Remembering Some Frauds
Remembering Some Frauds
Trevor Milton, Wayne LaPierre, Jacob Wohl, Project Veritas, Ken Paxton, and Bird
Some of the folks I’ve written about have found themselves back in the news. Let’s see what they’re up to, shall we?
Trevor Milton
Remember the Nikola guy, who just a few weeks ago went from billionaire to disgraced fraudster under federal investigation? Well, he’s been caught in another lie:
Citing "two people with knowledge of the matter," FT reports Nikola founder Trevor Milton paid a visit to Croatia's electric supercar startup Rimac in 2015, where he failed to secure collaboration on unspecified projects. Milton then allegedly paid several thousand dollars to Rimac designer Adriano Mudri for the drawings and 3D models of a semi-truck concept named "Road Runner," which had been one of Mudri's diploma projects. FT claims "Road Runner" then became the truck's working name at Nikola, citing internal communique using the designation.
He even stole the design for his truck! Impressive. Oh, also it turns out he resigned amidst not only fraud allegations but also sexual assault. By, uh, his cousin:
One of the first people accusing Milton of assault was his cousin, who came to visit for their grandfather’s funeral when Milton was 17 years old and still lived in Utah. She was 15.
Trevor has gone radio silent and, judging by the long list of potential crimes he stands accused of, it’s probably the best idea he’s had in awhile.
Wayne LaPierre
The embattled leader of the NRA, who spent decades draining the non-profit’s coffers to fund his lavish lifestyle, is now also under investigation by the Feds:
In his testimony to the attorney general’s office, Mr. LaPierre said he didn’t disclose the yacht trips for security reasons and because he considered the boat to have been used for a legitimate business purpose, including discussions between his wife and a niece about the NRA Women’s Leadership Forum—a group both were involved with, according to the attorney general’s complaint.
“Any time I get the two of them together anywhere, there is a benefit for the NRA,” the complaint says that he testified. “Yeah, they got together in the Bahamas…it could have been in Washington.”
Turns out writing off yacht trips and private jet flights as expenses might not be legitimate, and might actually be tax fraud instead? Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Jacob Wohl
Last time I wrote about the exploits of Jacob Wohl I said:
All of this stuff is super illegal! But, it seems to me, much of it falls just below the line of something a police detective or prosecutor wants to bother with.
Good news! Our boy has caught himself a charge:
Michigan's attorney general filed felony charges Thursday against two far-right activists who allegedly coordinated a series of racist robocalls that discouraged voters in Detroit and other cities from participating in the November election.
Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl are each being charged with four felony counts, including intimidating voters and conspiracy to commit an election law violation.
Yikes! What sort of naughtiness did these two dipshits get up to?
The robocalls came from a nonexistent group called the "1599 project" and falsely warned recipients that voting by mail would result in being "finessed into giving your private information to the man."
[…]
In the calls, the robocaller told recipients to "beware of vote by mail" and falsely said that doing so would feed personal information into a database accessible to the police pursuing warrants, credit card companies collecting debts and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aiming to track people for mandatory vaccines.
They just can’t help themselves, can they? Judging by my own phone logs, the campaigns are spamming the hell out of everyone already, so they probably don’t need assistance from these bozos.
They made quite a few calls, according to the complaint, and targeted urban areas:
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a press release that the calls were made in August to almost 12,000 residents with phone numbers from the 313 area code that covers Detroit. An investigation found that attorneys general in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois received complaints about similar phone calls being placed to cities with large minority populations.
True to form, they turned their arraignment into a complete circus:
Good luck guys, I’m sure the judge will appreciate your antics.
Project Veritas
I wrote this about Jacob Wohl:
The guy is an obvious clown, but as the right wing reinvents itself as the party of trolling and grievance, it’s good to remember there’s Jacob Wohl and there are smarter versions of him out there, involved in more insidious plots that are less likely to fall apart with a moment’s scrutiny.
…and then I talked about James O’Keefe and Project Veritas. They’ve spent the last year working on a - let’s call it elaborate? - plan to undermine confidence in the election on behalf of their GOP funders. Not long after I wrote those words, their latest exposé dropped:
A ballot-harvesting racket in Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Minneapolis district — where paid workers illegally gather absentee ballots from elderly Somali immigrants — appears to have been busted by undercover news organization Project Veritas.
It will absolutely stun you to learn the sting was complete bullshit, and exposed almost immediately:
Project Veritas says that Omar Jamal, their key whistleblower “works with the Ramsey County Sheriff Department and is the chairman of the Somali Watchdog Group.”
Records obtained by the Daily Dot indicate that the “Somali Watchdog Group,” the group which Jamal allegedly heads, only just registered its website in late August 2020.
