jhu72 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 29, 2022 6:07 pm
get it to x wrote: ↑Sat Oct 29, 2022 3:56 pm
Pretty good article here on using data in determining voter roll integrity as well as drilling down on individual voter habits and preferences. It argues fractal computing is way ahead of the technology the Dems are using, calling their method the Big Data Titanic.
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fw ... nicem.html
... I am highly skeptical. There is zero detail of their technology, so no one can make any sense out of their claimed technology. They use the word fractal like it is magic. Fractals have been around for a long time now. Not exactly new technology. Sounds more like a scam being setup. We got the best technology, nobody can touch it. We can see things quicker and more accurately and we are telling you there is voter fraud, right here in River City.
Gotta keep the misdirection up to make that cheddar! (Is this what is meant by Metallica’s “And Justice for All” album cover????
Before he led the Justice Department, Matthew G. Whitaker promoted company accused of deceiving clients
When federal investigators were digging into an invention-promotion company accused of fraud by customers, they sought information in 2017 from a prominent member of the company’s advisory board, according to two people familiar with the probe: Matthew G. Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney in Iowa.
It is unclear how Whitaker — who was appointed acting attorney general by President Trump on Wednesday — responded to a Federal Trade Commission subpoena to his law firm.
In the end, the FTC filed a complaint against Miami-based World Patent Marketing, accusing it of misleading investors and falsely promising that it would help them patent and profit from their inventions, according to court filings.
In May of this year, a federal court in Florida ordered the company to pay a settlement of more than $25 million and close up shop, records show. The company did not admit or deny wrongdoing.
Whitaker’s sudden elevation this week to replace fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions has put new scrutiny on his involvement with the shuttered company, whose advisory board he joined in 2014, shortly after making a failed run for U.S. Senate in Iowa.
At the time, he was also running a conservative watchdog group with ties to other powerful nonprofits on the right and was beginning to develop a career as a Trump-friendly cable television commentator.
World Patent Marketing — founded by Miami businessman Scott J. Cooper, who had donated $2,600 to Whitaker’s Senate campaign — prominently highlighted Whitaker’s résumé as a former U.S. attorney, which helped lend the company credibility.
But Whitaker seems to have been more than a figurehead. He spoke about inventions of the company’s clients in online videos — including a special hot-tub seat for people with mobility issues. He also penned a response to at least one complaint — writing a threatening email in which he cited his role as a former U.S. attorney, according to court filings.
“It’s really upsetting to know that guy will be attorney general,” said Ryan Masti, 26, who lost $77,000 after paying World Patent Marketing to help him bring to market his idea for a social media app to help the disabled. “It’s so offensive. It’s like a stab in the back.”
Whitaker did not respond to requests for comment about World Patent Marketing or the investigation. “We’ll decline,” Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in an email to The Washington Post.
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A partner at Whitaker’s former Iowa law firm declined to comment. A spokesman for the FTC also declined to comment.
In Matthew G. Whitaker, Trump has a loyalist at the helm of the Justice Department
There was no evidence that Whitaker knew company salespeople were making false promises to inventors, court receiver Jonathan Perlman said in an interview.
“I have no reason to believe that he knew of any of the wrongdoing,” Perlman said.
Whitaker was paid at least $10,000 by the company, according to court filings.
At the conclusion of the FTC investigation, Perlman sent a demand letter to Whitaker — along with other advisory board members — seeking repayment of the fees they received. Whitaker did not respond, Perlman said.
When Whitaker was appointed to the board of World Patent Marketing in October 2014, a company spokesman said in a press release that he would provide “vision and direction.” Later, the company touted Whitaker’s legal background and said he was working with the company to help investors avoid patent marketing fraud.
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“As a former U.S. Attorney, I would only align myself with a first class organization,” Whitaker said in a 2014 company news release. “World Patent Marketing goes beyond making statements about doing business ‘ethically’ and translate those words into action.”
According to the FTC, however, the company falsely promised clients it would patent and market their ideas in exchange for hefty fees — and then pocketed the money.
“For the last three years, Defendants have operated an invention-promotion scam that has bilked thousands of consumers out of millions of dollars,” the agency alleged in a recently unsealed court filing. “In truth and in fact, Defendants fail to fulfill almost every promise they make to consumers.”
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Neither Cooper nor his current attorney responded to requests for comment.
In court documents, Cooper told the court that the company did provide some services and said the company’s website warned customers that most inventions are not commercially successful, according to the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Sun-Sentinel.
World Patent Marketing salespeople would persuade prospective clients to sign a confidentiality agreement and then ask them to explain their idea, according to court documents.
Whatever the concept, no matter how banal or improbable, investigators found, the salesperson would pronounce the idea fantastic and encourage the customer to pay for a package to market and patent the idea, documents show.
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Many people ended up in debt or lost their life savings, according to the FTC.
Promotional material highlighted the meaty résumés of board members like Whitaker, which seemed to be a key component of the business operation. The company said the board would help review inventors’ ideas to maximize their ability to get rich.
