Offshore Hackers Make Their First Infrastructure Cyber Attack in the U.S.
Something we have been worrying about is now a reality. The first cyber attack upon U.S. infrastructure has taken place on a water plant in IL.
Conspiracy theorist say this is a false flag to curb internet activity
Comments »Corporate America: A Great Combination
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6E8H3C1CrU 450 300] [youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRbtdvtke3w&feature=related 450 300]
Comments »WATCH YOUR WALLET! Smith & Wollensky Steakhouse Waiters Busted in $600,000 Credit Card Scam
Waiters at some of New York’s swankiest eateries were part of a criminal crew that stole credit card information to create counterfeit cards — and then racked up some $600,000 in purchases, prosecutors revealed Friday.
Led by Luis Damian “DJ” Jacas, the crooks equipped waiters at Smith & Wollensky, The Capital Grille, Wolfgang’s Steakhouse and JoJo — and at two restaurants outside the city — with electronic “scimmers” to steal the info from at least 50 customers, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said.
Then Jacas used a “network of shoppers” to go on shopping sprees at high-end Manhattan stores like Chanel, Neiman Marcus, Cartier, Hermes of Paris, Bloomingdales, Bergdorf Goodman, Waldmann’s, London Jewelers, Burberry, Jimmy Choo, Lord & Taylor, prosecutors said.
They even used the phony American Express cards to refuel at Starbucks and also hit stores in Westchester County, Long Island, Boston, Chicago and Florida.
The ill-gotten goods were then fenced to “complicit customers” for cash, prosecutors said.
“The high-end targets of this case make it notable, but disturbingly this case is far from unique,” said District Attorney Cy Vance, whose 18-month joint investigation with the Secret Service ended Thursday with the arrests of 27 people.
The suspects were hit with 172 counts of felony enterprise corruption, conspiracy, grand larceny and other charges.
One of the key players in the ring was Brian Torrey, 34, of Bronxville, a longtime Smith & Wollensky waiter.
“Over 60 credit cards were stolen by Mr. Torrey,” Assistant District Attorney Kenneth Kern said.
Two of Jacas’ alleged fences, Eric Brahms, 42, and his wife, Emily, 30, both of Manhattan, were busted at Mt. Sinai Hospital while she was in labor, sources said.
Another alleged member of the ring, 46-year-old Anthony Coffarro, of Brooklyn, was apparently rousted from his bed and arrived at his arraignment Friday dressed in long johns.
The crimes charged in the indictments occurred between April 2010 and November 2011.
Jacas, 41, of Manhattan, also had phony drivers licenses made in the names of the customers whose credit card information was stolen, prosecutors said.
Jacas “oversaw and managed all aspects of the criminal operation,” prosecutors said. He directed his “shoppers” to buy watches, handbags, wallets and other easilly-fenced items.
In addition to the luxury items, investigators who raided the crews’ storage unit at Manhattan Mini Storage on East 62nd St. found a stash of expensive wine, more than $1 million in cash, the skimming devices and the equipment used to make the bogus credit cards and drivers licenses.
The American Express card holders victimized by the gang were not stuck with the bill, prosecutors said.
Read more: http://trade.cc/ijk
Comments »Documentary: Zeitgeist the Movie
Crimes Unpunished Hurt Confidence
Obama has pursued less criminal charges as opposed to the Reagan and Bush eras.
Comments »SHOCK: The Entire System Has Been Utterly Destroyed By The MF Global Collapse
Presented without comment, merely to confirm that the market as we know it, no longer exists.
BCM Has Ceased Operations (source)
Posted by Ann Barnhardt – November 17, AD 2011 10:27 AM MST
Dear Clients, Industry Colleagues and Friends of Barnhardt Capital Management,
It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere spectator.
The reason for my decision to pull the plug was excruciatingly simple: I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets – because they are not. And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse. Given this sad reality, I could not in good conscience take one more step as a commodity broker, soliciting trades that I knew were unsafe or holding funds that I knew to be in jeopardy.
The futures markets are very highly-leveraged and thus require an exceptionally firm base upon which to function. That base was the sacrosanct segregation of customer funds from clearing firm capital, with additional emergency financial backing provided by the exchanges themselves. Up until a few weeks ago, that base existed, and had worked flawlessly. Firms came and went, with some imploding in spectacular fashion. Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep customers 100% liquid – even as their clearing firm collapsed and was quickly replaced by another firm within the system.
Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise. What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.
