his main company? Why didn’t he release his taxes like every other candidate?

Because Donald Trump is a criminal.

A real estate developer wants to build properties. A hotelier wants to own and run successful hotels. A casino owner wants to own and run a casino. A television producer wants to create successful television shows and movies.

Trump doesn’t do any of those. He provides cover for other criminals to move their money around, and he takes some off of the top.

Here’s how…

If there’s a few million dollars to move, he’ll provide an apartment for sale in New York or Miami. I wonder how many of his condos have humans living in them.

If there’s a few hundred million dollars to move, it’s time for a failed hotel development. Trump will announce a deal to build some spectacular hotel at some crazy, ridiculous price like $3 billion. They’ll hire architects, designers, accountants, engineers, and lawyers. They’ll put the money they’ve gathered so far into escrow, through a shell company or two, and wait a couple years as the interest in the project wanes. The deal will fall through, and all of the money, minus fees, gets returned to the investors. Laundered.

If there are billions to launder, the hotel will get made. Trump will receive a licensing fee for his name. Then, after construction, the other investor will take out a mortgage on the property for more than the building’s value. They then run out of town with the money, if the bank comes looking for it. If they don’t, they’ll swallow the loss. If they don’t want to swallow the loss, they’ll foreclose on the property and sell it off.

So, Trump failed up when he got elected. He probably wanted to go into media after the election, and keep doing his deals. Instead, he’s on the biggest stage in the world, and doing everything he can to distract and discredit those looking into him and his actions.

By the way, CI and FinCEN have been on to him for a while.

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Thank you, and have a good one.

Daily Check-In 9/22/2017

Friday Night. Time for the News Dump…

AP CONFIRMS THAT RUSSIANS TRIED TO HACK VOTING SYSTEMS

From the Associated Press, we get conclusive evidence that the Russians attempted to breach the voting systems of at least 21 states were targeted during the 2016 elections in attempts to change voter rolls, software on voting machines, and possibly even the totals themselves.

From @emptywheel, as of a few hours ago, the list of identified states were as follows:

Alabama
Arizona
Colorado
Connecticut
Illinois
Iowa
Maryland
Minnesota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin

That’s 13 identified so far. We’ve had reports in the past that Texas had some weirdness going on during the election in Dallas county where long lines were caused by people disappearing from voter rolls, or having their information changed. North Carolina had some funkiness with their exit polling, as did Florida. I also heard reports of Missouri and South Carolina, where HRC was trending high a couple weeks before election night. Let’s add them to the list…

Alabama
Arizona
Colorado
Connecticut
Florida
Illinois
Iowa
Maryland
Minnesota
Missouri
North Carolina
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin

Take a look at those states listed, what’s missing? New York, California, Massachusetts, Idaho, Oregon, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas.

The “safe” states. The states that were solidly Democratic or Republican. The states where there wasn’t a chance of voting for Hilary Clinton from a traditional Red state, or the Blue states where Trump didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hell.

Why? Because the Russians had finite resources, and Cambridge Analytica told them where to focus their attack.

This report from the AP helps back up the Reality Winner story from earlier this year. Hell, even James Clapper said that the USIC’s assessment of the election is that it was illegitimate. Rep. Mike Quiqley of the House Intel Committee said that if the public knew what he knew, they’d want him to go full throttle.

WHITE HOUSE STAFFERS PREPARING TO JUMP SHIP

From Vanity Fair, here comes a report out of Washington, D.C. where many lobbyist groups, think tanks, and other agencies are getting swamped with resumes from Trump Administration staffers looking to leave the White House.

While it’s not uncommon for staffers to cash in on their experience in the White House, it usually happens after 2 years or more, not less than 1. This is indicative of people getting out while the getting is good.

FROM THE RUMOR MILL…

An article on Patribotics by Louise Mensch reported that SVB Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, was under watch from the FISA Russian Bank money laundering warrant she discussed a few days ago.

Silicon Valley Bank, located in Silicon Valley, is owned by Sberbank, one of the Russian banks under sanctions. From this report, they’re tied up in the Cambridge Analytica scandal where the state voter rolls and DNC databases were hacked and data mined.

