severa levashov

<p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">hmmn</font></p><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/2018/03/03/jerome-corsis-inks-to-alt-right-connected-russian-hackers/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.madcowprod.com/2018/03/03/jerome-corsis-inks-to-alt-right-connected-russian-hackers/</font></a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small;"><div class="td-post-content" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; margin-top: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...Corsi, InfoWars’s DC bureau chief, as well as the man many think invented the alt-right, was riding high earlier this week,  after <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">USA Today</em>, the country’s <a href="https://splinternews.com/usa-today-publishes-infowars-conspiracy-nut-without-eve-1823404629#ga=2.220978523.237935032.1519528819-1695488106.1512405280" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">highest-circulating paper,</a> published an <a href="https://splinternews.com/usa-today-publishes-infowars-conspiracy-nut-without-eve-1823404629#ga=2.220978523.237935032.1519528819-1695488106.1512405280" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">opinion piece he wrote.</a></font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then, yesterday, he was kicked off YouTube… <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">for life.   </em></strong>He had only recently received his first two You Tube strikes—for harassment and/or bullying—late last month.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[img]</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since his banishment, he’s been posting increasingly irate tweets that make it clear than his relationship with the truth is currently a bit stand-offish.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of his headlines reads: <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"> “Dr Jerome Corsi: My YouTube Channel Restored! Alex Jones Infowars.”</strong></font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[screensht]</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A screenshot of Corsi’s shut-down site gives the lie to that little bit of fake news. Maybe it was just wistful thinking. </font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Say what you want about him, Jerome Corsi traffics in pro-style disinformation. He delivers the goods. He knows what makes his people’s blood race.</font></span></p><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 400; margin: 27px 0px 17px; line-height: 30px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dr. Jerome Corsi may know a few Russian hackers</font></span></h3><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Jerome Corsi has more to worry about than how many views his video rants are currently receiving. He may be </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">involved in a half-visible criminal conspiracy powering the Russiagate scandal, which is beginning to unravel.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If, as expected, Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicts a gaggle of Russian hackers next week, it will be surprising if some of the Americans who facilitated and helped pay for the hackers aren’t taken down as well.  </font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many are waiting impatiently for the American fellow-conspirators of the Russian hackers’ to be fingered and publicly shamed.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The notion that this number “might could” include Jerome Corsi is enough to set bitter hearts aflutter. But, is this just wishful thinking?</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under America’s racketeering laws, everyone involved in a criminal organization is supposedly guilty of the crimes committed by other members of the group, which could truly trigger a bloodletting.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Fed up with knives that just won’t cut? Need an Icy Hot Sleeve, a Glass Wizard, or 6 Second Abs? Could you utilize a Bun & Thigh Roller?  A Magic Bullet?”</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Russiagate conspiracy has been around — in one form or another— for 15 years, since March of 2003, when a Russian hacker later to become famous named<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Pavel ‘Red Eye’ Vrublevsky</span></strong> moved into a house in Howard Beach, Queens which was already occupied by a company owned by a Tampa Mobster named Mike Muzio.  </span></font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Vrublevsky’s <a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/readdress/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">re partners LLC </a>listed its business address as 158-49 90th St, a single family residence in Howard Beach. So too Mike Muzio’s <a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/blue-moon2/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">blue moon group Inc. </a> involved in pornography and cyber crime. V</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">rublevsky’s company handled the back end, taking credit cards, through his Moscow company Chronopay.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And this is where things begin to get interesting. </font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">2004, Muzio’s <em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Blue Moon Group</strong></em> was a subsidiary o<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">f Genesis Intermedia<i>,</i></span></strong> an Internet start-up used by Saudi arms dealer and ‘fixer’ Adnan Khashoggi in what will become a massive and masterful stock fraud generating a sweet $300 million dollar payday.</span></font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Whether Muzio was an active participant is unknown. But he was not shy getting involved in stock fraud later, after he </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">went from working for Adnan Khashoggi t0 an “alt-right” stock fraud ring run by a business partner and Breitbart collaborator of former Trump advisor <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Steve Bannon,</span> </strong>Sarasota’s own <span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Andrew Badolato</strong></span>.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-16448" src="https://www.madcowprod.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/download.jpg" alt="" width="194" height="259" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; height: auto; float: left; margin: 6px 24px 21px 0px; display: block;" /></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It does not seem to have been a difficult leap, especially since Khashoggi is a charter member of Donald Trump’s Palm Beach ‘homies.’</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">It was at this time—in 2003—that Russian Mobsters, including <em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Semion Mogilevich,</strong></em> Russia’s Mob’s Mr. Bigski, began colluding with elements of the American Mafia, the nascent alt-right, and Adnan Khashoggi, who </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">was right at home in this company, having been in operations for over 40-years in his long career as a CIA fixer.</span></font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Khashoggi’s longevity owed partly to being able to offer the requisite plausible deniability (he’s a foreigner!). As well, they offered the chance to meet starlets, like Paul McCartney’s future wife Heather, in decidedly relaxed circumstances.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Until his death last year in New York Adnan Khashoggi was a fixture in nearly every American scandal since Watergate. He was around for so long that clips from his first big scandal—something to do with bribes and Lockheed—are in black and white.  </font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The staple of spammers everywhere was Viagra, in all its hundreds of mutations. Penile enlargers sold well. Aftersales might include an antenna booster.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><h4 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 400; margin: 24px 0px 14px; line-height: 29px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The secret life of an<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> agent provocateur</span></font></span></h4><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jerome Corsi, alt-right rabble-rouser, led a secret second life.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Who knew?</font></em></strong></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/e2muySx.png" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;"><img class="alignleft wp-image-16450" src="https://www.madcowprod.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/e2muySx-558x262.png" alt="" width="359" height="168" srcset="https://www.madcowprod.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/e2muySx-558x262.png 558w, https://www.madcowprod.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/e2muySx-696x326.png 696w, https://www.madcowprod.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/e2muySx.png 766w" sizes="(max-width: 359px) 100vw, 359px" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; height: auto; float: left; margin: 6px 24px 21px 0px; display: block;" /></a>In<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> 1995, before his career peddling smears began to take off, reported The Boston Globe, Corsi was involved in ripping off two dozen investors in Minnesota by convincing them to give him money which then magically disappeared, supposedly for investments in Poland.</span></font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The <b>FBI didn’t charge Corsi. Several investors sued and won judgments against him, but were unable to collect.  Corsi reportedly transferred all his assets and funds to his wife’s name.</b></font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another leader in the American wing of the Russiagate conspiracy was  stockbroker Gregg M.S. Berger. Gregg M.S. Berger, however, is not his real name. His real name is <b>Gregg StickelBerger. </b> Easy to see why he changed it.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Both Berger and Corsi worked at shady Gilford Securities, widely rumored to have Mob ties.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stockbroker StickelBerger used Gilford Securities to serviced two sets of players, in what looks to be the same ongoing conspiracy. One is a Mob-Mafiya strand; the other is Khashoggi’s GenesisIntermedia fraud.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From Reuters:</font></span></p><blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; position: relative; border-left: none; margin: 40px 34.7969px 38px; text-align: center;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 40px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NEW YORK, Feb 1 (Reuters) – A New York stock broker has been charged with orchestrating a fraudulent $30 million scheme to illegally “pump-and-dump” thinly traded Chinese and Israeli penny stocks, the U.S. Justice Department said.  <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Gregg Berger, 47, was charged </strong>with one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud, in an indictment unsealed Tuesday in U.S. district court in Detroit. He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.</font></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 40px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In a related case</span></strong><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud charges against Berger, seven other people, and three companies involved in the alleged scheme, including one company in Canada.</span></font></span></p></blockquote><h4 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 400; margin: 24px 0px 14px; line-height: 29px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A “China-Israeli micro stock play”</font></span></h4><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Gregg Berger worked with Alan M. Ralsky,</strong></span> known as America’s Spam King</span>. The two men commit financial fraud together, then plead guilty in 2009 to conspiracy.