position:investigative reporter

  • How We Investigated the New York Taxi Medallion Bubble - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/reader-center/taxi-medallion-investigation.html

    It took a year, 450 interviews and a database built from scratch to answer a simple question: Why had anyone ever agreed to pay $1 million for the right to drive a yellow cab?

    By Brian M. Rosenthal
    May 22, 2019

    Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

    The story started, like a lot of stories seem to, with President Trump’s former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen.

    On April 9, 2018, the F.B.I. raided Mr. Cohen’s office, thrusting him into the national spotlight. The next day, the top editors at The New York Times asked five reporters to start working on a profile. I was one of them.

    The other reporters researched Mr. Cohen’s family, his legal career, his real estate interests and, of course, his work for the president. I took on the last piece of his business empire: his ownership of 30 New York taxi medallions, the coveted permits needed to own a yellow cab.

    After a few weeks of reporting, the team learned enough to publish our story on Mr. Cohen. And I discovered enough to know what I wanted to investigate next.

    At that time, the taxi industry was becoming a big story. Mr. Cohen had owned his medallions as an investment, counting on them rising in value because of the city’s decision to issue only about 13,000 permits. But thousands of the medallions were owned by drivers themselves, and two driver-owners had just died by suicide. Public officials were talking about how the price of a medallion had plummeted from over $1 million to under $150,000. Most were blaming ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft.

    I had a different question: Why had anybody ever paid $1 million for the right to the grueling job of being a cabby?

    When I pursue an investigation, I identify the single most important question that I am trying to answer, and orient all of my reporting around it. (For example, why did it cost more to build subway track in New York than anywhere else in the world? Or why did Texas have the lowest special education rate in the country?) In this case, I ended up interviewing about 450 people, and I asked almost all the same question: Why did the price reach $1 million? It became my North Star.

    I heard plenty of theories, but I began to get somewhere only when I had an epiphany: No driver-owner had ever really paid close to $1 million for a medallion. On paper, thousands of low-income immigrants had. But while they had poured their life savings into their purchase, virtually all had signed loans for most of the cost — and never really had a chance to repay.

    I needed to examine as many loans as possible, to see if they were as unusual and reckless — and predatory — as some of my sources said they were. But how?

    I got a lead from an unexpected source: the lenders themselves.

    After prices had started crashing, the lenders in the industry had tried to squeeze money out of borrowers. Many of them had filed lawsuits against borrowers — lawsuits which had to include copies of the loans.

    I ultimately reviewed 500 of these loans, and I saw disturbing patterns: Almost none of them included a large down payment. Almost all of them required the borrower to repay everything within three years, which was impossible. There were a lot of interest-only loans, and a wide variety of fees, including charges for paying loans off too early. Many of the loans required borrowers to sign away their legal rights.

    Armed with the loan documents, I started calling dozens of current and former industry bankers, brokers, lawyers and investors. Some pointed me to disclosures that lenders had filed with the government, which were enormously helpful. Others shared internal records, which were even better.

    New York City did not have reliable digital data on medallion sales, so I used paper records to build a database of all the 10,888 sales between 1995 and 2018. The city taxi commission had never analyzed the financial records submitted by medallion buyers, so I did. Nobody knew how many medallion owners had gone bankrupt because of the crisis, so I convinced my boss to pay a technology company, Epiq, to create a program that sped through court records and spat out a tentative list — and then two news assistants helped me verify every result.

    As I dug into the data and the documents, I sought out driver-owners. I wanted to understand what they had been through. To find them, I went to Kennedy International Airport.

    The fare from taking someone from the airport into Manhattan can make a cabby’s day, and so drivers wait in line for hours. And over several visits during a couple of months, I waited with them, striking up conversations outside a food stand run by a Greek family and next to pay phones that had stopped working years ago. After talking briefly, I asked if I could visit their homes and meet their friends.

    In all, I met 200 taxi drivers, including several I interviewed through translators because they did not speak English fluently. (Some of those men still had signed loans of up to $1 million.) One by one, they told me how they had come to New York seeking the American dream, worked hard and gotten trapped in loans they did not understand, which often made them give up almost all of their monthly income. Several said that after the medallion bubble burst, wiping out their savings and their futures, they had contemplated suicide. One said he had already attempted it.

    The day after we began publishing our findings, city officials announced they were exploring ways to help these driver-owners, and the mayor and state attorney general said they were going to investigate the people who channeled them into the loans.

    In the end, the three front-page stories that we published this week about the taxi industry barely mentioned Mr. Cohen at all.

    But they did something much more important: They told the stories of Mohammed Hoque, of Jean Demosthenes and of Wael Ghobrayal.

    Brian M. Rosenthal is an investigative reporter on the Metro Desk. Previously, he covered state government for the Houston Chronicle and for The Seattle Times. @brianmrosenthal

    #USA #New_York #Taxi #Betrug #Ausbeutung

  • Inquiries Into Reckless Loans to Taxi Drivers Ordered by State Attorney General and Mayor - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/nyregion/nyc-taxi-medallion-loans-attorney-general.html

    May 20, 2019 - The investigations come after The New York Times found that thousands of drivers were crushed under debt they could not repay.

    The New York attorney general’s office said Monday it had opened an inquiry into more than a decade of lending practices that left thousands of immigrant taxi drivers in crushing debt, while Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered a separate investigation into the brokers who helped arrange the loans.

    The efforts marked the government’s first steps toward addressing a crisis that has engulfed the city’s yellow cab industry. They came a day after The New York Times published a two-part investigation revealing that a handful of taxi industry leaders artificially inflated the price of a medallion — the coveted permit that allows a driver to own and operate a cab — and made hundreds of millions of dollars by issuing reckless loans to low-income buyers.

    The investigation also found that regulators at every level of government ignored warning signs, and the city fed the frenzy by selling medallions and promoting them in ads as being “better than the stock market.”

    The price of a medallion rose to more than $1 million before crashing in late 2014, which left borrowers with debt they had little hope of repaying. More than 950 medallion owners have filed for bankruptcy, and thousands more are struggling to stay afloat.

    The findings also drew a quick response from other elected officials. The chairman of the Assembly’s banking committee, Kenneth Zebrowski, a Democrat, said his committee would hold a hearing on the issue; the City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, said he was drafting legislation; and several other officials in New York and Albany called for the government to pressure lenders to soften loan terms.

    The biggest threat to the industry leaders appeared to be the inquiry by the attorney general, Letitia James, which will aim to determine if the lenders engaged in any illegal activity.