I have learned over the last week that MF Global is almost certainly the mere tip of the iceberg. There is massive industry-wide exposure to European sovereign junk debt. While other firms may not be as heavily leveraged as Corzine had MFG leveraged, and it is now thought that MFG’s leverage may have been in excess of 100:1, they are still suicidally leveraged and will likely stand massive, unmeetable collateral calls in the coming days and weeks as Europe inevitably collapses. I now suspect that the reason the Chicago Mercantile Exchange did not immediately step in to backstop the MFG implosion was because they knew and know that if they backstopped MFG, they would then be expected to backstop all of the other firms in the system when the failures began to cascade – and there simply isn’t that much money in the entire system. In short, the problem is a SYSTEMIC problem, not merely isolated to one firm.
Perhaps the most ominous dynamic that I have yet heard of in regards to this mess is that of the risk of potential CLAWBACK actions. For those who do not know, “clawback” is the process by which a bankruptcy trustee is legally permitted to re-seize assets that left a bankrupt entity in the time period immediately preceding the entity’s collapse. So, using the MF Global customers as an example, any funds that were withdrawn from MFG accounts in the run-up to the collapse, either because of suspicions the customer may have had about MFG from, say, watching the company’s bond yields rise sharply, or from purely organic day-to-day withdrawls, the bankruptcy trustee COULD initiate action to “clawback” those funds. As a hedge broker, this makes my blood run cold. Generally, as the markets move in favor of a hedge position and equity builds in a client’s account, that excess equity is sent back to the customer who then uses that equity to offset cash market transactions OR to pay down a revolving line of credit. Even the possibility that a customer could be penalized and additionally raped AGAIN via a clawback action after already having their customer funds stolen is simply villainous. While there has been no open indication of clawback actions being initiated by the MF Global trustee, I have been told that it is a possibility.
And so, to the very unpleasant crux of the matter. The futures and options markets are no longer viable. It is my recommendation that ALL customers withdraw from all of the markets as soon as possible so that they have the best chance of protecting themselves and their equity. The system is no longer functioning with integrity and is suicidally risk-laden. The rule of law is non-existent, instead replaced with godless, criminal political cronyism.
Remember, derivatives contracts are NOT NECESSARY in the commodities markets. The cash commodity itself is the underlying reality and is not dependent on the futures or options markets. Many people seem to have gotten that backwards over the past decades. From Abel the animal husbandman up until the year 1964, there were no cattle futures contracts at all, and no options contracts until 1984, and yet the cash cattle markets got along just fine.
Finally, I will not, under any circumstance, consider reforming and re-opening Barnhardt Capital Management, or any other iteration of a brokerage business, until Barack Obama has been removed from office AND the government of the United States has been sufficiently reformed and repopulated so as to engender my total and complete confidence in the government, its adherence to and enforcement of the rule of law, and in its competent and just regulatory oversight of any commodities markets that may reform. So long as the government remains criminal, it would serve no purpose whatsoever to attempt to rebuild the futures industry or my firm, because in a lawless environment, the same thievery and fraud would simply happen again, and the criminals would go unpunished, sheltered by the criminal oligarchy.
Read the rest here.
Comments »While We Are All Hooked on Europe, Has Anyone Noticed Signs of Civil War in Syria ?
Even worse than the thought of civil war is that Russia is backing Assad while the world tells him to chill the fuck out.
Comments »ANOTHER COACHING PERVERT! Long-Time Syracuse Basketball Assistant Bernie Fine Under Fire
Syracuse Police have confirmed to CNY Central they are in the very early stages of an investigation into allegations made against Syracuse University assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine.
Police would not elaborate on what those allegations are, but ESPN.com is reporting that those allegations involve molesting a team ball boy. Syracuse Police say the information came to the department today.
According to ESPN.com, the alleged abuse started in the mid-1980s and lasted for more than a dozen years. The alleged victim told ESPN’s Outside the Lines that he was entering the seventh grade at the time it started.
We have put in several calls to the Syracuse University Athletics Department. So far, no calls have been returned.
Comments »French CDS At New All Time High
Fun With Max Keiser: A Well Organized Criminal Plan by GS, the IMF, & the ECB
This describes exactly why people are rioting; quite a different view from the mainstream media.
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6Z8kTJ0WsU 450 300] Comments »Allen Stanford Ponzi Victims Looking for Their Pound of Flesh
Victims of Allen Stanford’s alleged $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme may soon have a chance to submit claims, though it remains unclear how much of their losses they might ultimately recover.
Ralph Janvey, the court-appointed receiver for Stanford’s firm, asked a federal judge in Houston for permission to set up a claims process, more than 2-1/2 years after the financier’s arrest, a Wednesday court filing shows.
Approval of the request could pave the way for investors to recover at least some of their losses from Stanford’s alleged fraud, a sum believed to be $2 billion or more.