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In their joint effort, Berger ran a $33 million international microcap stock scheme involving the stocks of eight small U.S. companies “headquartered” overseas, in the People’s Republic of China, Canada, and Israel.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The companies were used in reverse mergers with local non-U.S. companies looking for a back door into U.S. financial markets.</font></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">Stockbroker Berger ran </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">two conspiracies. One was the </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">China-Israeli micro stock play, for which Berger was eventually indicted, along with Al Ralsky, a cast of virtual unknowns… and a </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Russian named Peter Severa.</span></span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Make that Russian hacker Peter Severa</span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">. </em></strong> Who was safe in Russia, until, five years after his American partners are convicted,  makes the mistake of going on </font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[pix]</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">vacation in Spain…. Or… he was lured to Spain.  </font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In either event, under Spanish skies, the Russian hacker was arrested by Spanish police, where it turned out Peter Severa was not his real name. </font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">It was Peter Levashov</span></strong>, #7 on the world’s Top 10 Worst Spammers list,</span> according to a Russian cyber-security company. A Justice Department indictment asserts Levashov is the l<b>ong-time Russian partner of American Alan Ralsky of West Bloomfield Michigan.</b></font></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">After the U.S. won a titanic struggle with Russia for control of where he would be extradited, he was <b>recently extradited to the United States.</b></font></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">It’s a simple declension. Jerome Corsi has ties to Gregg Berger. Berger was partners with America’s Spam King Al Ralsky. He partnered with Peter Levashov. As well as with Jonathan Curshen.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of Khashoggi’s partners named Michael Farkas bought a spy store in Miami. The group began soliciting sales over the Internet in earnest.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Need a pair of sunglasses fitted with a fiber-optic video camera? A shirt button concealing a surveillance microphone? How about a bullet-proof umbrella, or a baseball cap strong enough to repel a hatchet blow?</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><h4 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 400; margin: 24px 0px 14px; line-height: 29px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Uber-hackers working  for uber-oligarchs</font></span></h4><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">At the same time he was working with Ralsky and his crew, busy fraudster (but on whose behalf?) Gregg Berger was also part of a criminal conspiracy involving </span><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Sarasota native Jonathan Curshen</span><em style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">,</em></strong><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> another example of that Florida city’s lack of either ethics or charm.</span></font></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With Curshen’s lavish assistance, Berger helms an effort to pump and dump the stock of a little nothing company (literally, there was nothing there) called CO2.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back to the first conspiracy.  One of the eight American shell companies located overseas that Berger and Ralsky are using is something called “<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">China Digital.”</em></strong></font></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Which leads back to </span><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Jonathan Curshen, part of Berger Conspiracy No. 2.</span></strong></font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Berger’s Conspiracy no 1. Curshen helped manipulate “China Digital’s stock price.  So Berger’s two known criminal conspiracies must be part of one larger overarching conspiracy.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which means that — in the best of all possible worlds —  each and every ‘connected’ miscreant who has helped move the conspiracy forward is now, as a matter of law, guilty of every crime committed by each one of their fellow conspirators.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jonathan Curshen was in business with Steve Bannon’s alt-right business partner Andy Badolato in Sarasota, Florida.</font></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to a criminal Complaint filed Sept 4, 2008, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Curshen, along with someone named Bruce Grossman, schemed to defraud investors in a company called Industrial Biotechnology Corporation (“IBC”) by paying secret cash kickbacks to an undercover FBI agent, who was posing as a middleman willing to recruit corrupt stockbrokers.</span></font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Who controlled Industrial Biotechnology Corporation (“IBC”)?  Serial alt-right fraudster Andy Badolato.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Teddy bears. Some Viagra? A mail-order bride? Fake diplomas were steady earners. But of course they didn’t sell nearly as well as hard-core pornography videos.  Nothing did. </font></span></p><h4 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 400; margin: 24px 0px 14px; line-height: 29px;" /><h4 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 400; margin: 24px 0px 14px; line-height: 29px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before there was Jesus there was John the Baptist</font></span></h4><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Befor</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">e there was Donald Trump, there was Jerome Corsi. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">His supremely distasteful “Swift Boat” book, filled with lies and calumny, did in an authentic war hero (no matter what you thought of his politics), 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Later Corsi lobbed another grenade over the transom called  “Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President.”</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Slight problem: in a bit of horrific timing that makes you question whether there might not be a God after all,  Corsi’s book came out three weeks<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"> after</em></strong> Obama’s birth certificate had been released, and promptly tanked.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That’s when Alex Jones told his audience he and Corsi were receiving warnings from<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> “top government officials”</span></strong><i>—</i>presumably because a mid-level functionary wouldn’t convey the seriousness of the matter—while preparing to publish the true story of something or other.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Threats started<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><i> </i>pouring</span></strong> in,” Alex Jones told his listeners. Even his own lawyers, he said, advised him against breaking the story.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s enough to give you chills.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/hack.gif" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;"><img class="alignright wp-image-16462 size-full" src="https://www.madcowprod.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/hack.gif" alt="" width="300" height="170" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; height: auto; float: right; margin: 6px 0px 21px 24px; display: block;" /></a>The real story of the Russian hackers is a story of the increasing levels of expertise they began to display.  They were working hard to master the Internet’s arts of persuasion.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Russians began stretching their computer skills beyond the reach of their American cousins, <b>Adnan Khashoggi</b> and sidekick Ramy El Batrawi’s GenesisIntermedia provided the only outfit who could stay with them.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spammers—in Russia and the U.S.—sold vacation giveaways, mortgages, work-at-home opportunities…Loans! </font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Successful spammers were soon living large.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is what hackers, Russian and American, did. Control millions of servers. Write a zesty little sales pitch. Slam some cloak-and-dagger software through a massive database of e-mail addresses.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then deluge the planet like the wrath of a vengeful God.  </font></span></p><h4 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 400; margin: 24px 0px 14px; line-height: 29px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A threat to proto-fascists everywhere</font></span></h4><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not since the glory days of Iran-Contra has the group Donald Trump is fronting for—the so-called “Alt-Right”—received so much bad publicity. Yet even after all this time the group— as a long-standing drug trafficking, financial fraud and money laundering operation— remains recognizable. One anchor over the decades, for example, has been Adnan Khashoggi.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Khashoggi, and his lieutenant Ramy El-Batrawi, both of whom were deeply implicated in Iran Contra, would have a last hurrah in Russiagate.</b></font></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So too would Americans like Tampa Mobster Mike Muzio,  currently away doing 13 years at a federal penitentiary in Minnesota.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> There he tweets about looking forward to getting out in 2020.</span></font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the players on the ground were releasing press releases announcing orders from each other for billions of dollars worth of product that didn’t exist, from other businesses which were members of the conspiracy.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The phony companies were often led by former agents from U.S. military intelligence, the CIA, and the NSA (at<b> Skyway Aircraft, </b>which we’ll get to presently), as well as alt-right factotums like Andy Badolato, Jerome Corsi, and Jonathan Curshen. </font></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Facing them across the table was a roving posse of Russian hackers, as well as a squadron of Russian Mobsters like Oleg Deripaska.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The story of our time is about Donald Trump and the globalization of organized crime. It’s intrinsically more interesting than the one being surfaced so far.