    “Our office is beginning an inquiry into the disturbing reports regarding the lending and business practices that may have created the taxi medallion crisis,” an office spokeswoman said in a statement. “These allegations are serious and must be thoroughly scrutinized.”

    Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said through a spokesman that he supported the inquiry. “If any of these businesses or lenders did something wrong, they deserve to be held fully accountable,” the spokesman said in a statement.

    Lenders did not respond to requests for comment. Previously, they denied wrongdoing, saying regulators had approved all of their practices and some borrowers had made poor decisions and assumed too much debt. Lenders blamed the crisis on the city for allowing ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft to enter without regulation, which they said led medallion values to plummet.

    Mr. de Blasio said the city’s investigation will focus on the brokers who arranged the loans for drivers and sometimes lent money themselves.

    “The 45-day review will identify and penalize brokers who have taken advantage of buyers and misled city authorities,” the mayor said in a statement. “The review will set down strict new rules that prevent broker practices that hurt hard-working drivers.”

    Four of the city’s biggest taxi brokers did not respond to requests for comment.

    Bhairavi Desai, founder of the Taxi Workers Alliance, which represents drivers and independent owners, said the city should not get to investigate the business practices because it was complicit in many of them.

    The government has already closed or merged all of the nonprofit credit unions that were involved in the industry, saying they participated in “unsafe and unsound banking practices.” At least one credit union leader, Alan Kaufman, the former chief executive of Melrose Credit Union, a major medallion lender, is facing civil charges.

    The other lenders in the industry include Medallion Financial, a specialty finance company; some major banks, including Capital One and Signature Bank; and several loosely regulated taxi fleet owners and brokers who entered the lending business.

    At City Hall, officials said Monday they were focused on how to help the roughly 4,000 drivers who bought medallions during the bubble, as well as thousands of longtime owners who were encouraged to refinance their loans to take out more money during that period.

    One city councilman, Mark Levine, said he was drafting a bill that would allow the city to buy medallion loans from lenders and then forgive much of the debt owed by the borrowers. He said lenders likely would agree because they are eager to exit the business. But he added that his bill would force lenders to sell at discounted prices.

    “The city made hundreds of millions by pumping up sales of wildly overpriced medallions — as late as 2014 when it was clear that these assets were poised to decline,” said Mr. Levine, a Democrat. “We have an obligation now to find some way to offer relief to the driver-owners whose lives have been ruined.”

    Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, proposed a similar solution in a letter to the mayor. He said the city should convene the lenders and pressure them to partially forgive loans.

    “These lenders too often dealt in bad faith with a group of hard-working, unsuspecting workers who deserved much better and have yet to receive any measure of justice,” wrote Mr. Stringer, who added that the state should close a loophole that allowed the lenders to classify their loans as business deals, which have looser regulations.

    Last November, amid a spate of suicides by taxi drivers, including three medallion owners with overwhelming debt, the Council created a task force to study the taxi industry.

    On Monday, a spokesman for the speaker, Mr. Johnson, said that members of the task force would be appointed very soon. He also criticized the Taxi and Limousine Commission, the city agency that sold the medallions.

    “We will explore every tool we have to ensure that moving forward, the T.L.C. protects medallion owners and drivers from predatory actors including lenders, medallion brokers, and fleet managers,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement.

    Another councilman, Ritchie Torres, who heads the Council’s oversight committee, disclosed Monday for the first time that he had been trying to launch his own probe since last year, but had been stymied by the taxi commission. “The T.L.C. hasn’t just been asleep at the wheel, they have been actively stonewalling,” he said.

    A T.L.C. spokesman declined to comment.

    In Albany, several lawmakers also said they were researching potential bills.

    One of them, Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou of Manhattan, a member of the committee on banks, said she hoped to pass legislation before the end of the year. She said the state agencies involved in the crisis, including the Department of Financial Services, should be examined.

    “My world has been shaken right now, to be honest,” Ms. Niou said.

    Brian M. Rosenthal is an investigative reporter on the Metro Desk. Previously, he covered state government for the Houston Chronicle and for The Seattle Times. @brianmrosenthal

    #USA #New_York #Taxi #Betrug #Ausbeutung

  • Hunger Strike Gains Momentum in Azerbaijan – Foreign Policy
    https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/16/hunger-strike-gains-momentum-in-azerbaijan-political-prisoner-protest


    From left, Rafik Bakhishov, Zafar Ahmadov, and Tofig Yagublu take part in a hunger strike at the headquarters of the opposition party Musavat in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Jan. 15.
    (Khadija Ismayilova)

    Seeing Baku as a strategic partner, the United States and Europe overlook rights violations.

    More than a dozen political prisoners, activists, and members of the opposition in Azerbaijan have joined a solidarity hunger strike to call attention to the plight of the imprisoned anti-corruption blogger Mehman Huseynov, who has refused food for three weeks.

    Huseynov, 29, launched his own hunger strike on Dec. 26 after new charges were brought against him that could keep him detained for another seven years.

    His supporters include the prominent Azerbaijani investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova, who announced on her Facebook page Monday that she would stop eating and called on the international community to intervene on Heseynov’s behalf. Ismayilova’s own imprisonment between 2015 and 2016 sparked an international outcry.

    “I can only sacrifice my time, health and stamina. Please, respond, world,” she wrote.

    Daniel Balson, the Europe and Central Asia advocacy director for Amnesty International USA, said the solidarity hunger strike was unprecedented in Azerbaijan.

    Corruption and human rights abuses are rife in the southern Caucasus country. President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father in 2003, has abolished term limits and appointed his wife as vice president, drawing accusations that he has effectively established a monarchy in Azerbaijan.

    It is estimated that there are currently more than 100 political prisoners in the country, according to Amnesty International USA, and the media is tightly controlled. Last year, the Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Mukhtarli was abducted in the capital of neighboring Georgia and brought to Azerbaijan, where he was sentenced to six years for smuggling and illegally crossing the border.

    “All well-known human rights defenders and journalists spend at least one or two years in prison,” said Huseynov’s brother, Emin Huseynov.

    He told Foreign Policy that while his brother began his hunger strike by refusing to eat or drink water, he has since begun to drink milk, enabling him to prolong his protest.

    Mehman Huseynov ran SANCAQ (“Pin” in Azerbaijani), a popular online magazine across Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. His video reports, which explored government corruption and social problems, frequently garnered hundreds of thousands of views.