Since SVB is owned by Sberbank, and located in the heart of Silicon Valley, it makes the bank the perfect drop-off point for data to and from Russia. Since they’re a subsidiary, communication with the home base wouldn’t be too crazy. And with them being in Silicon Valley, any tech company making hits on their system could try to claim a legit reason for it.

Cambridge Analytica, Spectrum Health, Trump Organization, Alfa Bank. Now we can add Sberbank and SVB to the list.

This is worth keeping an eye on. Like always, take this with a grain of salt.. at least until it’s confirmed by the Washington Post in a couple months.

That’s it for today. I’ll see what I can get up this weekend.

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Thank you, and have a good one.

Daily Check-In 9/21/2017

Not too bad for a Thursday…

At least relatively speaking, that is. In TrumpWorld, today felt like a slow news day. Health care, North Korea, Spicer, Facebook, Twitter, Lewandowski, Pence. Today it felt a little slow.

Compared to W or Obama, stuff is happening at breakneck speed.

Calling today a slow news day is like saying a 747 is moving slow. It’s moving at several hundred miles per hour. Might not be as fast as an F-35, but it sure is faster than a Ford Explorer.

LEWANDOWSKI SAYS MANAFORT SHOULD BE IN PRISON FOR LIFE

From The Hill, former Trump Campaign Manager, and Paul Manafort’s predecessor Corey Lewandowski, called out his successor in some harsh language, going as far as to say that he should spend the rest of his life in jail.

Corey is a blustery asshole whom I hate for completely irrational reasons that I’ll explain later, but so far he’s the only person associated with the Trump Campaign to show any level of outrage at what happened. Everyone else either shrugged it off, acted like they never heard of Paul Manafort (like Vice President Mike Pence did this morning on Fox & Friends), or tried to change the subject. To Corey’s credit, he’s calling Paul out. Not that there was any love lost between the two, and Corey is still denying that Trump ever had anything to do with Russia, at least while he was around.

SOCIAL MEDIA, CONGRESS, AND THE SPECIAL COUNSELOR ALL GETTING ON THE SAME PAGE

Earlier today, reports came out that both Facebook and Twitter have agreed to work with the Senate committees, and that they are both fully cooperating with Special Counselor Mueller. Twitter is handing over the information they’ve collected on Russian bots, while Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced several sweeping changes with Facebook, including policing ads more for political content, forcing advertisers to disclose themselves in the ad, and sharing the suspected Russian ads with Congress.

These aren’t some magnanimous or altruistic move on their part, this is straight-up CYA. Cover. Your. Ass.

If they don’t cooperate with the investigations, they’re screwed, and could possibly go down as accomplices. If they don’t take proactive actions, they could piss off Congress enough to get classified as utilities. That might still happen, but at least if they start taking swift action, they’re less likely to be completely screwed.

‘THE NOTEBOOK 2″ TO STAR SEAN SPICER, ROBERT MUELLER, DONALD TRUMP

SHOUTY SPICE IS BACK, BITCHES! After rage quitting the White House when he was passed over for his dream job, Sean Spicer is back in the news, and not for being affable on late night television.

According to GQ Magazine , the Special Counselor is very interested Sean Spicer. He’s interested in hearing his side of the story of the Comey firing press statement. He’s interested in hearing his side of the story of the press statements he made before Comey was fired. He’s interested in hearing his side of the story about all of the times he addressed the nation and spouted obvious lies to the American people.

Unlike everyone else in this organization, Sean won’t have a problem remembering details.

Why?

He took notes. Lots of notes. Of EVERYTHING.

Spicer has many reputations, but one of them is being an studious note taker. He took notes in meetings, about meetings, notes about what he was doing each day, whom he was meeting with, what they discussed, wha the other person discussed, and who was where. One of the stories about him was that staffers would tease him, saying he was taking notes so he could write a tell-all book.

Well, he’s gonna tell all…to Bobby Three Sticks.

I called Spicer flipping like a gymnast months ago. He’s a lying, hypocritical jerk, and a toadie, but he wouldn’t take the fall for Trump. Sean Spicer struck me as being the guy that gets close to his dream job, one step away from it, and knows that he’s got to eat a shit sandwich every now and then, but he didn’t think it would be as bad as it was. Being ridiculed, humiliated, abused, treated like dirt, and that was just his boss. That doesn’t include being a laughing stock for America.