“Innovators are today’s revolutionaries — forward-thinking visionaries that have come together to form the powerful and influential World Patent Marketing advisory board,” the narrator of one promotional video intoned, as photos of Whitaker and other board members filled the screen.
Masti, who said he struggled with ADHD as a child and hoped his invention would help others like him, said in an interview that he trusted the company in part because he was told that advisory board members, including Whitaker, had reviewed his idea and thought it would be successful.
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“They said he’s very high up. He’s a professional. He’s got a lot of power,” said Masti, a resident of Cameron, N.Y., who said he voted for Trump in 2016. “That’s how they sold you.”
Now, Masti said he is living with his parents and facing crushing debt from loans he took out to pay the company.
Another former customer, Penn Mason, an airline employee from Nashville, said he paid World Patent Marketing $21,000 to help him patent and market a real estate app he had invented.
The company failed to patent his product and quickly stopped returning his phone calls, he said.
Mason said he believes that paid advisory board members like Whitaker essentially pocketed money from unsuspecting victims.
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“That was our money,” said Mason, 52. Of Whitaker’s selection as acting attorney general, he said, “It makes me sick to my stomach . . . It’s like a punch in the gut.”
Acting attorney general Whitaker has no intention of recusing from Russia probe, associates say
When investors began to complain that they had paid the company large sums with little to show for it, they were threatened, according to interviews and court documents.
Mason said that after he began to complain, he got a call from Cooper, the CEO, who threatened to sue him for slander. “He really scared me,” Mason said. “You feel like you’re dealing with all these bigwigs.”
The Miami New Times, which published in an in-depth investigation of the company last year, reported that Cooper would sometimes tell people who had posted negative reviews of the company that he had security with specialized training in the Israeli martial art Krav Maga.
In an August 2015 email included in court documents, Whitaker wrote to a complainant who threatened to go to the Better Business Bureau, “I am assuming you understand that there could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you.” He noted he was a former U.S. attorney.
Another board member, Aileen M. Marty, a professor of infectious disease at Florida International University in Miami, said she was told when she joined the board that she would be sent interesting patent ideas to review — but never received any.
Marty said she received one check for her board service, which she returned when she heard the company could be committing fraud.
“I wish I had never heard of the company and I wish that my name were not in any way associated with it. I can’t turn back time and not accept the offer to be on their board — believe me if I could, I would,” she said in an email to The Post.
As he was advising World Patent Marketing, Whitaker ran a conservative watchdog group called the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust. The group lodged numerous ethics complaints and calls for investigations, targeting Hillary Clinton and Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, as well as some Republicans.
On its website, FACT lists a downtown Washington address. But it is one of some 200 “virtual members” who use a K Street location to claim a presence in the nation’s capital, according to Brian Bullock, assistant general manager of Carr Workplaces, the firm that operates the site.
“They only come in every six months or so,” Bullock said. “We pretty much just accept their mail.”
FACT was formed in 2014 with a large donation from another tax-exempt charity that has served as a fountainhead of cash for organizations affiliated with the conservative movement — an arrangement that helps further mask the identity of donors.
The group received more than $1 million in recent years from a donor-advised fund called Donors Trust Inc., which is a source of funding for scores of other conservative groups, including Judicial Watch, Project Veritas, the Claremont Institute, the Federalist Society and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, tax filings show.
Whitaker received $402,000 in 2016 as FACT’s president and director — nearly a third of the donations the group received that year, according to its tax filings. He received $252,000 in 2015, more than half the charity’s receipts that year, tax filings show.
FACT officials declined to comment, but they described the group as a nonpartisan ethics watchdog that holds accountable government officials from both parties.
Alice Crites and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.
As Onyx mean mugged: Excuse me, for example I’m an inspiration of a whole generation
And unless you got ten sticky fingers it’s an imitation
A figment of your imagination
Bu-bu-bu-but wait it gets worse
I’m not watered down so I’m dying of thirst
Coming through with a scam, foolproof plan
B-boys make some noise, and just, just SLAM
Tuberville dealings include failed hedge fund, charity
FILE - In this Nov. 18, 2016 file photo, Cincinnati coach Tommy Tuberville walks off the field after the team's NCAA college football game against Memphis in Cincinnati. Democratic Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama has called Republican challenger Tommy Tuberville “Coach Clueless” for the former football coach's recent comments about the coronavirus. Jones attacked Tuberville in a campaign appearance Friday, Sept. 11, 2020. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Tommy Tuberville’s quest for a seat in the U.S. Senate is powered by the reputation he gained as Auburn University’s football coach, where he led the team to an undefeated season.
But in the years since, the Republican has been mired in business failings, a lawsuit and even a questionable charity that raises money but gives very little away.
A hedge fund Tuberville helped start in 2009 was the subject of a criminal investigation in which Tuberville’s business partner pleaded guilty to fraud. Tuberville, who denied wrongdoing, later settled a lawsuit filed by investors who lost millions.