    In January 2017, plainclothes police officers dragged Huseynov into a van, placed a hood over his head, and took him to a police station, where he was electrocuted and beaten. After he spoke out about the abuse, Huseynov was charged with slander and sentenced to two years in prison for defaming an entire police station.

    The blogger was due to be released in March, but new charges that were brought against him, which are widely thought to be politically motivated, could add years to his sentence.

    The European Parliament is set to debate a resolution on Thursday calling on Azerbaijan to release all political prisoners unconditionally and to respect the freedom of the press.

    The Azerbaijani Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

  • The Long View: #Surveillance, the #Internet, and Government Research - Los Angeles Review of Books
    https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-long-view-surveillance-the-internet-and-government-research

    At first blush Yasha Levine’s Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet (2018) seems to fit the bill. A former editor of The eXile, a Moscow-based tabloid newspaper, and investigative reporter for PandoDaily, Levine has made a career out of writing about the dark side of tech. In this book, he traces the intellectual and institutional origins of the internet. He then focuses on the privatization of the network, the creation of Google, and revelations of NSA surveillance. And, in the final part of his book, he turns his attention to Tor and the crypto community.

    He remains unremittingly dark, however, claiming that these technologies were developed from the beginning with surveillance in mind, and that their origins are tangled up with counterinsurgency research in the Third World. This leads him to a damning conclusion: “The Internet was developed as a weapon and remains a weapon today.”

    To be sure, these constitute provocative theses, ones that attempt to confront not only the standard Silicon Valley story, but also established lore among the small group of scholars who study the history of computing. He falls short, however, of backing up his claims with sufficient evidence. Indeed, he flirts with creating a mythology of his own — one that I believe risks marginalizing the most relevant lessons from the history of computing.

  • Russian investigative reporter dies after fall, and some fear foul play - CNN
    https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/16/europe/russian-journalist-borodin-dies-fall-intl/index.html

    (CNN) A Russian reporter known for his investigations into Russian mercenaries in Syria died after a fall from his apartment in the city of Yekaterinburg, raising fresh concern about threats to independent journalists.

    Maxim Borodin fell from his fifth-floor apartment and died Sunday, according to a statement released by his employer, Novy Den (New Day). Local police said they did not see any foul play, but his death prompted intense speculation among friends and colleagues.

  • ’Fiction is outperforming reality’: how YouTube’s algorithm distorts truth | Technology | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/02/how-youtubes-algorithm-distorts-truth

    There are 1.5 billion YouTube users in the world, which is more than the number of households that own televisions. What they watch is shaped by this algorithm, which skims and ranks billions of videos to identify 20 “up next” clips that are both relevant to a previous video and most likely, statistically speaking, to keep a person hooked on their screen.

    Company insiders tell me the algorithm is the single most important engine of YouTube’s growth. In one of the few public explanations of how the formula works – an academic paper that sketches the algorithm’s deep neural networks, crunching a vast pool of data about videos and the people who watch them – YouTube engineers describe it as one of the “largest scale and most sophisticated industrial recommendation systems in existence”.

    Lewd and violent videos have been algorithmically served up to toddlers watching YouTube Kids, a dedicated app for children. One YouTube creator who was banned from making advertising revenues from his strange videos – which featured his children receiving flu shots, removing earwax, and crying over dead pets – told a reporter he had only been responding to the demands of Google’s algorithm. “That’s what got us out there and popular,” he said. “We learned to fuel it and do whatever it took to please the algorithm.”

    During the three years he worked at Google, he was placed for several months with a team of YouTube engineers working on the recommendation system. The experience led him to conclude that the priorities YouTube gives its algorithms are dangerously skewed.

    “YouTube is something that looks like reality, but it is distorted to make you spend more time online,” he tells me when we meet in Berkeley, California. “The recommendation algorithm is not optimising for what is truthful, or balanced, or healthy for democracy.”

    Chaslot explains that the algorithm never stays the same. It is constantly changing the weight it gives to different signals: the viewing patterns of a user, for example, or the length of time a video is watched before someone clicks away.

    The engineers he worked with were responsible for continuously experimenting with new formulas that would increase advertising revenues by extending the amount of time people watched videos. “Watch time was the priority,” he recalls. “Everything else was considered a distraction.”

    The software Chaslot wrote was designed to provide the world’s first window into YouTube’s opaque recommendation engine. The program simulates the behaviour of a user who starts on one video and then follows the chain of recommended videos – much as I did after watching the Logan Paul video – tracking data along the way.

    It finds videos through a word search, selecting a “seed” video to begin with, and recording several layers of videos that YouTube recommends in the “up next” column. It does so with no viewing history, ensuring the videos being detected are YouTube’s generic recommendations, rather than videos personalised to a user. And it repeats the process thousands of times, accumulating layers of data about YouTube recommendations to build up a picture of the algorithm’s preferences.

    Over the last 18 months, Chaslot has used the program to explore bias in YouTube content promoted during the French, British and German elections, global warming and mass shootings, and published his findings on his website, Algotransparency.com. Each study finds something different, but the research suggests YouTube systematically amplifies videos that are divisive, sensational and conspiratorial.

    It was not a comprehensive set of videos and it may not have been a perfectly representative sample. But it was, Chaslot said, a previously unseen dataset of what YouTube was recommending to people interested in content about the candidates – one snapshot, in other words, of the algorithm’s preferences.

    Jonathan Albright, research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, who reviewed the code used by Chaslot, says it is a relatively straightforward piece of software and a reputable methodology. “This research captured the apparent direction of YouTube’s political ecosystem,” he says. “That has not been done before.”

    I spent weeks watching, sorting and categorising the trove of videos with Erin McCormick, an investigative reporter and expert in database analysis. From the start, we were stunned by how many extreme and conspiratorial videos had been recommended, and the fact that almost all of them appeared to be directed against Clinton.

    Some of the videos YouTube was recommending were the sort we had expected to see: broadcasts of presidential debates, TV news clips, Saturday Night Live sketches. There were also videos of speeches by the two candidates – although, we found, the database contained far more YouTube-recommended speeches by Trump than Clinton.

    But what was most compelling was how often Chaslot’s software detected anti-Clinton conspiracy videos appearing “up next” beside other videos.

    Tufekci, the sociologist who several months ago warned about the impact YouTube may have had on the election, tells me YouTube’s recommendation system has probably figured out that edgy and hateful content is engaging. “This is a bit like an autopilot cafeteria in a school that has figured out children have sweet teeth, and also like fatty and salty foods,” she says. “So you make a line offering such food, automatically loading the next plate as soon as the bag of chips or candy in front of the young person has been consumed.”