The timeframe appears to be after Project Veritas began producing the video, which shows footage from July.
The sheriff would not confirm whether Jamal worked at their office, which of course he did not. None of this stopped the president from tweeting the story, because he’s had a long-running racist feud with Ilhan Omar. Project Veritas has spent lots of time and energy attempting to smear Omar, and this was touted as their “gotcha” moment.
After the initial debunking of their “inside source” a local news network tracked down one of the men featured in the Veritas video, and, well, he tells a very different story:
In his first interview, Liban Osman tells the FOX 9 Investigators he was offered $10,000 by community activist Omar Jamal to say he was collecting ballots for Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
Except was legally collecting ballots on behalf of his brother, who was running for city council:
It is clear from the raw video, obtained by FOX 9, that Liban Osman was working for his brother’s campaign.
Liban Osman admits the Project Veritas video footage looks incriminating, but he said the group deliberately left the full context on the cutting room floor. Project Veritas used two separate videos he posted on Snapchat while driving in his car to make it appear as if he was illegally picking up ballots and offering money for votes, he said.
Not content to let their failed bribe attempt be the end of it, Veritas used Jamal to stage another fake encounter:
In a second report from Project Veritas, surreptitiously recorded video shows a man receiving $200 in “pocket money” in exchange for his agreement to vote for Ilhan Omar.
James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, calls it “an explosive piece of tape.”
But two sources tell the FOX 9 Investigators the man is a relative of Omar Jamal, and that during the encounter outside Cedar Riverside Apartments, it is Jamal who is handing the man $200 which was intended for the family of a sick relative in Somalia.
In case race baiting wasn’t enough for you, they layered in some Islamophobia as well:
The Project Veritas reports also contend, without evidence, that the cash for ballots scheme is being bank rolled by Lake Street businessman Basim Sabri.
In the second video, an anonymous woman said, “He’s Palestinian. He’s funding the whole thing.”
Is…this…illegal? Seems like it should be? Ilhan Omar is going to cruise to reelection, and, happily, Osman’s brother won his city council race. Has Veritas finally managed to piss off enough people that they’ll get hit with criminal charges over their behavior? Here’s hoping.
Ken Paxton
When I wrote about Project Veritas, I explored their connection to a certain powerful state attorney general:
This is why some of the powerful allies O’Keefe has made should be worrying, especially Texas AG Ken Paxton
So, how’s Ken Paxton doing these days?
Top aides of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have asked federal law enforcement authorities to investigate allegations of improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential crimes against the state’s top lawyer.
In a one-page letter to the state agency’s director of human resources, obtained Saturday by the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV, seven executives in the upper tiers of the office said that they are seeking the investigation into Paxton “in his official capacity as the current Attorney General of Texas.”
The Thursday letter said that each “has knowledge of facts relevant to these potential offenses and has provided statements concerning those facts to the appropriate law enforcement.”
I am not a lawyer, but that seems bad? Seven of your deputies say you’re doing crimes, and they have proof? Boy! How will he come back from this one?
Paxton, a 57-year-old Republican, was first elected in 2014. His office said in a statement Saturday evening: “The complaint filed against Attorney General Paxton was done to impede an ongoing investigation into criminal wrongdoing by public officials including employees of this office. Making false claims is a very serious matter and we plan to investigate this to the fullest extent of the law.”
Ah, that’s one strategy - accuse your accusers of doing crimes! And, lest we think these are Deep State operatives out to get their boss, some of them were die hard loyalist…uh…bigots:
Mateer’s inclusion in the complaint letter, and his departure as Paxton’s second in command, was particularly significant, coming from a political ally who shared a conservative Christian perspective on many social and legal issues.
When President Donald Trump tapped Mateer to become a federal judge in 2017, Paxton lauded him as “a principled leader — a man of character — who has done an outstanding job for the State of Texas.”
Mateer’s nomination was later withdrawn after revelations of anti-LGBT remarks, including calling transgender children part of “Satan’s plan.”
Shucks! What a bunch of lovely folks. Also, it seems pertinent to point out that the attorney general of Texas has actually been under criminal indictment since 2015:
Paxton has been operating under a separate legal cloud since the summer of 2015, when he was indicted on three felony counts related to private business deals in 2011 and 2012. Seven months after being sworn in for his first four-year term as attorney general, Paxton was arrested, booked into Collin County Jail and quickly released on a no-money bond.
He has steadfastly proclaimed his innocence and dismissed the charges as a political attack from those who oppose his strong conservative principles.
For someone who loudly proclaims his innocence he sure does seem to end up crime adjacent an awful lot. What bad luck. Also, Paxton was reelected in 2018, despite all of this. An indicted criminal, elected as the top law enforcement officer for one of our largest states. The system works!