</font></span></p></div><footer times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both;"><div class="td-post-source-tags" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><ul class="td-tags td-post-small-box clearfix" open="Open" sans="Sans" arial="arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-weight="font-weight" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 30px; line-height: 20px; clear: left; height: 20px; display: table;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); padding: 5px 9px; display: block; text-transform: uppercase; line-height: 10px; float: left; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px; margin-left: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">TAGS</font></span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/badolato/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Badolato</font></a></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/bannon/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Bannon</font></a></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/corsi/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Corsi</font></a></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/curshen/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Curshen</font></a></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/hackers/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">hackers</font></a></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/russiagate/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">RUSSIAGATE</font></a></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/trump/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Trump</font></a></li></ul></div></footer></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/2016/09/21/trump-campaigns-bannon-ties-to-sarasota-grifter/" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://www.madcowprod.com/</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">2016/09/21/</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">trump-campaigns-bannon-ties-to-sarasota-grifter/</span></font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...S<span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">tock fraud, for  example,  an increasingly popular pastime in Florida, which provided links between Badolato and names already notorious for being part of an ongoing criminal conspiracy.</span></font></div><div class="td-post-content" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; margin-top: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The location varies between Sarasota and St. Petersburg, Florida, home to <a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/2006/05/02/mystery-of-5-5-ton-coke-flight-deepens/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">St Petersburg-Clearwater International </a>Airport, where at least two Badolato associates were involved with companies owning drug planes, which took off with some regularity from there on flights down to South America and back</span>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Because active retirees make St. Petersburg an international shuffleboard hot spot — Aspen for snowbirds from the Upper Midwest — some wag dubbed the drug trafficking organization (DTO)  <a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/2008/08/25/drug-scandal-figure-dea-guilty-of-selective-prosecution/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Shuffleboard Cartel.</span></a></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As astute readers are undoubtedly aware, St. Petersburg is also the home of the<a href="http://stpeteshuffle.com/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;"> world’s largest shuffleboard club. </a>The<a href="http://studiohourglass.blogspot.com/2012/04/visiting-clearwaters-shuffleboard-hall.html" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;"> Shuffleboard Hall of Fame</a> is right next door in Clearwater.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you’re looking to get into drug trafficking, you want a benign host, filled with people who don’t ask too many questions. So you could do a lot worse than St Petersburg, home of All Things Shuffleboard,  and Venice, Florida, which boasts the second-oldest population in the entire United States.</font></p><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 400; margin: 27px 0px 17px; line-height: 30px;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Welcome to Andy’s World-Wide Web</font></strong></h3><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like nighttime bonfires attract drum circles, Bannon’s hasty change-of-residence to Badolato’s Sarasota beach house under pressure from reporters has attracted attention.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How odd to discover someone close to Donald Trump’s campaign chairman who’s been peddling phony companies with no product, no prospects, and nothing to sell… companies whose <a href="https://www.hugedomains.com/domain_profile.cfm?d=therenewablecorp&e=com" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">websites disappear</a> into the ether with frightening regularity.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you squint through the flickering flames, you can glimpse a few familiar faces from Florida’s unusually generous bounty of <a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/2013/11/15/nsa-links-to-st-petersburg-fl-drug-ring/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">grifters, racketeers and flim-flam men.  </a>Some even have close ties to America’s national security state.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/curshen-1.jpg" rel="attachment wp-att-12820" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;"><img class="alignright wp-image-12820" src="https://www.madcowprod.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/curshen-1.jpg" alt="curshen" width="307" height="315" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; height: auto; float: right; margin: 6px 0px 21px 24px; display: block;" /></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Like one of Andy Badolato’s partners in Sarasota, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/5126-2/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Jonathan Curshen</a>,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> publicly fingered as a principal player in </span><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/sec-skyway/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">the stock fraud</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> and drug trafficking ring centered around <b>SkyWay Aircraft of St. Petersburg.</b></span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Specifically Curshen invented <a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/sky5/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">a Dupont heir </a>whose largesse helped <a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/dupont2/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">SkyWay buy</a> a DC-9 airliner busted in Mexico in 2006 while carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine.</font></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Jonathan Curshen <a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/2011/06/16/dea-still-in-denial-on-american-druglords-2/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">made a deal with Badolato</a> to sell 3 million shares of an Andy Badolato company he’d founded and led called<b> Industrial BioTechnology Corporation (IBOT</b>), through Curshen’s Costa Rica brokerage company, <a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/redseaoffshore.jpg" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Red Sea Management, </a>in exchange for a 25 percent cut of the proceeds.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[logo clipart?]</font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/redsea4.jpg" rel="attachment wp-att-12762" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Curshen made a big mistake, according to federal prosecutors. He bribed an undercover FBI agent he thought represented brokers handling the accounts of wealthy customers. <a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/2011/06/16/dea-still-in-denial-on-american-druglords-2/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Caught red-handed,</a> Curshen pled guilty to paying bribes to stock brokers to buy  Badolato’s company’s stock.</span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">What makes Jonathan Curshen interesting to a probe of officially-sponsored organized crime is tha<a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/red-sea-skyway-curshen-et-al/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">t Curshen’s Red Sea Management, </a>according to filings with the SEC, also supplied the DC-9 airliner (N900SA) busted in Mexico’s Yucatan carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/oops3-300x243.jpg" rel="attachment wp-att-12821" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;"><img class="alignright wp-image-12764" src="https://www.madcowprod.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/FelonGeffon.jpg" alt="felongeffon" width="201" height="221" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; height: auto; float: right; margin: 6px 0px 21px 24px; display: block;" /></a></font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At the time of the big bust, FAA records showed the DC-9 was registered to a SkyWay Aircraft principal, Frederic Geffon, who regularly commingled funds between SkyWay and other entities he owned, like Royal Sons Motor Yachts, and <a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/2006/04/17/owners-of-plane-seized-with-5-5-tons-of-cocaine/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Royal Sons LLC.</a></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/2010/08/04/from-tampa-to-timbuktuthe-american-drug-lords-in-the-news/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Geffon had been investigated for drug trafficking</a> ten years earlier. The DEA had not filed charges. In aviation circles there was widespread suspicion Geffon escaped doing time by flipping and going to work as an informant for the DEA.</font></p><figure id="attachment_12765" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-12765" class="wp-caption alignleft" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 6px 24px 0px 0px; text-align: center; max-width: 100%; float: left; width: 288px;"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-12765" class="wp-caption-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-align: left; margin: 6px 0px 26px; line-height: 17px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jonathan Strikes A Pose]</font></figcaption></figure><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In criminal jargon it’s called <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">working off a beef. </span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reported the Oct 10, 2008 Vancouver Sun: “Jonathan Randall Curshen…controlled a company in Costa Rica called Red Sea Management, which had generously provided, in return for 28,000,000 shares of common stock in SkyWay,…a 1966 McDonald Douglas DC-9 aircraft that shortly thereafter was carrying a cargo of 5.6 tons of cocaine, worth several hundred million dollars. This is a strange case.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today Jonathan Curshen<a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/curshen-20yrs/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;"> is serving 17 years </a>in federal prison. Curshen and SkyWay Aircraft were associated with a network that included a surprising number of people who were former members of military intelligence, or the CIA, or  the Genovese  Mafia Family in New York City.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While his <a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/2007/11/23/our-story-thus-far/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">his ties to Republican politicians</a>, like his current campaign client Donald Trump, are visible for everyone to see, tomorrow we’ll ask: Does Steve Bannon have national security ties?</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sarasota’s very own “hyena pack”</font></strong></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Evidence strongly suggests that Andy Badolato and associates are what fraud and money laundering investigators call<a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/2014/03/24/hyena-pack/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;"> a”hyena pack;”</a> fraudsters acting in concert to shred the investments of clueless shareholders who bought into a clutch of sad-looking penny stock companies that were an excuse for schemes netting then tens of millions of dollars.