    Once that gets normalised, however, what is fractionally more edgy or bizarre becomes, Tufekci says, novel and interesting. “So the food gets higher and higher in sugar, fat and salt – natural human cravings – while the videos recommended and auto-played by YouTube get more and more bizarre or hateful.”

    But why would a bias toward ever more weird or divisive videos benefit one candidate over another? That depends on the candidates. Trump’s campaign was nothing if not weird and divisive. Tufekci points to studies showing that “field of misinformation” largely tilted anti-Clinton before the election. “Fake news providers,” she says, “found that fake anti-Clinton material played much better with the pro-Trump base than did fake anti-Trump material with the pro-Clinton base.”

    She adds: “The question before us is the ethics of leading people down hateful rabbit holes full of misinformation and lies at scale just because it works to increase the time people spend on the site – and it does work.”

    About half the videos Chaslot’s program detected being recommended during the election have now vanished from YouTube – many of them taken down by their creators. Chaslot has always thought this suspicious. These were videos with titles such as “Must Watch!! Hillary Clinton tried to ban this video”, watched millions of times before they disappeared. “Why would someone take down a video that has been viewed millions of times?” he asks.

    I contacted Franchi to see who was right. He sent me screen grabs of the private data given to people who upload YouTube videos, including a breakdown of how their audiences found their clips. The largest source of traffic to the Bill Clinton rape video, which was viewed 2.4m times in the month leading up to the election, was YouTube recommendations.

    The same was true of all but one of the videos Franchi sent me data for. A typical example was a Next News Network video entitled “WHOA! HILLARY THINKS CAMERA’S OFF… SENDS SHOCK MESSAGE TO TRUMP” in which Franchi, pointing to a tiny movement of Clinton’s lips during a TV debate, claims she says “fuck you” to her presidential rival. The data Franchi shared revealed in the month leading up to the election, 73% of the traffic to the video – amounting to 1.2m of its views – was due to YouTube recommendations. External traffic accounted for only 3% of the views.

    Franchi is a professional who makes a living from his channel, but many of the other creators of anti-Clinton videos I spoke to were amateur sleuths or part-time conspiracy theorists. Typically, they might receive a few hundred views on their videos, so they were shocked when their anti-Clinton videos started to receive millions of views, as if they were being pushed by an invisible force.

    In every case, the largest source of traffic – the invisible force – came from the clips appearing in the “up next” column.

    #YouTube #Algorithme_recommendation #Politique_USA #Elections #Fake_news

  • Lire absolument: How America Armed Terrorists in Syria, Gareth Porter
    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-america-armed-terrorists-in-syria

    CIA involvement in the arming of anti-Assad forces began with arranging for the shipment of weapons from the stocks of the Gaddafi regime that had been stored in Benghazi. CIA-controlled firms shipped the weapons from the military port of Benghazi to two small ports in Syria using former U.S. military personnel to manage the logistics, as investigative reporter Sy Hersh detailed in 2014. The funding for the program came mainly from the Saudis.

    A declassified October 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency report revealed that the shipment in late August 2012 had included 500 sniper rifles, 100 RPG (rocket propelled grenade launchers) along with 300 RPG rounds and 400 howitzers. Each arms shipment encompassed as many as ten shipping containers, it reported, each of which held about 48,000 pounds of cargo. That suggests a total payload of up to 250 tons of weapons per shipment. Even if the CIA had organized only one shipment per month, the arms shipments would have totaled 2,750 tons of arms bound ultimately for Syria from October 2011 through August 2012. More likely it was a multiple of that figure.

  • Retracing the Armenian Genocide, from Turkey to Syria

    A century ago, the world witnessed a forced migration in the other direction, from Turkey to Syria, and often to the migrants’ deaths.

    1.5 million Armenians were killed due to the Ottoman Empire’s actions in World War I. Most survivors make up the Armenian refugee communities throughout the world, including in Los Angeles, where investigative reporter Dawn Anahid MacKeen grew up.


    http://www.thetakeaway.org/story/retracing-armenian-genocide-turkey-raqqa
    #Arménie #génocide #asile #migrations #réfugiés #histoire #Syrie #Turquie

  • Ismayilova Marks 1 Year in Prison Today; New Stories Posted
    https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/4682-ismayilova-marks-1-year-in-prison-today-new-stories-posted

    One year ago today, investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova, 39, was unjustly jailed in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku.
    […]
    Ismayilova, an OCCRP partner, was detained on Dec. 5, 2014, on trumped-up charges that included inciting a former colleague to attempt suicide (accusations later recanted). She was eventually convicted of tax evasion and embezzlement in another bogus case connected to her job as a talk show host at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).
    She vehemently denies all allegations, insisting that she is being prosecuted because her work exposing insider deals worth billions has annoyed Azerbaijan’s powerful president, Ilham Aliyev, and his inner circle of family and friends.
    Ismayilova has been sentenced to 7.5 years in prison. Since her arrest, journalists for OCCRP have launched The Khadija Project to finish her work and send a single, stark message to those who would try to muzzle an independent press: “Until Khadija is free, we will be Khadija x 100.

  • #Azerbaidjan : condamnation à 7 ans et demi de prison pour la journaliste Khadija Ismayilova

    Azerbaijani investigative reporter faces more than 7 years in prison
    http://www.kyivpost.com/content/russia-and-former-soviet-union/azerbaijani-investigative-reporter-gets-jail-sentence-396951.html

    Investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova, who has written numerous hard-hitting stories on corruption in Azerbaijan, was today sentenced to seven and a half years in prison by the Azerbaijani authorities.

    Ismayilova insists she is being imprisoned for her investigative work and that the charges lodged against her are fabricated, an assessment backed by civil society groups and media freedom organizations.

    Her journalism for Kyiv Post partner Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other press outlets, included major exposes of graft and improper business links of those in the close circle of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, including his family members.
    […]
    Acquitted of the initial charge of incitement to attempt suicide, Ismayilova was convicted of embezzlement, tax evasion and running an illegal business at the RFE/RL bureau – charges she has called ridiculous.

    This case was a travesty. It has more in common with the Stalin show trials than modern justice,” says Drew Sullivan, editor of OCCRP. “It appears Khadija was convicted politically and not criminally for her reporting.