But when Trump decided to bring his Jewish children to meet the Pope instead of Sean Spicer, a devout Catholic. Meeting the Pope was a lifelong dream of his. When Trump did that, he lost Spicer. Doing this for him would have cost Trump very little, but would have kept Spicer’s loyalty for life. To quote Frank Underwood “It requires very little of me, and it means the world to him.”

The final straw for Spicer was when Trump hired Anthony Scarmucci to be the next White House Communications Director instead of him. I heard rumors that when he found out, Spicer legitimately rage quit.

This also shows how bad Donald Trump is at what he does. He demands loyalty of everyone, but does not return it to his subordinates. In crime organizations, loyalty can be kept with threats of violence. With wealth, loyalty can be bought, as long as the cash flows. But in Washington, D.C., loyalty is temporary, and power can shift on a dime. By treating Sean Spicer so bad for so long, he created an enemy. An enemy who kept notes, and shared them with the Special Counselor.

IN OTHER NEWS

NORTH KOREA’S KIM JONG UN CALLS TRUMP DERANGED, WORLD SADLY AGREES

Yep, this story again. It’s almost like every time Trump needs a distraction, North Korea does something. And, yes, North Korea and Russia have some interesting ties. Earlier this year, two North Korean spies suffered Russian Heart Attacks, when they were found dead in their luggage after being shot.

It won’t be too long before it comes out that Putin is pulling North Korea’s strings as well, and that they’re the reason why North Korea can put a nuke on a missile.

SENATE REPUBLICANS CONTINUE PUSH ON OBAMACARE REPEAL BEFORE END OF FISCAL YEAR ON SEPTEMBER 30

This doesn’t deal much with the Russian Investigation, but this could cost at least 25 million Americans their health care, and is a terrible idea.

I put blame on Citizens United. As long as unlimited money from corporations is allowed in campaigns, elected officials are beholden to the will of large money donors like the Mercers and Koch’s. The Koch Brothers even said that they will only donate $400 Million in next year’s midterm elections if, and only if, Obamacare is repealed and tax cuts are passed.

But why the sudden push? September 30th is the end of the fiscal year for the Federal Government. The parliamentary trick that Mitch McConnell used on health care, called Reconciliation, can be used on one bill or package per year, has to meet certain financial requirements, and can bypass cloture.

That last part, cloture, is part of how filibusters work. While a simple majority is all that is technically required to pass any bill in the Senate, a filibuster can be called by any senator, for any reason. Cloture is the number of votes required to break a filibuster. That number, 60, is part of why it’s so hard to get things done in the Senate, but is also what protects this country from rampant partisanship.

So, Mitch has one last shot to pass a health care repeal before September 30th. After that, we’re back to the sixty vote threshold.

FROM THE RUMOR MILL….

Nothing too new has come from the Rumor Mill on Twitter recently, except for confirming stories hitting the press and giving details that fill in the gaps.

One thing I found interesting was something Louise said in a tweet about Mike Pence showing up on Fox and Friends. Earlier this summer, she wrote an article detailing how Fox News as a corporation, and a few individuals in particular, were under investigation by the FBI for their role in spreading Russian propaganda during the election, and after. One name she dropped was Sean Hannity.

Earlier today, she mentioned that the cast and crew of Fox & Friends was included in that investigation. I’ve mentioned before in Fox & Friends – 10 Minutes Is Enough how that program hit all of the checkboxes of a state run propaganda operation. It wouldn’t surprise me at all that they were under investigation by the USIC, FVEY, and every other agency at this point.

Once again, this is just a rumor, take it with a grain of salt.

That’s about it for tonight. I’m working on an idea for a new section on the home page, focusing on crimes. If I’m right about what’s coming on the horizon, there’s gonna be a lot of talk about FISA, Money Laundering, Obstruction of Justice, and lots of fraud and tax evasion. I’m going to add a new section devoted just to the crimes, and how the actors in this macabre play line up with each crime. Criminal definitions don’t necessarily fall under “Get To Know Your Government”, and I plan to right enough of these to justify their own section.

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda”

– Katy Tur

Thank you, and have a good one.