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This latest ‘blemish’ on the Trump brand comes in the wake of <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/23/donald-trump-foreign-business-deals-national-security-498081.html" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">last week’s story in Newsweek </a> which shed light on Trump’s foreign business dealings. The story exposed evidence that a number of Trump’s overseas partners have been looting their home countries with the same sleazy avarice which became infamous in the U.S. after the scams of Wall Street’s predatory elite crippled the American economy in 2008</span>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">News that Trump’s Presidential campaign manager is hanging his hat in the home of a fraudster with similar proclivities is probably not the most hopeful of signs.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Note: Badolato was contacted and asked for comment on this story. Apparently he declined. It happens.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">TOMORROW: DRILLING DOWN INTO ANDY’S DOOMED PUBLIC COMPANIES  <span style="font-weight: 600; text-transform: uppercase;">TAGS:</span></font></p></div><footer times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both;"><div class="td-post-source-tags" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><ul class="td-tags td-post-small-box clearfix" open="Open" sans="Sans" arial="arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-weight="font-weight" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 30px; line-height: 20px; clear: left; height: 20px; display: table;"><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/andy-badolato/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Andy Badolato</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/badolato/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Badolato</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/breitbart/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Breitbart</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/campaign/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">campaign</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/campaign-manager/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">campaign manager</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/cia/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">CIA</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/cocaine/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">cocaine</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/dea/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">DEA</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/donald-trump/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Donald Trump</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/drug-trafficking/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">drug trafficking</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/grifters/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">grifters</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/hyena-pack/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">hyena pack</font></a></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/jonathan-curshen/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Jonathan Curshen</font></a></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/red-sea-management/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Red Sea Management</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/sarasota/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Sarasota</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/sinofresh/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Sinofresh</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/steve-bannon/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Steve Bannon</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/stock-fraud/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">stock fraud</font></a></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px; margin-left: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 4px;"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/tag/voter-fraud/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; border: 1px solid rgb(237, 237, 237); margin-left: 0px; line-height: 8px; padding: 5px 8px; height: 20px; margin-right: 4px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">voter fraud </font></a><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/author/dhopsicker/" roboto="Roboto" slab="Slab" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Daniel Hopsicker</font></a></li></ul></div></footer><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/2007/11/23/our-story-thus-far/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.madcowprod.com/<b>2007/11/23/</b>our-story-thus-far/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a  DC9  is busted at an airport in the state of Campeche, Mexico carrying an incredible 5.5 tons of cocaine…</font></div><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of its two listed owners, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Brent Kovar of <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">SkyWay Aircraft</em></strong>, boasted in a press release that he’d been appointed  to the Business Advisory Council of the National Republican Congressional Committee by Congressional Majority Leader Tom Delay…</span></font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The second  plane's registered owner, “Royal Sons LLC,” used to be housed in a hanger at the Venice Fl. Airport owned by terror flight school Huffman Aviation… </font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The plane was painted with the distinctive blue-and-white with gold trim used by  official U.S. Government planes. Around the image was a legend reading: SkyWay Aircraft: SkyWay Aircraft: Protection of America’s Skies…</font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The plane bore a Seal of a federal eagle clutching an olive branch. Most who saw it were fooled into believing it belonge to the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security. The firm’s Chairman<b>, Glenn Kovar, boasted of long-standing ties to the CIA</b>…</font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The case had immediate and obvious national security implications. No one in authority in the U.S. addressed them, or even acknowledged they existed…  </font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The DC9 had an identical twin, a second airliner painted the same way. The airliners were supposedly used to perform in-flight demonstrations of the technology of SkyWay’s new product…</font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But that could not have been the purpose for owning the twin airliners.</font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>SkyWay had no products, no prospects, and nothing to demonstrate. The company was a penny stock fraud scam which successfully relieved investors of over $40 million dollars in only three years…</b> </font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What the company DID have was twin airliners masquerading as official U.S. Government planes…  </font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Glenn and Brent Kovar, the father-and-son pair running SkyWay, had run a similar  scam several years earlier,  called Satellite Access Systems, (SAS) whose last known stock quote was three one-thousands of a penny per share… </b></font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The FAA did nothing to clear up confusion about who owned the plane when it was busted. They wrote: “The file will not be available to be sent out until it is updated in approximately 2 weeks…”  </font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A month later, the plane’s registration records have still not been released.</font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A San Diego defense contractor, The Titan Corporation, had issued a press release as the company was going bankrupt, stating they planned to purchase a half billion dollars worth of the company’s non-existent product…</b></font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Titan was was the biggest campaign contributor of disgraced former Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham. The company was involved in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, and has recently been convicted and fined $28 million for fixing a Presidential election in the African state of Benin…</span> </font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Titan  employed  a mysterious Lebanese man who provided assistance to Mohamed Atta and other terrorist hijackers in Venice Florida before the 9.11 attack, who was listed as a contractor working for the company in Saudi Arabia last year…</font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What business did Titan Corp. have with SkyWay Aircraft? No one is saying. Calls to both companies have not been returned…</font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Titan official quoted in the press release had been the executive vice president of an Annapolis Maryland firm, Intergraph, which had a deal with <b>Brent Wilke</b>’s ADCS Inc. which is now being investigated by the FBI…</font></p><p align="left" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The deal, brokered by Duncan Hunter, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, resulted in massive mark-ups on a product the Pentagon never asked for. The only losers were U.S. taxpayers, and maybe some dead U.S. servicemen in Iraq whose Humvee’s didn’t get armor plating because there wasn’t enough money for it in the Pentagon budget…</b></font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">many pix some lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.madcowprod.com/2016/09/28/stock-fraud-drug-trafficking-alt-right/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.madcowprod.com/2016/09/28/stock-fraud-drug-trafficking-alt-right/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>stock Fraud, Drug Trafficking, & the ‘Alt-Right’</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By Daniel Hopsicker -September 28, 2016</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">101836</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">When Donald Trump’s campaign manager Steve Bannon was recently exposed for using  a vacant house in Miami as his legal residence, he hastily changed his legal address to a beach house in Sarasota, Florida owned by a writer at his Breitbart.com website.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">His hurried move— made more urgent by Trump’s adoption of ‘voter fraud’ as one of his signature issues— has unexpectedly given a gift that keeps on giving to investigators probing the financing of the newly-emergent “Alt-Right.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">muzio2</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">America’s “most dangerous political operative”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">bannon44Bannon, who Bloomberg recently called The Most Dangerous Political Operative in America,  had repaired to a beach house owned by Andy Badolato, who claims on his website to be an “entrepreneur, senior level executive, venture capitalist and seed stage investor” who has founded companies with a market cap of $26 billion dollars.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">However an investigation reveals that Bannon’s buddy and roommate Badolato has long-time links to a nest of financial fraudsters that raise questions of whether money taken from investors through Badolato’s series of stock scams — which operated on an almost industrial scale—had been pocketed by  financiers of the Breitbart.com-led “alt-right.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">foggo-conningham</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The group of racketeers, swindlers and flimflam men may even have links to fraudsters in Southern California associated with a man who has been profiled here on many occasions.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Does anyone remember  disgraced Republican Congressman Randy “Duke ” Cunningham?