    OCCRP joins media freedom and human rights organizations worldwide to demand Ismayilova’s immediate release. Organizations from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights have noted she is a political prisoner and her incarceration cannot be tolerated.

  • RETOUR SUR UN MENSONGE MEURTRIER

    Review: Judith Miller’s ‘The Story: A Reporter’s Journey’
    APRIL 7, 2015http://www.nytimes.com

    In late 2002 and through 2003, Judith Miller, an investigative reporter at The New York Times, wrote a series of articles about the presumed presence of chemical and biological weapons and possible nuclear matériel in Iraq. Critics thought the articles too bellicose and in lock step with the George W. Bush administration’s march to war. They all included careful qualifiers, but their overwhelming message was that Saddam Hussein posed a threat.

    Ms. Miller’s defense of her work then was straightforward: She reported what her sources told her. She has now written a book-length elaboration of that defense, “The Story: A Reporter’s Journey.” The defense is no better now than it was then.

    “The Story,” as anodyne a title as one could imagine, briefly sketches Ms. Miller’s early life before devoting itself to a more detailed description of her career. She came from a troubled home in Nevada and grew into an intrepid young woman who, she writes, liked adventure, sex and martinis.

    With very little experience, she joined the Washington bureau of The Times in 1977 as a reporter, a prized assignment, largely because the newspaper was facing a lawsuit accusing it of sex discrimination, she writes. The chapter describing this is titled “The New York Times, the Token.” She was very raw and her early work showed it. An editor told her she was sloppy and unprofessional. She learned professionalism fast enough that in 1983 she was posted to Cairo, one of the first women to head an international bureau for The Times.

    Correspondents in Cairo are typically charged with covering the whole of the Arab world, from West Africa to Iraq. Sometimes, non-Arab Iran is thrown in just for fun. This is an impossible if enthralling job and, in Ms. Miller’s telling, she fell hard for it. It was “thrilling” and “exhilarating,” she writes.

    Ms. Miller recounts longstanding friendships with, among others, King Hussein of Jordan, who failed in an attempt to teach her water-skiing.

    She was one of the earliest mainstream journalists to report on growing radicalization within Islam. She was also one of the earliest to report on the difficulties that could be imagined when the new radicals crossed paths with another emerging problem — the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This became a subject she would return to throughout her career.

    Ms. Miller devotes several chapters, by far the most given to any subject, to her coverage of Iraq. She had missed the first Persian Gulf war, she writes, stranded in Saudi Arabia. She fought hard to be included in coverage of the next one. The string of exclusive articles she produced before the Iraq war had the effect of buttressing the Bush administration’s case for invasion.

    She had built her career on access. She describes finding, cultivating and tending to powerfully situated sources. She writes that she did not, as some critics of her prewar reporting supposed, sit in her office and wait for the phone to ring. She pounded the pavement. And an ambitious reporter with the power, prestige and resources of a large news organization behind her can cover a lot of road.

    Opponents of the Iraq invasion and media critics of her reporting accused her of being a secret neoconservative thirsting for war. Whatever her actual politics, though, the agenda that comes through most strongly here is a desire to land on the front page. She rarely mentions an article she wrote without noting that it appeared on the front page or complaining that it did not.

    During the war, she writes, she was the sole reporter embedded with the military team charged with finding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. It failed, meaning so had she. Ms. Miller concedes that the Bush administration’s case for war was built largely on Iraq’s presumably ambitious weapons program. In describing what went wrong with one particular claim, she offers a defense that is repeated throughout the book: “The earlier stories had been wrong because the initial intelligence assessments we reported were themselves mistaken — not lies or exaggerations.”

    The New York Times fired her for being wrong. So, why are you giving gravitas to her “mea non culpa” book? She was wrong then.
    Ms. Miller’s main defense is that the experts she relied upon — intelligence officials, weapons experts, members of the Bush administration and others — were wrong about Mr. Hussein’s weapons. She acknowledges being wrong but not making any mistakes. She quotes herself telling another reporter: “If your sources were wrong, you are wrong.” This is where she gets stuck.

    Journalists, especially those who have a talent for investigative work, are taught early to write big, to push the story as far as possible. Be careful; nail the facts; be fair, but push hard. Nobody pushed harder than Ms. Miller. In this case, she wound up implicitly pushing for war.

    A deeper critique of her own reporting, and through that example a critique of the entire enterprise of investigative reporting, would examine its inherently prosecutorial nature. Investigators — journalistic or otherwise — are constantly trying to build a case, to make things fit even when they don’t obviously do so. In the process, the rough edges of the world can be whittled away, nuance can become muddled in the reporter’s head, in the writing, or in the editing.

    The final section of “The Story” deals with Ms. Miller’s role in the Valerie Plame affair, her refusal to identify a source (for an article she never wrote), her jailing because of that refusal, and finally her forced resignation from The Times in 2005. As she describes it, she wasn’t simply abandoned but thrown overboard. This seems partly because of politics and institutional embarrassment, but also partly because of her personality. Almost every investigative reporter is in some way difficult to deal with. Ms. Miller was no exception. She offended colleagues on the way up, she says, and they delighted in her failure when she fell down.

    To Ms. Miller’s credit, this is not a score-settling book, although Bill Keller, the executive editor who she says forced her out of The Times, gets walked around the block naked a couple of times and competing reporters receive just-for-old-times’-sake elbows to their rib cages.

    That doesn’t mean she has made peace with the end of her career at The Times. It was a devastating exile for a proud and influential reporter. Cast out of the journalistic temple, she says she felt “stateless,” and from the evidence here she remains a bit lost. This sad and flawed book won’t help her be found.

    THE STORY
    A Reporter’s Journey
    By Judith Miller
    381 pages. Simon & Schuster. $27.

    Terry McDermott, a former national correspondent for The Los Angeles Times, is the author, with Josh Meyer, of “The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.”❞

  • REDACTED COPY OF SUIT FILED IN YOLO COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT

    Plaintiff,

    v.

    Lea Rosenberg, Yolo Lodge 169 Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Davis Rebekah Lodge; Grand Lodge of California; Independent Order of Odd Fellows; Davis Odd Fellows; Soroptimist International of Davis; Soroptimist International; Soroptimist International of the Americas; David Rosenberg; David Reed; Sheryl Cambron; Barbara Geisler; Virgil Smith; Robert Bockwinkel; Jonathan Raven; Allison Zuvela; Michael Cabral; Tracie Olson; Kathleen White; and Does 1 through 100, inclusive,

    Defendants.