Stanford, 61, faces 14 criminal charges and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission civil charges over allegations he deceived investors who bought fake certificates of deposit from his Antiguan bank, Stanford International Bank Ltd.
His February 2009 arrest came two months after Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was uncovered.
Wednesday’s filing is “a major step” toward returning money to victims, Kevin Sadler, a partner at Baker Botts representing Janvey, said in an email.
Though a court-appointed examiner and a committee of Stanford investors expressed disagreements over parts of the process at an Oct. 13 court conference, “the court made clear at the status conference that the process should begin, and the receiver has acted accordingly,” he added.
Peter Morgenstern, a lawyer for the investors’ committee, on Thursday declined immediate comment. John Little, the examiner, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
It is unclear how much money will be distributed, when payouts will begin, and how such amounts will be calculated.
“For investor claimants, the amount of the investor’s net investment in the Ponzi scheme will be one of the most significant factors” in determining payouts, Janvey said.
The $7.2 billion figure reflects CDs on Stanford’s books when the receivership was set up, not actual investor losses.
At the Oct. 13 conference, Sadler said at least $2 billion of investor funds had been lost through a series of backdated fictitious loans. “If one wanted to consider a floor of money that’s gone, that certainly would be a candidate,” he said.
HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS SOUGHT
According to a court filing, Janvey had $80.1 million of unrestricted cash on hand as of Oct. 31, after accounting for professional fees and costs.
The trustee is seeking another $955.3 million in litigation. This includes $610 million from other Stanford investors and vendors, and $335 million in British, Canadian, Swiss and other accounts.
Liquidators in Antigua have sought control of some of these accounts, court papers show.
Stanford recently moved to a Houston federal detention center from the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina, where he was treated for an addiction to an anti-anxiety medication.
His criminal trial is expected to begin in January in the federal court in Houston. Stanford is scheduled to be arraigned under his most recent indictment on Nov. 28. That proceeding had been delayed because of his treatment at Butner.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge David Hittner, who oversees the criminal case, barred Stephen Cochell, a lawyer for Stanford in the SEC case, from meeting his client at the Houston detention center until the criminal case is finished.
The judge said public comments by Cochell about Stanford’s current mental status could impact the criminal trial. Cochell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Madoff is serving a 150-year prison term at Butner.
The civil case is SEC v. Stanford International Bank Ltd, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas, No. 09-00298. The criminal case is U.S. v. Stanford, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, No. 09-00342
Read more: http://trade.cc/hwl
Genral Maritime, $GMR, Files for Bankruptcy
Mid Morning Fun: Here is Why There is So Much Violence at Fast Food Joints
You must also wonder why you can buy junk food with food stamps, but not organic or health foods.
Let’s keep subsidizing junk food companies with tax payer money.
Comments »Late Afternoon Laugh: Pizza Joins Ketchup in the Vegetable Category
Lunch Break: Can You Stomach The Accusation ?
Accusations turn into something more concrete when you do research.
The more you research; the deeper you find the rabbit hole goes.
The lifting of the veil is in full swing!
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cqZffMZ_w8 450 300] Comments »Detroit to run out of money by April
I cannot wait for the entire span of city officials to be replaced with an emergency financial manager. Bring on Caesar! Democracy cannot survive when your people are this stupid.
Comments »A closely guarded report on Detroit’s finances paints an alarming picture of a city that will run out of cash by April unless officials make immediate, painful reductions that will cut deeply in to public services.
The report, obtained by the Free Press, outlines some drastic scenarios that illustrate how steep those cuts must be for the city to stay afloat.
For example, if the city laid off 2,200 employees — a third of its workforce — the city still would run out of cash by July.
No one has said the city is considering that as an option, but it demonstrates the severity of the financial crisis.
Mayor Dave Bing and the City Council have said the solution lies in getting major concessions from reluctant labor unions and reducing the city’s skyrocketing costs for retirees.
Bing is planning a public address Wednesday regarding the financial crisis.
“Mayor Bing inherited a city in fiscal, operational and ethical crisis,” his spokesman Dan Lijana said Monday. “Rather than continuing business as usual and sweeping problems under the rug, Mayor Bing has taken on the tough issues and had an honest dialogue with Detroit about our fiscal challenges.”
The problems are so severe and immediate, restructuring experts said, that the state may have no choice but to appoint an emergency manager with the authority to gut union contracts, sell assets, restructure the government and end nonessential services.
“At the point where Detroit is, they need an emergency manager,” said Pontiac’s emergency manager Louis Schimmel, who also took over the shrinking budgets of Hamtramck and Ecorse years ago. “What are they going to do when they run out of cash?”
Some 33k Customers of MF Global Still Have No Access to Their Cash
Show me the $ …..not just any $, but my $
Comments »