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Fleecing Haitian immigrants for fun and profit </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">badolato66]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Andy Badolato was involved in a stock fraud cum Ponzi scheme at a Palm Beach Gardens, Florida company, Industrial Business Ventures Group, (IBVG), where he was Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Two of his partners in the scheme —</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Jonathan Curshen</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> and Michael Muzio— are currently in federal prison.  Both men were also involved, oddly enough, in the drug trafficking ring in St. Petersburg, Florida responsible for the ill-fated ‘drug move’ resulting in the biggest drug seizure on an airplane in Mexican history,  5.5 tons of cocaine, found on an American-registered DC-9 busted in the Yucatan in April of 2006.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">masterjon</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Jonathan Curshen</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Alt-right Sarasota beachcomber Badolato’s fellow Sarasota resident Jonathan Curshen was profiled in a story here last week.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“Curshen i</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">s the most intriguing. He is a dual citizen of England and the United States,” reported Off-shore Alert. “He resides in Sarasota, Fla., and </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Costa Rica.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> In Costa Rica, he serves as honorary consul for St. Kitts & Nevis. He also serves as honorary consul for “New Utopia,” a sham country that exists only in cyberspace. It publicly offers ‘citizenships,’ ‘national flags,’ ID cards and currency.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A look at Badolato’s second partner in the scheme, Tampa resident Michael Muzio, exposes a checkered past  and criminal curriculum vitae every bit as colorful as Curshen.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Andy’s Web” grafic</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">andys-web</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">muzio-mike</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Muzio and Badolato’s company was involved in what was called “a classic Ponzi scheme,” made even more despicable because it targeted poor Haitian immigrants.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to an FBI press release  announcing Muzio’s conviction, the scheme “stripped $14.3 million from more than 600 gullible investors, most of them Haitian-Americans in South Florida and New Jersey.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Muzio issued false and misleading press releases,” said the FBI,  claiming International Business Ventures Group had deals to offer pre-paid debit cards and pre-paid calling cards in Haiti, where the company also had exclusive rights to market pre-paid electric meters.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">muzio-2</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Muzio once complained  to “colleagues” about how costly it was to run a stock scam,  Palm Beach Business magazine reported.  “He’s about to find out exactly how expensive it can be when you get caught.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For his part in the fraud Muzio was sentenced to 163 months in prison.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Muzio may have been a little preoccupied</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>In what authorities like to think is a relatively unusual situation for a corporate officer, Michael Muzio also found himself the target of a Mob hit. Testimony in an extortion trial in Tampa named Muzio as the intended victim of a Mafia hit ordered by a business associate, Joseph Forlizzo of Queens, and Clearwater, Florida.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">peewee</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Forlizzo brothers contracted Muzio’s murder, court testimony revealed, with Anthony “Pee Wee” Lanza, a captain in New York’s Genovese Mafia crime family.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Pee Wee” was involved, according to the NY Daily News, in everything from prostitution, where he was running “a high heel-clicking stream of hookers reporting to the upper East Side headquarters of a mob-controlled prostitution ring,” to extortion, for threatening to beat a man to death if he didn’t pay up a Genovese crime family loan.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Forlizzo, a chiropractor, had been partners with Muzio in a magnetic resonance imaging company in Clearwater. Deciding the partnership was unsatisfactory, Forlizzo took certain ‘measures,’ which became the center focus during his trial,  which was filled with accusations of Mafia ties, hit men and extortion.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Testimony showed that Forlizzo and the “boys from  New York” decided to kill Muzio and have another man, Philip ‘Philly’ Bova, of Largo, Florida,  pose as Muzio to empty his bank accounts.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">51tfiie5zl-sy346_Court transcripts offered little explanation for why Muzio ‘needed killing,’ or ‘had it coming,’ two often-cited reasons for contract hits.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But when officers of public companies need key man insurance against the prospect of being rubbed out, business almost invariably suffers.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In a cautionary note, Tampa Mob expert Scott Deitche, author of Cigar Store Mafia reports that Pee Wee, after being convicted of extortion, died in prison.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“A troubled existence”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">bado]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Andy Badolato’s companies have all floundered like unwanted babies flung off a cliff. But Industrial Business Ventures Group had a particularly troubled business life, facing problems most new concerns never encounter, like attrition, which became an issue when Muzio and three of the company’s officers went to prison at the same time.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Muzio, called “a Tampa businessman” in news accounts, was at the time on probation for a 2006 grand larceny conviction in New York.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“The Saga Ends In Jail” was the headline on an article by one stock analyst:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“The fact that the company has been involved in suspicious schemes should be of no surprise to people who have spent time to review the biography of the company’s management team. All three of them: Brian Taglieri, Abner Alable, and Ronnie Bass, are currently in jail facing their sentences.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Initially, the trio started its business as an investment club called HomePals, based in North Miami Beach. In the spring of 2008, HomePals managed to strip almost $14.5 million from hundreds of Haitians living in Florida and New Jersey by means of a Ponzi-like scheme.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Then in July 2008, HomePals bought International Business Ventures Group, which until then was a public shell company. The larceny…involved pumping up IBVR stock price as much as possible and then dumping it on the public.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As his trial was about to start, Ronnie Bass, 36, of Delray Beach, pleaded no contest to 14 charges in connection with the Homepals Investment Club. He faced 20 years in prison.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Multi-tasking “hyena pack” big in stock fraud, drug trafficking </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The real question is the one asked in “Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid:” Who are these guys? </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">bado-7</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">At Play in the Fields of the Lord]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In addition to Mob links, we will see hints of U.S. intelligence involvement.  Does Steve Bannon have national security ties?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to Bloomberg News, Bannon joined the Navy right after college, and then spent four years at sea, including working as a navigator in the north Arabian Sea during the Iranian hostage crisis. He left the Persian Gulf just as the ill-fated U.S. mission to rescue the hostages in Tehran, Desert One, died in the sands of the Iranian desert.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Bannon became an assistant to the chief of Naval operations at the Pentagon, earned a master’s degree in national security studies at Georgetown University at night, then headed to Wall Street, where he went to work at Goldman Sachs. There he worked on a series of leveraged buyouts, including a deal involving Bain Capital and Mitt Romney.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“The camaraderie was amazing,” he told reporter  Jeff Goldberg  “It was like being in the Navy, in the wardroom of a ship.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The subject of rogue U.S. intel assets joining the Mob in widespread stock fraud warrants careful consideration.  According to L.J. Kolb’s “Overworld,” an eye-opening account of growing up as the son of an American spy:  “There’s a secret world all around us. You just don’t see it unless you know where to look.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Daniel Hopsicker</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://www.madcowprod.com</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Daniel Hopsicker is an investigative journalist and the author of two books on transnational crime, Welcome to Terrorland and Barry & the Boys.</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/local/2020/08/20/steve-bannon-andrew-badolato-and-sarasota-connection/5616202002/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/local/2020/08/20/steve-bannon-andrew-badolato-and-sarasota-connection/5616202002/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was a phone call between two of the world’s most powerful men, a conversation of such consequence that even the portrait of Andrew Jackson leaned in to listen, or so it seemed inside the Oval Office on that momentous Saturday afternoon.</font></div><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Donald Trump’s first presidential discussion with Russian leader Vladimir Putin took place on Jan. 28, 2017 only a select few of his most-trusted men stood before him at the historic Resolute desk, among them being Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist and advisor so influential it was not deemed necessary he wear a tie during high-level meetings impacting global affairs.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>MORE: </strong><a href="https://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20170207/anderson-steve-bannons-curious-sarasota-connection" target="blank" rel="noopener" data-t-l="|inline|intext|n/a" class="gnt_ar_b_a" style="text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-color: rgb(0, 152, 254); font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Anderson: Steve Bannon’s curious Sarasota connection</a></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At roughly the same time that day, in striking contrast to the Trump-Putin phone call Bannon was witnessing, a different conversation was occurring in the semi-circular driveway of a home on Casey Key Road, a narrow lane of hidden paradise in south Sarasota County that meanders between opulent tropical mansions and transitory views of the turquoise-tinted Gulf.  <span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">It was there that a 53-year-old man in cargo shorts was explaining to a Sarasota County Sheriff’s deputy that he was not involved in the theft of two antique clay pots from his neighbor, never mind the complainant’s statement in a report that the man’s house “has some shady individuals inside and may have something to do with the theft.”