    COMPLAINT FOR DAMAGES AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF FOR:


    1. Plaintiff – an individual residing in Yolo County, an investigative reporter and a Rabbi — has been subject to a campaign of systemic harassment ever since he uncovered corruption in various matters dealing with Boyd Gaming Director, owner of various casinos, and class-action attorney Thomas Girardi (“Girardi”) of Girardi & Keese in connection with financial corruption involving California Democratic Party operatives.

    2. For example, Plaintiff unearthed the fact that subsequent to being disciplined by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stemming from an attempt to defraud the court by resorting to the “use of known falsehoods”, the State Bar of California appointed as “special prosecutor” to Girardi’s own private malpractice lawyer (Jerome Falk of Howard Rice) to prosecute Girardi on the State Bar’s behalf. (When later questioned about this matter, Falk, seeking to mislead Plaintiff, told Plaintiff that his firm had represented the law firm of Girardi & Keese, but not Girardi himself.)
    3. Plaintiff also discovered corruption in a national class-action case (Fogel v. Farmers) whereas Girardi – who represented the class of plaintiffs – never disclosed that the attorney who represented defendant Farmers was concurrently representing Girardi in a separate legal matter. Very shortly after Plaintiff exposed the corruption, attorneys for Farmers approached, sought and obtained from the court a supplemental notice to the class of plaintiffs (consisting of 14 million Americans) indicating that if they cashed their settlement checks, they agreed to not sue Farmers or Girardi because of the undisclosed relationship.
    4. Plaintiff also unearthed corruption involving Girardi (who has a reputation of “bankrolling” the California Democratic party) and individuals associated with the California Democratic Party with connections to the California Public Utilities Commission/Energy Commission (Michael Peevey, Tim Simon, Geoffrey Brown, Peter Arth, Joe Dunn, Martha Escutia, Darrell Steinberg) and utility lawyers involved in the “California Energy Crisis” (Ron Olson and Jeff Bleich of Munger Tolles; James Brosnahan of Morrison & Foerster; John Keker of Keker & Van Nest; Jerry Falk and Douglas Winthrop of Howard Rice; Thomas Girardi of Girardi & Keese; Joe Cotchett of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy; Mark Robinson of Robinson Calcagnie Robinson, and the law-offices of DLA Piper) to launder money from utility companies (SCE, PG&E, Verizon, AT&T) to various members of California Democratic Party (Joe Dunn, Martha Escutia, Kamala Harris, Jerry Brown, Kevin Johnson, Darrell Steinberg) and OBAMA FOR AMERICA via various non-profits (CaliforniaALL, Level Playing Field Institute, California Consumer Protection Foundation).
    5. Also involved in the various financial schemes were Cache Creek Casino, Sacramento-based developer Mark Friedman of Fulcrum Property, his business partner (gambling attorney Howard Dickstein), and Dickstein’s wife, Jeannine English, who was also acting on behalf of AARP to position Barack Obama in the White House and on behalf of Mark Friedman to position Kevin Johnson as the mayor of Sacramento. Additionally involved were Obama for America tech-guru Mitch Kapor and his wife, Freada Kapor Klein.
    6. In connection with the above discoveries, Plaintiff informed various law-enforcement agencies of these facts, as well as filed ethics complaints against some of the above named attorneys with the State Bar of California.
    7. Plaintiff has been repeatedly warned that Girardi is “well-connected” and will seek to silence Plaintiff as a result of Plaintiff’s discoveries and allegations.
    8. Indeed, very shortly after Plaintiff unearthed these events, a posse of eight armed investigators from the Yolo County District Attorney’s office executed an invalid search warrant at Plaintiff’s place of residence in Yolo County and confiscated all documents and computers in his home relating to, inter alia, various ethics complaints filed by Plaintiff on the ground that the ethics complaints were baseless.
    9. Plaintiff has been informed by credible sources, and thereon alleges, that David Rosenberg was one of those responsible for pressing criminal charges against him, that he “cleared the way” for the search warrant, and that he is otherwise friendly with Howard Dicsktein, Mark Friedman, Jerry Brown, Mark Robinson, and Chief Marshall McKay of Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation (all actors in CaliforniaALL — a sham non-profit launched for the purpose of laundering funds to finance the campaigns of various politicians, including President Obama, Kamala Harris, Kevin Johnson of Sacramento, and Governor Jerry Brown.
    PART II: BACKGROUND OF FACTS UNDERLYING CLAIMS AGAINST LEA ROSENBERG AND RELATED INDIVIDUALS AND ENTITIES FOR VIOLATION OF CALIFORNIA’S BUSINESS & PROFESSIONS CODE § 17200 — PREDICATED ON 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d)