Bird
If you live in or near a city, you’ve probably seen rentable scooters littering streets and parks. Most of this detritus is attributable to one of two companies - Lime and Bird. I wrote about Lime and their role in a rental bike debacle recently, and back in April I wrote about Bird firing 400 people on a faceless Zoom call, but we haven’t checked in on how scooters are doing in the pandemic. Let’s find out!
Bird is a privately owned, venture-funded scooter company. They were doing decent business before the pandemic, but like many thing-share companies, they’ve had to cut costs as demand fell. So what did Bird do? Created a predatory “franchise” program to unload costs on its gig workers:
Since the pandemic began, Bird has been quietly changing its business model by convincing its contract workers to invest in the scooter equipment themselves. While the company announced a “franchise” program in 2018, at the time, it primarily marketed the concept to entrepreneurs, local bike shops, and other independent operators. Bird has never acknowledged that it is now offering financing on scooters to people who cannot afford to buy them outright, a strategy that seems intended to convince the company’s struggling contract workers to sign on.
Great! So what are the terms of this program?
According to a contract obtained by OneZero, the fleet managers don’t actually own the scooters. The title to the scooters will remain with Bird, even after the fleet managers pay off the scooter debt. Bird calls the scooter payments “equipment fees,” and the fees don’t go away if a scooter is lost or broken. The fleet managers are expected to pay for them even if the contract is terminated, according to the legal fine print.
Boy. To take a step back, what Bird and other scooter companies had been doing pre-COVID was paying independent gig workers to pick up and charge scooters that were low on battery. Apparently, it was possible to make a decent living doing this if you were willing to work odd hours and drive all over the place. However, like many venture-backed gig economy “business models” it wasn’t profitable for Bird, so instead they’ve found a creative way to shift liability for the scooters - while not ever actually selling them to contractors! - and pay these newly-christened “fleet managers” less money for doing the same work. Disruptive!
Like many franchise models, the “costs” are front loaded, meaning these not-really-owners get most of their paycheck deducted until their debt is paid:
The fleet managers’ revenue comes from scooter rides and is paid out by Bird in a weekly check. Bird takes 30% out of each fleet manager’s paycheck to pay off their scooter debt, in addition to a 20% service fee, and an additional city fee, a sales tax fee, and a promotional fee, according to one invoice provided to OneZero.The fees and the equipment payments that Bird withholds amount to about 70% of the fleet managers’ weekly earnings.
At some unknown future date the managers could make as much as 80% of the revenue collected - before fees? Who knows! But we’re still in the middle of a pandemic and it’s about to be winter - scooter usage will undoubtedly decrease as it gets cold.
Managers were promised exclusive access to areas of cities, but now find themselves competing against others. They’re also liable for mechanical issues:
Before the Covid-19 crisis, which prompted Bird to lay off 400 people via Zoom call, Bird scooters were maintained by mechanics who were employed by Bird. But now, the mechanic work is the responsibility of fleet managers, who agree in the contract to keep the scooters in safe and good condition and to carry their own insurance.
So not only are they responsible for making sure scooters are available 24/7 on the street, but they’re responsible if anything happens to them. People have not stopped destroying scooters for fun. Bird has now saddled its gig workers with that liability, for events entirely out of their control.
Anyhow, being a scooter franchisee sounds like a blast:
Bird demands that [Daniel] keep 95% of his scooters on the street and keeps the pressure on him even when his scooters are in the repair shop, he says. If he can’t keep up with Bird’s “performance metrics,” Bird threatens to take away some of his scooters, which he fears would lower his daily earnings. The stress of that keeps him working all the time. He has spent some nights camping in his van on the street to study the public’s scooter habits.
Love to take on $40,000 in debt, legal liability, and sleep in my van so my gig overlords don’t send me a nasty text message than I’ve fallen below my Scooter Quota for the day.
Short Cons
The Atlantic - “How exactly has a self-declared billionaire avoided federal taxation for the better part of this century? Do these records prove that he’s poor, or astonishingly good at hiding how rich he is? And what’s the deal with all the money he’s losing on golf courses?”
The Guardian - “A calligraphy scroll by China’s former leader Mao Zedong, estimated to be worth millions, was cut in half after it was stolen last month in Hong Kong, police have said.”
Dickinson County News - “A series of minor thefts in early September had Lakes Area store clerks scratching their heads. Newspaper racks were empty. Storefront vending boxes were cleaned out, and copies of the Sept. 2 Dickinson County News were hard to come by…”
Washington Post - “The firm, Rally Forge, was “working on behalf of Turning Point USA,” Facebook concluded in an investigation that led to the removal of 200 accounts and 55 pages, as well as 76 Instagram accounts — many of them operated by teenagers in the Phoenix area.”
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