</span></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The man being questioned told the deputy he didn’t steal the pots, and besides, he had been in Washington, D.C., for Trump’s inauguration at the time of the alleged theft. The deputy took his statement, drove off, and left the man to walk back inside. When he reached the front door of his weathered yellow home he was greeted by the sight of a mannequin, posed just inside the entrance.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The man’s name was Andrew Badolato.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And Bannon — who once held such power in the White House that he was seated on the National Security Council, unprecedented in American history for a presidential adviser, and was allotted access to this country’s most sensitive intelligence with the highest level of security clearance — has recurrently been associated with him since 2003.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Badolato’s past — according to county and federal court records, state business filings, Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office reports, interviews with former associates and internal documents obtained by the Herald-Tribune — includes numerous lawsuits, substantial monetary judgments and sizeable Internal Revenue Service liens filed against him; business dealings with convicted felons for stock-related fraud; an extortion attempt after he borrowed money from a self-described mobster that led to him wearing a wire for the FBI; an </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">association with a</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> Costa Rican </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">offshore firm that was called a “money laundering hub”</span></b><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">by the Justice Department; and sexual assault allegations made by three women over a period of four years that allegedly took place inside his million-dollar home on Casey Key Road.</span></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>MORE</strong>: <a href="https://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20170124/column-does-stephen-bannon-live-in-sarasota-county-because-hes-registered-to-vote-here" target="blank" rel="noopener" data-t-l="|inline|intext|n/a" class="gnt_ar_b_a" style="text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-color: rgb(0, 152, 254); font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Does Stephen Bannon live in Sarasota County? Because he’s registered to vote here</a></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Badolato, a 1982 graduate of Cardinal Mooney High in Sarasota, has never been charged with a crime, nor has he been the subject of any “regulatory body investigation, proceeding or hearing,” according to a letter from his attorney, Wil Florin, who added that “Mr. Badolato, as you know, is a private figure. He has no interest in entering the public discourse on any subject related to him including your upcoming article. He is a single father and a well-liked and respected businessman in the Tampa Bay area.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Repeated attempts to reach Bannon, who has never been charged with a crime either, for comment about his longstanding relationship with Badolato were unsuccessful.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Their relationship has been such that Bannon declared on a Sarasota County voter registration form he lived at Badolato’s address while running Trump’s 2016 campaign, a logistical challenge considering the headquarters was based 1,198 miles away at Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, where Bannon occupied a corner office that he was seen in nearly every day he wasn’t traveling on the campaign trail</span>, according to Michael Wolff’s best-selling book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Experts say Bannon’s relationship with Badolato should have raised red flags with the FBI — the agency responsible for the initial vetting of Bannon for his White House security clearance.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Government officials seeking security clearance are required to fill out an exhaustive form known as an SF-86 for FBI background checks. Applicants, according to the form, must list “the places where you have lived, beginning with your present residence and working back 10 years. Residences for the entire period must be accounted for without breaks.” Because the forms are not public record and the White House does not comment on individual security clearances, it is unclear whether Bannon listed Badolato’s address.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the form, “The U.S. Criminal Code provides that knowingly falsifying or concealing a material fact is a felony which may result in fines and/or up to five years imprisonment.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The White House has been recently embroiled in security clearance controversies involving former staff secretary Rob Porter, who held an interim clearance for months despite the FBI’s knowledge of domestic abuse accusations made by two ex-wives, and security clearance issues involving the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Porter resigned, and as a result, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly outlined changes to the security clearance process in a memo to senior White House officials on Feb. 16. Kushner’s security clearance was later downgraded — he no longer has access to top secret information.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>MORE</strong>: <a href="https://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20180610/cambridge-analytica-scandal-has-sarasota-ties" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-t-l="|inline|intext|n/a" class="gnt_ar_b_a" style="text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-color: rgb(0, 152, 254); font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Cambridge Analytica scandal has Sarasota ties</a></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The American people deserve a White House staff that meets the highest standards and that has been carefully vetted — especially those who work closely with the president or handle sensitive national security information,” Kelly wrote in the memo. “We should — and in the future, must — do better.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Porter, who saw highly-classified information on a daily basis, was among several senior officials working without permanent security clearance status. Included in that group is Kushner. It is not known whether Bannon — who worked in the White House for a year before being fired on August 18, 2017 — had a permanent clearance or was operating with an interim one.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush from 2005-2007 and currently a professor at the University of Minnesota, said Bannon’s recurring 13-year relationship with Badolato should have precluded him from becoming a powerful senior White House advisor with unlimited access and undeniable influence.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I can think of ten other reasons,” Painter said, “but this in and of itself should have disqualified him from being in the White House.”</font></p><figure class="gnt_em gnt_em_img" style="contain: content; display: flex; flex-flow: row wrap; clear: both; width: 660px; margin: 30px 0px;"><h2 class="gnt_ar_b_h2" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 28px 0px 18px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 26px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Security clearance concerns</font></h2><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relatively unknown outside the alt-right conservative base, Bannon replaced Paul Manafort and joined Trump’s presidential campaign as CEO on Aug. 17, 2016. He is largely credited for helping orchestrate one of the biggest upsets in United States political history.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">When Bannon took over, Trump was trailing Hillary Clinton by double digits in some polls. As a reward, Bannon was named as Trump’s chief strategist on Nov. 13, 2016, and was placed on the National Security Council “principals committee” on Jan. 28, 2017, after Trump signed a presidential order he reportedly may not have been fully briefed on.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The National Security Act of 1947 states that “the National Security Council is responsible for the interaction of domestic, foreign and military policies relating to the national security” and to hold a seat requires the highest security clearance. Bannon would have had to possess a “top-secret clearance,” and a “SCI” or “Sensitive Compartmental Information” clearance. The Office of the Inspector General defines a “top-secret clearance” as one that “gives you access to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“SCI” is defined as “classified information concerning, or derived from, intelligence sources, methods, or analytical processes that must be handled within formal access control systems established by the Director, Central Intelligence Agency.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To obtain a security clearance, Bannon would have been required to fill out the SF-86 form. According to Bradley Moss, a Washington D.C. attorney who specializes in national security and security clearance law, the FBI would have combed through Bannon’s completed form, spoken with people from his past and then personally interviewed him. From there, the FBI would have submitted its assessment to the White House Security Personnel Office, which is not part of the West Wing and has an independent director. If the Security Personnel Office is concerned about an element of someone’s past, the White House counsel is often contacted.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By law, Bannon would have been required to list Badolato’s address on his application. That’s because on Aug. 19, 2016 — just two days after he became Trump’s campaign CEO — he claimed it as his home on a Sarasota County voter registration form to<b> establish residency in Florida</b> — fulfilling one of the state’s three requirements for residency. The other two include filing a “declaration of domicile” with the court clerk and applying for a homestead property tax exemption. According to the Sarasota County Property Appraiser’s website, Bannon did not apply for either.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An SF-86 form, according to the State Department, requires that applicants reveal all former residences they have lived at in the last 10 years. “Indicate the actual physical location of your residence, not a Post Office box or a permanent residence when you were not physically located there,” the form states. “If you split your time between one or more residences during a time period you must list all residences.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition, applicants must name someone who knew them at that address — preferably someone still in the area — and provide that person’s contact information. “Do not list your spouse, cohabitant or other relatives,” the form states. A box must be checked indicating if the applicant owned, rented, leased or “other.” Listing “other” requires an explanation.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Bannon did indeed list the Sarasota County address as required, it could have led the FBI to Badolato’s name. The FBI could have then checked into Badolato’s background and investigated Bannon’s association with him. It is unclear if any of this happened because the document is not a public record.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s very possible he completely and properly filled out the form and this association slipped through the cracks (of the FBI),” Moss said. “I would not be surprised in the slightest if that happened.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon — whose driver’s license was issued in California — also owns houses in the Golden State. If he was intent on establishing Florida residency, he could have afforded to buy or rent a house on his own. According to his White House financial disclosure form, which calls for an estimated range of personal wealth, not a specific amount, Bannon stated he had $100,000 to $250,000 in one bank account and two other accounts estimated at having $500,001 to $1 million each<b>. Bannon estimated he held assets of $11.8 million to $53.8 million, according to the form.