    10. Following the execution of the invalid search warrant on Plaintiff’s home, described above, Plaintiff began conducting research into David Rosenberg’s background and learned that he is a judge with the Yolo County Superior Court with a reputation of being a “political animal”.
    11. Plaintiff further learned, and thereupon alleges, that David Rosenberg and his wife (Lea Rosenberg) are deeply involved — as either officers or directors — with a web of non-profit entities worth millions of dollars known as Saratoga Retirement Community, Meadows of Napa Valley, Davis Odd Fellows, Odd Fellows Homes of California, Davis Rebekah Lodge, Soroptimist International of Davis, and others.
    12. Plaintiff also discovered that Lea Rosenberg — as the wife of a judge – was energetically raising funds from various businesses. Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges that Lea Rosenberg is an individual residing in Yolo County.
    13. Judge Rosenberg’s judicial campaign treasurer, Victor Bucher, is a nationally renowned expert in the area of accounting and tax fraud, and also serves as the “treasurer” of a separate non-profit entity launched by David Odd Fellows — Davis Odd Fellows Charities, Inc. — where David Rosenberg serve as president and Bucher as Treasurer.
    14. On April 4, 2013 — consistent with the statutory framework put into place by 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d) — Plaintiff served a request for Davis Odd Fellows and Davis Rebekah Lodge to make available for inspection their IRS 990 forms, which Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges are tax-exempt organizations.
    15. A tax-exempt organization must make available for public inspection its application for tax exemption, three most recent 990 annual information returns, and schedules and attachments available, pursuant to 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d), which reads, in relevant part:
    “Public inspection of certain annual returns, reports, applications for exemption, and notices of status
    (1) In general
    In the case of an organization described in subsection (c) or (d) of section 501 and exempt from taxation under section 501 (a) or an organization exempt from taxation under section 527 (a)—
    (A) a copy of—
    (i) the annual return filed under section 6033 (relating to returns by exempt organizations) by such organization,
    (ii) any annual return which is filed under section 6011 by an organization described in section 501 (c)(3) and which relates to any tax imposed by section 511 (relating to imposition of tax on unrelated business income of charitable, etc., organizations),
    (iii) if the organization filed an application for recognition of exemption under section 501 or notice of status under section 527 (i), the exempt status application materials or any notice materials of such organization, and
    (iv) the reports filed under section 527 (j) (relating to required disclosure of expenditures and contributions) by such organization, shall be made available by such organization for inspection during regular business hours by any individual at the principal office of such organization and, if such organization regularly maintains 1 or more regional or district offices having 3 or more employees, at each such regional or district office, and
    (B) upon request of an individual made at such principal office or such a regional or district office, a copy of such annual return, reports, and exempt status application materials or such notice materials shall be provided to such individual without charge other than a reasonable fee for any reproduction and mailing costs.
    The request described in subparagraph (B) must be made in person or in writing. If such request is made in person, such copy shall be provided immediately and, if made in writing, shall be provided within 30 days.
    (2) 3-year limitation on inspection of returns
    Paragraph (1) shall apply to an annual return filed under section 6011 or 6033 only during the 3-year period beginning on the last day prescribed for filing such return (determined with regard to any extension of time for filing).”
    16. Plaintiff delivered the request through Lea Rosenberg because she was the common denominator between the various “Odd Fellows” entities and Soroptimist, in that she served as an officer and/or director of the various “Odd Fellows” entities, and as president of Davis Rebekah Lodge.
    17. Specifically, on April 4, 2013 Plaintiff delivered to Lea Rosenberg at learose@jps.net the following email request:
    “Re: Request for Production of IRS Form 990, Form 990 Schedule A, Form 1023 to entities associated with Lea Rosenberg, to wit: Soroptimist International of Davis, Davis Rebekah Lodge, Davis Odd Fellows

    Dear Mrs. Rosenberg:

    Consistent with U.S. Internal Revenue Service Regulations, please consider this communication a formal request to produce their IRS Form 990, Form 990 Schedule A, as well Form 1023. This request is for all documents submitted to the IRS within the past three years, which generally means the three most recent returns.

    Said regulations require that these documents be produced within 30 days. Soroptimist International of Davis , Davis Rebekah Lodge, Davis Odd Fellows are entitled to charge reasonable costs for any copying and mailing costs incurred in relation to this request. Alternatively, you can email the documents to me as PDF attachments. I prefer the latter method. However, if for some reason, you prefer to copy and mail the documents, please send them to the following address:

    [—address intentionally omitted—]

    I ask that you draw no conclusion or develop any concern from the mere fact that this request is being made about you, Soroptimist International of Davis , Davis Rebekah Lodge, Davis Odd Fellows or any other individual or entity.

    In addition, I ask that you please produce the following:
    1. A detailed and complete list of all other non-profit entities you were involved beginning in 2008 to the present.
    2. A detailed and complete list of all sums which were transferred amongst any and all organizations you were involved, beginning in 2008 to the present. For example, if in 2009 Soroptimist International of Davis transferred money to Davis Odd Fellows either as donation or rent, I ask that such transaction be disclosed.
    3. A detailed and complete list of all direct or indirect transfers of funds from Soroptimist International of Davis, Davis Rebekah Lodge, Davis Odd Fellows to Progress Ranch and/or any other entity associated with Barbara Sommer from 2007 to the present.

    Thank you for your time and anticipated cooperation. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.”

    18. Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges that Lea Rosenberg received Plaintiff’s email dated April 3, 2013.
    19. On April 24, 2013, Plaintiff delivered to Lea Rosenberg a notice of change of address.
    20. Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges that Lea Rosenberg received Plaintiff’s requests for the organizations’ IRS 990 forms, and while conspiring with other Defendants, chose to breach the duty to comply with 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d).
    21. Plaintiff is further informed and believes that Defendants have directly performed, or aided, abetted, counseled, commanded, induced, procured, encouraged, promoted, instigated, advised, willfully caused, participated in, enabled, contributed to, facilitated, directed, controlled, assisted in, or conspired in the commission of the above-described acts.
    22. Due to this failure to comply with Plaintiff’s request, Plaintiff spent considerable time and resources trying to obtain those documents elsewhere, to no avail. Plaintiff asked his paid research-clerk to conduct further research on the Internet in hope of locating a complete set of the desired documents, also to no avail.
    23. Still seeking a complete set of the requested documents, on September 24, 2013 Plaintiff sent Lea Rosenberg the following email:

    "RE: Davis Odd Fellow Hall; Davis Odd Fellow - Second Request for Production of IRS Documents

    Dear Ms. Rosenberg:

    The purpose of this communication is to address the following matters:

    1. Since you appear to have been involved with Davis Rebekah Lodge, Davis Odd Fellow, and Sophomoric, I had previously asked you to produce the IRS tax-returns for those entities.

    For reasons which I do not understand, rather than complying with this simple request (as you are required to do by law given the fact that those entities are allowed to operate on a “tax-exempt” status), you have failed to respond. I am therefore reiterating my request that you comply with the request for these tax returns and produce them to me within the next 5 days.

    As you know, I am troubled by events surrounding the almost exclusive fundraising to “emancipated foster youth”, Barbara Sommer, Davis Odd Fellow members Jonathan Raven and Michael Cabral, Cache Creek Casino, Vic Bucher, and Progress Ranch.

    I am also troubled by the fact that Judge Rosenberg (and his Judicial Campaign CPA Vic Bucher) lends money to the judicial campaign of other judges (i.e. Tim Fall and Dan Maguire). Hence, I would like to get to the bottom of things, and need the requested tax forms to do so.

    2. In the previously submitted request, there was no mention of “Davis Odd Fellow Hall.” My position and understanding is that Davis Odd Fellow Hall is part of Davis Odd Fellow.
    Nevertheless, please consider this communication a formal request to also provide copies of the last three tax return forms that “Davis Odd Fellow Hall” had submitted to the IRS.

    3. Given that Davis Odd Fellow, David Odd Fellow Hall, and Davis Rebekah Lodge are under the exclusive control of you, your husband David Rosenberg, as well as David Reed and his wife Cheryl Cambron, and given that both David Rosenberg and David Reed are judges of the Yolo County Superior Court, I submit that these entities have a duty to operate at an even higher level of transparency than mandated by the IRS, and must comply with the common law duty of disclosure.