In 2014, Tuberville started the Tommy Tuberville Foundation, which has given only a small portion of its money to charity while spending tens of thousands of dollars to stage annual golf tournaments.
Those financial dealings are now in the spotlight in the closely watched Senate race as Republicans push to recapture the once reliably red state of Alabama. Tuberville, a Trump-backed political newcomer, won the GOP primary by besting former longtime Sen. Jeff Sessions, who failed to reclaim the seat he’d left to become Trump’s attorney general.
Zac McCrary, a Democratic pollster, said Tuberville’s financial dealings are important for voters to consider.
“People know who Tuberville is as a football coach, but they don’t really know who he is beyond that, McCrary said. “This purely goes to his judgement, purely goes to his ethics,” McCrary said
The Tuberville Foundation says Tuberville started the organization to help veterans after being inspired by the World War II service of his father.
An Associated Press review of its public tax records showed the foundation reported spending about one-third of the money it raised on charitable giving.
From 2015 to 2017, it raised $231,463 before expenses, but only spent $44,000 on its three biggest charitable programs in those years, according to records. The group’s last publicly available tax return, from 2018, lists all of its $34,000 spending as charity work, although large portions of that appear to be overhead costs.
The 2020 golf tournament held this month at the Auburn University Club listed entry prices from $400 per player to $5,000 for a foursome as a “Gold Star Sponsor.” The post-golf activities included a reception and “Time with Tubs.”
Tax forms show the foundation’s 2015 golf tournament brought in nearly $118,000 before expenses but cost $24,000 to put on. Eventually, about $20,000 that year was spent on veterans’ home renovations and program expenses, according to the form.
Tuberville’s campaign and people involved with the nonprofit said the records didn’t reflect all the good the charity did because volunteer labor and donated materials were used to refurbish veterans’ homes. The campaign also said the foundation had a dormant period as Tuberville retired from coaching.
“It seems that any criticism of the Foundation, its size, and its work argues that a man who was generous, selfless, and charitable with his own money simply wasn’t generous, selfless, and charitable enough. That is an unfair, arbitrary, and subjective standard that simply cannot be met,” the campaign said in a statement.
Laurie Styron, executive director of CharityWatch, a watchdog group that monitors how nonprofits spend their money, said the filings raise some questions.
“The purpose of a tax-subsidized public charity is not to support one person’s speaking events or golf tournaments. A charity needs to be able to show the public that it is delivering on its mission. The 2015 through 2018 tax filings don’t reflect that. Most expenses have gone towards covering the expenses of golf tournaments and overhead costs,” Styron wrote in an email after reviewing the tax forms.
In 2018, the foundation listed all of its expenses as charity spending, but Styron said some of that was likely overhead expenses such as bank charges of $594, and taxes of $797. The form detailed only $8,000 spent on two programs. However, Tuberville’s campaign produced internal documents indicating more was spent, including $22,627 for a veterans’ retreat program.
Al McKellar, who served as foundation president in its early years, said the forms don’t reflect all work. He said the foundation received donations, such as lift chairs, that were installed in veterans’ homes and volunteer labor was used.
“It was never a huge Foundation, but it was designed to make a large impact on the veterans it served,” McKellar said.
The charity is only the latest Tuberville dealing to raise questions. In trying to raise doubts Tuberville’s fitness for office, Jones has pointed to Tuberville’s involvement in a failed hedge fund.
Tuberville in 2009 was a partner in a hedge fund that ended in criminal charges against his business partner, John David Stroud. Tuberville also privately settled a civil suit against him filed by investors.
“An Alabama teacher, and parents saving for their children’s education, lost everything. Tuberville’s partner got 10 years in prison. And Tuberville? You guessed it. He said he didn’t have a clue. But he had the money to settle out of court,” the narrator in a Jones ad says.
According to court records, Tuberville began the business partnership with Stroud after being introduced to him. Their joint 50-50 venture was called TS Capital, a reference to their last names.
Tuberville said in a deposition that he had no daily duties with the group. But he had a leased BMW through the company, made introductions and investors said business cards identified Tuberville as managing partner.
In 2013, Stroud pleaded guilty to investment fraud. The Alabama Security Commission said Stroud took investors’ money and used it for personal expenses, unauthorized business and to pay returns to other investors.
Tuberville maintained he was also a victim of Stroud, a view that state regulators agreed with.
“In 2009, Coach Tuberville lent his name to an investment company. It was a big mistake, and he’s paid for it,” a campaign statement read.
“He got conned by Stroud too,” Joe Borg, director of the Securities Commission, said of Tuberville. “From what we could tell, he was unwittingly used to bring folks in.”
Whether Tuberville should’ve known about Stroud’s crimes was an issue for the civil proceeding filed by investors, Borg said. Tuberville acknowledged in court documents that he didn’t adequately vet Stroud before partnering with him.
Tuberville reached a settlement for an undisclosed sum in 2013 after investors sued.
Tuberville also invested in what prosecutors contended was a Ponzi scheme run by a former Georgia football coach Jim Donnan. A jury found Donnan not guilty of financial charges in 2014.