</b></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Wolff’s “Fire and Fury,” Bannon never lived in Sarasota during the campaign. Wolff described Bannon in the book as being “suddenly transformed inside Trump Tower, an office he entered on August 15 (2016) and for practical purposes did not exit, save for a few hours a night (and not every night) in his temporary midtown Manhattan accommodations, until January 17 (2017), when the transition team moved to Washington.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon himself offered hints he never lived in Sarasota County as well. In October 2016, Bannon registered to vote in New York — while still registered in Florida — and listed his home address as a one-bedroom apartment across from Bryant Park in Manhattan. Florida law specifies that it is not illegal to be registered to vote in two states, but you can only vote in one.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wolff told the Herald-Tribune he had no knowledge of Bannon residing in Sarasota during Trump’s 2016 campaign or presidential transition period.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“He couldn’t have lived there,” he said. “I know he was basically in Trump Tower the entire time. He was literally there every day.”</font></p><h2 class="gnt_ar_b_h2" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 28px 0px 18px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 26px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘A very, very dangerous man’</font></h2><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The SF-86 security clearance form states that withholding, misrepresenting or falsifying information “may affect your eligibility for a sensitive position” and “affect access to classified information.” Furthermore, the form says, “potential consequences include, but are not limited to, removal, debarment from federal service or prosecution.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the State Department’s Adjudication Guidelines for Determining Eligibility for Access to Classified Information “conduct involving questionable judgment, lack of candor, dishonesty or unwillingness to comply with rules and regulations can raise questions about an individual’s reliability, trustworthiness and ability to protect classified information.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the same guidelines, conditions that could raise a security question and may be disqualifying include “association with persons involved in criminal activity.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Badolato, though never charged with a crime, has been associated with criminal activity in the past. According to a federal court document, for example,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> he borrowed $12,500 at 500 percent interest in 2008 from<b> Luis Caputo, a Sarasota resident who claimed ties to the Gambino organized crime family.</b> Federal court records show Badolato was threatened by Caputo when he couldn’t pay back the loan. He eventually helped the FBI bring down Caputo on extortion charges by taping their meetings and exchanging marked bills. Caputo was sentenced to two years in prison in 2013 and died a year later at age 78. Badolato was so afraid of Caputo, records show, that he requested after-hours protection by the Sarasota Police Department.</span></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I don’t want to be the one to say based on this relationship Bannon should have been disqualified,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy. “But I would say the fact of the relationship ought to have been a consideration and, if it wasn’t, then that was an oversight in the process.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whether or not it was an oversight may not have mattered, however. In granting security clearance, the president is the ultimate arbiter, according to the security expert, Moss. If the president wishes to grant a person clearance, no matter their past activities or former associations, he has the authority to override any recommendations of denial from the FBI.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“He could have hired Charlie Manson and no one would have had the legal authority to have questioned that decision,” Moss said, though throughout history presidents have rarely taken this course of action.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Beth Rosenson, who teaches political ethics at the University of Florida, said it is not known how much of Badolato’s past Bannon knew of and pointed out that people who do questionable things don’t always inform acquaintances of their actions. Still, she said, the relationship “calls into question Bannon’s judgment for sure and it calls into question Trump’s judgment for selecting him” as one of his most trusted advisors.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rosenson said she teaches her students that politicians in the public trust should be held to the highest of standards, not only as it pertains to their own personal conduct but with the people they surround themselves with.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Bannon has exhibited questionable judgment on a number of fronts so I wouldn’t be surprised by this,” Rosenson said. “It doesn’t look good and it doesn’t smell good.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Painter, President Bush’s former ethics attorney, said of Bannon’s association with Badolato: “I think it shows a pattern of a complete lack of judgment.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of Bannon, Painter added: “He’s a very, very dangerous man.”</font></p><h2 class="gnt_ar_b_h2" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 28px 0px 18px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 26px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Multiple sexual assault allegations</font></h2><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Bannon and Badolato — a self-described venture capitalist — have a relationship that goes back to 2003.</b></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">They have been in at least three failed penny-stock ventures together, and Bannon was once removed from a Sarasota County company’s board for his relationship with Badolato.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2010, Badolato formed a company listing Bannon as a board member alongside an attorney named L.B. Moon, who was barred from practicing law by the Oklahoma Supreme Court for threatening to kill an adversary, place his body in a shredder and have his daughter raped.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For seven years — even while he was in the White House — Bannon used another one of Badolato’s addresses, this time a Sarasota office — 2033 Main Street, Suite 400 — for one of the film companies he owned. It was the same address Badolato used for nearly a decade for various businesses, many of which failed, according to court documents. <b>At one point in 2011 they even shared the office for two separate companies at the same time, state records show.</b></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the fall of 2010, the pair appeared together as moderators on two political webinars just six months after Badolato was questioned by the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office concerning sexual assault allegations made by three women.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Feb. 26, 2010, according to a sheriff’s report, deputies visited Badolato at his Main Street office because of “numerous reports received over a period of time where females alleged that he had forced himself on them and had sex against their will. We explained to him that none of them had filed charges. However they did file reports about the incidents. We told Badolato that raised some concerns from a law enforcement standpoint.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Badolato, according to the report, told the deputies the girls came onto him and that he would choose his dates more carefully in the future.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One Sheriff’s Office report alleged Badolato flew young “models” he met on “sugar daddy” websites from out of state to his home, where he promised them $1,000 for photo shoots on the beach, along with use of his house and an expensive car, but didn’t follow through on his promises. Two of the women flown in alleged he sexually assaulted them, one from Wisconsin in 2009, the other from Maine in 2010, though no charges were filed.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>One said in a report she sent a text to her husband and father in Wisconsin while in Badolato’s house that read: “Emergency. Get me home.”</b></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those alleged incidents were not the first time Badolato was accused of sexual misconduct. According to a handwritten report given to a Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office deputy in 2006, one of Badolato’s former housekeepers alleged he would not pay her unless she performed oral sex. The woman also said he sexually assaulted her and told her to “consider this as part of your job. Think of yourself as my dirty slut.” Again, charges were not filed.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Emails obtained by the Herald-Tribune show attempts were made to warn Bannon about associating with Badolato. In 2011, Sarasota resident Joey Barquin began sending emails to associates of Bannon’s in the film industry, as well as to Diane Clohesy, Bannon’s ex-wife, trying to steer Bannon away from investing money with Badolato.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barquin, who sued the Catholic Church in 1993 for alleged abuse as a child in a Vermont state orphanage and accepted an undisclosed settlement, claims Badolato owes him more than $600,000 from a past business dealing. He spent a lot of time, he says, with Badolato in his Sarasota office and traveling with him to places such as Cuba for business.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At 6:12 p.m., on July 22, 2013, Barquin sent an email to a person in the media industry Bannon was associated with stating “Badolato records all of his phone calls with a Sony m-572-v micro tape player and has his office wired with a GSM micro room device with separate Sim card insertion for remote listening.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“He has been recording Bannon and other associates/individuals/conservative groups etc. etc. for years without there (sic) knowledge.</b>”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As recently as spring 2016, Badolato wrote three stories for Breitbart News — the website Bannon formerly ran — concerning the presidential election, and from 2010 to 2016 Badolato received “associate producer” credits on several conservative documentaries that Bannon made, including one called “<b>Clinton Cash,” which raised questions concerning a uranium deal with Russia that the Clinton Foundation</b> allegedly profited from. <b>Rebekah Mercer, daughter of billionaire and conservative mega-donor Robert Mercer and a former financial backer of Bannon, also received a producer credit on the film.</b></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Badolato was also involved in Bannon’s 2011 film about Sarah Palin called “The Undefeated.” The day before the film was released, Badolato received a “second-chance” letter from the IRS because he had not filed tax returns for the years 2005-2009 and had ignored a summons, records show.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Badolato recently removed any references to his associations with Bannon’s film company from his personal website and no longer touts his work for Breitbart.</b></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Badolato, according to his same website, describes himself as a venture capitalist. He says the companies he has founded have secured more than $700 million in capital before going public. Still, many of his businesses have failed. Years later he has retroactively resigned from the board of several and he has filed twice for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and twice for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, with three of the cases dismissed because he failed to file proper information to the court<b>. Badolato’s 2005 bankruptcy was filed on the day before a RICO Act case alleging stock fraud was set to go to trial and he was among the defendants.</b></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On an amendment for Badolato’s 2005 bankruptcy, Bannon was listed 16th among 136 new creditors who received notice of the filing. The amount of Bannon’s claim was not revealed. At No. 19 on the list was a </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">brokerage firm in </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Costa Rica called Red Sea Management, which was a “money laundering hub,”</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">according to the Justice Department, and </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">run by a former Sarasota resident named Jonathan Curshen, who is currently serving 20 years in prison for stock fraud. Badaloto’s final bankruptcy filing for the case in 2013 would show he owed $15,631,334.62 to creditors, according to his trustee. The IRS alone had claims for over $700,000.</span></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the original 2005 filing Badolato claimed he owed $714,519 in unpaid taxes in 1998, 2001 and 2002, and a foreclosure filing on his house shows a lien was placed by the IRS for $517,042.66 of unpaid taxes from 1998. Another IRS document shows that he didn’t file returns from 2005-10 at one point.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Badolato has participated in the State Attorney <b>Worthless Check</b> Diversion Program, records show, and once, according to a notice in the Herald-Tribune, even had his storage locker on Bee Ridge Road auctioned off to satisfy a debt.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And yet Bannon has always seemed to trust Badolato’s business sense.</font></p><h2 class="gnt_ar_b_h2" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 28px 0px 18px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 26px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Money laundering hub</font></h2><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon and Badolato first went into business together in 2003 with a small cosmetics company incorporated in Delaware called the Donna Messenger Corp. Their office was at 7820 South Holiday Drive in Sarasota. Soon, they were on to bigger things.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2003 Bannon and Badolato became involved in a nasal spray company based in Englewood called Sinofresh. The company’s prospects were promising and national retail chains such as Walmart agreed to carry the product.<b> Ed McMahon even signed on as spokesman</b>. But the company soon became ensnared in nasty internal squabbles and Badolato was at the center. Badolato’s company — Sargon Capital — helped raise money for Sinofresh to go public and Badolato was retained in a consulting role. Badolato brought in Bannon and Seattle attorney David Otto — who was also involved in the Donna Messenger Corp. — to be part of Sinofresh. Bannon and Otto became board members, but were temporarily removed from the board for their relationships with Badolato.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Charles Fust, CEO of Sinofresh, had a memo drawn in Dec. 2003, which was later included in court, claiming Badolato was “engaging in substantial acts of illegal trading of company securities,” according to a document. Another document filed with the SEC stated “certain board members voted by written consent to remove Bannon and Otto. The decision was made after it became apparent they were not investigating certain improprieties that may have occurred as a result of the actions of Sargon Capital and Andrew Badolato.” Fust later said in a deposition he believed Bannon “failed to examine the matter” because he was “protecting Badolato’s interest.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Badolato, according to a Herald-Tribune story, spearheaded a class-action lawsuit in federal court against Fust and Sinofresh, though he was not named as a plaintiff. Among the allegations were that Bannon and Otto were improperly removed from the board (they were quickly reinstated) and that Fust used company money to buy an engagement ring. The case was dismissed in August, 2005, but Bannon and the other named plaintiffs continued with a malpractice suit against the law firm of Greenberg Traurig, which had served as counsel to Sinofresh.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The plaintiffs argued that Sinofresh executives received bad advice as it pertained to Bannon and Otto’s removal. The case was settled with Sinofresh receiving $200,000 from the law firm and was released from any fees.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The infighting took a substantial toll. By 2006 Sinofresh announced $1.8 million in losses for the previous year, a 20 percent decline, and Walmart removed the product from its shelves due to poor sales. Bannon and Badolato parted ways as well, but didn’t stay idle.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In 2006 Badolato became chairman of a company called </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Industrial Biotech Corp (IBOT), which was involved in a “pump and dump” scheme</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, according to court documents. This particular type of fraud involved manipulating the price of stock by faking trading activity and bribing brokers to buy the stock for wealthy clients at inflated prices. Former Sarasota resident </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Jonathan Curshen</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> was arrested as part of the scheme for attempting to bribe an undercover FBI officer who was posing as a broker for $19,000.</span></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Under oath in a New York courtroom in 2009 Curshen stated that “I conspired with individuals including Andrew Badolato to commit securities fraud and commercial bribery.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Badolato was not charged with a crime in the IBOT case. Curshen wrote in an email to the Herald-Tribune that “I believe Badolato cooperated with law enforcement to save himself.” He also wrote that he believes Badolato was wearing a wire during meetings between the two, leading to his arrest in the case.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Curshen owned the brokerage firm in Costa Rica called Red Sea Management, and a document obtained by the Herald-Tribune shows Badolato and his Sarasota attorney, <b>Charles Cleland Jr., </b>had an association with what a Justice Department press release called a “money laundering hub.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The document shows that on July 21, 2008, Cleland sent a fax to Curshen and Red Sea Management that said “please process requested $50,000 wire transfer to my trust account FBO (for benefit of) Mr. Badolato. </b>Your policies as previously described allow wire transfers from Mr. Badolato’s brokerage account to bank accounts in his name.” Cleland provided his Bank of America account number, the wire routing number and listed the bank’s address as 1605 Main Street, Sarasota.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The document you have from 2008 is describing a transfer of funds to Badolato that was from the proceeds of IBOT securities,” Curshen wrote in an email to the Herald-Tribune. “As Badolato sold IBOT shares he would transfer some of the proceeds to himself.”</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Badolato also had a longstanding business relationship dating back to at least 1998 with former Sarasota resident Gerald C. Parker. In 2011, Parker was among several defendants named in a $30.3 million judgment in Nebraska federal court after three retirees lost millions of dollars. </span>Badolato was not involved with Parker during the Nebraska Ponzi scheme but has been partners with Parker when other substantial judgments were handed down against them in court.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On May 5, 1999, according to court records, a company called Carter Footwear filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania against Badolato, Parker and two companies they were involved with — Investment Management of America and Graystone Worldwide. The complaint was filed under the RICO Act and alleged fraud among other charges.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Carter Footwear alleged that Graystone Worldwide — and Badolato — falsely portrayed Graystone as having “millions of dollars in state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment and hundreds of millions of dollars in sales commitments.” Carter Footwear claimed it incurred damages in excess of $6 million.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The lawsuit, according to a document, arose out of “Badolato’s involvement in an elaborate scheme to defraud Carter as part of an overall plan for Badolato and his cohorts to get rich through a sale of stock that was worthless.” The day before the case was originally set for trial — Sept. 6, 2005 — Badolato filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The convoluted civil case dragged on for nine years and generated more than 1,100 documents before the judge issued a default judgment against Graystone after the firm and its attorneys failed to show up for or participate in the trial, which was held in December 2007.<b> Badolato and Parker eventually agreed to pay $112,500 apiece as a settlement. A document filed in 2009 said both had failed to abide by the agreement and it is not known if they ever did.</b></font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Badolato also has had business dealings with a former Tampa resident named Michael Muzio, who is currently serving 13 ½ years in prison for his role among three co-conspirators in a <b>$14.3 million Ponzi scheme in South Florida that targeted nearly 600 Haitians in 2008-09.</b></span><b> </b>The scheme originated with Badolato’s sale of a shell company to Muzio, who served as a middleman in the transaction. Muzio, who was facing 190 years in prison, referred to Badolato as “a friend of mine” in a 2010 court document.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The association between Bannon and Badolato reemerged in 2010 — at least on paper. Badolato formed a new company called E3, and on a confidential prospectus obtained by the Herald-Tribune, Bannon was listed as an advisory board member.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Joining Bannon on the board was Oklahoma attorney Lewis B. Moon — a former football player for the Miami Dolphins whom Badolato claimed was a “lifetime member of the national association of the Boy Scouts.” Moon has been arrested multiple times and was banned from practicing law by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which called him an “embarrassment to the legal profession” after finding “convincing evidence” that he falsely identified himself as an ATF agent, engaged in shooting firearms while intoxicated, attempted to extort money and assaulted a fellow lawyer. He then threatened to kill the lawyer and have five men rape and kill his “pretty” daughter.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Moon threatened to stick a pen through the attorney’s neck and put his body through a shredder.</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was straight out of a movie — but not one Bannon would be interested in. By 2010 Bannon was immersed in the world of conservative filmmaking and when the closing credits rolled on his documentaries one name could often be found:</font></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 14px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p></figure></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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