    Thus, in addition to inspecting and copying the documents authorized by the IRS, I request copies of detailed financial statements (i.e. income, expenditures, names of donors, names of businesses and amount of rent Davis Odd Fellow Hall charges its various tenants, identity of subcontractors, identity of those who have rented the Hall etc.) For example, my understanding is that David Greenwald (publisher of The People’s Vanguard of Davis and Vanguard Court Watch) entered into a contract with Davis Odd Fellow Hall. Given that Mr. Greenwald’s publications purport to report on misconduct and malfeasance in the local area, including the courts, it appears to me that there is a direct conflict between this stated mission and his decision to rent space from an entity whose Board is comprised of you, and two Yolo County Superior Court judges.

    I am looking forward to hearing from you and receiving the requested documents."

    24. Later that day, Plaintiff received an email response from Lea Rosenberg stating only the following: “so he is at it again.”
    FIRST CAUSE OF ACTION
    Violation of California Business and Professions Code § 17200 Predicated on
    26 U.S.C. § 6104(d)
    (Against Defendants Lea Rosenberg, Yolo Lodge 169 Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Davis Rebekah Lodge; Grand Lodge of California; Independent Order of Odd Fellows; Davis Odd Fellows; Soroptimist International of Davis; Soroptimist International; Soroptimist International of the Americas; and Does 1 - 100)

    25. Plaintiff incorporates paragraph by reference paragraphs 1 – 24 as though fully set forth herein.
    26. Despite Plaintiff’s repeated requests, Defendants failed to comply with 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d). This failure constitutes unfair and unlawful acts pursuant to California’s Business & Professions Code § 17200.
    27. Plaintiff is informed and believes that Defendants have directly performed, or aided, abetted, counseled, commanded, induced, procured, encouraged, promoted, instigated, advised, willfully caused, participated in, enabled, contributed to, facilitated, directed, controlled, assisted in, or conspired in the commission of the above-described acts.
    28. As a proximate result of the unfair and unlawful acts of Defendants, as alleged above, Plaintiff suffered injury in fact and has lost money or property in an amount to be proven at trial.
    SECOND CAUSE OF ACTION
    Negligence per se
    (Against Defendants Lea Rosenberg, Yolo Lodge 169 Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Davis Rebekah Lodge; Grand Lodge of California; Independent Order of Odd Fellows; Davis Odd Fellows; Soroptimist International of Davis; Soroptimist International; Soroptimist International of the Americas; Lea Rosenberg; and Does 1 - 100)

    29. Plaintiff incorporates paragraph by reference paragraphs 1 - 28 as though fully set forth herein.
    30. Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges that the Defendants named above were all aware of Plaintiff’s repeated requests for the information described in this Complaint — the entities’ IRS Form 990 forms.
    31. Plaintiff is further informed and believes and thereon alleges that Defendants were under a duty to ensure compliance, yet chose to breach a duty prescribed in 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d). This failure to comply with the statutory requirements constitutes negligence per se.
    32. As a proximate result of Defendants’ breach of duty, as alleged above, Plaintiff spent considerable time and resources trying to obtain those documents elsewhere, to no avail. Plaintiff asked his paid research-clerk to conduct further research on the Internet in hope of locating a complete set of the desired documents, also to no avail. Plaintiff suffered injury in fact and has lost money or property in an amount to be proven at trial.
    33. Plaintiff further alleges that Davis Odd Fellows owns a Hall ("Davis Lodge Hall"), on a property adjacent to the two Lodges, and is the owner (and landlord) of rental property currently occupied by Hunan Chinese Restaurant and Coldwell-Banker Doug Arnold Real Estate.
    34. The “Hall Board Association” is a California corporation, and is the actual owner of the Davis Lodge Hall, the adjacent property of the two Lodges, and the rental property currently occupied by Hunan Chinese Restaurant and Coldwell-Banker Doug Arnold Real Estate.
    35. The “Hall Board Association” is composed of President David Rosenberg, Vice President David Reed, Secretary Lea Rosenberg, Treasurer Sheryl Cambron, and Barbara Geisler.
    36. The Davis Lodge Hall is available to rent by the general public for receptions, fund-raisers, dinners, conferences, trade shows, meetings, and other events.
    37. The Davis Lodge Hall is also used by Davis Odd Fellows for its own functions, such as Davis Odd Fellows Bingo and Master Balls.
    38. In approximately September 2013, and after the expenditure of considerable time, resources, and efforts, Plaintiff managed to ascertain that the actual legal name of Davis Odd Fellows and David Rebekah Lodge is “Yolo Lodge 169 Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Davis Rebekah Lodge.” Plaintiff then managed to obtain partial copies of tax returns that “Yolo Lodge 169 Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Davis Rebekah Lodge” had submitted to the IRS.
    39. Upon reviewing partial copies of the above-described IRS 990 forms from 2010 and 2011, Plaintiff noted that false information had been submitted to the IRS on two occasions that he was able to identify from the incomplete forms. Specifically, according to those 990 forms, in 2010 David Reed served as the president of Yolo Lodge 169; serving as the Treasurer of Yolo Lodge was Sheryl Cambron. Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges that Reed and Cambron are married to each other.
    40. However, this was not the information provided to the IRS. The 2010 IRS Form 990 submitted by Yolo Lodge asked, ‘Did any officer, director, trustee, or key employee have a family relationship or a business relationship with any other officer, director, trustee, or key employee?’ The form submitted by Yolo Lodge states, “NO.” Since two of the officers (Reed and Cambron) were actually married to each other, this is a misrepresentation.
    41. In 2011, Yolo Lodge officers submitted false information to the IRS again, this time involving a different set of actors — Lea and David Rosenberg, who are married to each other. Specifically, in 2011 David Rosenberg served as President of Yolo Lodge; his wife, Lea Rosenberg, served as “Secretary” of Yolo Lodge, and David Reed served as a board member.
    42. The 2011 IRS Form 990 submitted by Yolo Lodge asked, ‘Did any officer, director, trustee, or key employee have a family relationship or a business relationship with any other officer, director, trustee, or key employee?’ The form submitted by Yolo Lodge states, “NO.” Since two of the officers (David Rosenberg and Lea Rosenberg) were actually married to each other, this is a misrepresentation.
    43. Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges that Virgil Smith is a CPA a member of Davis Odd Fellows, and a co-conspirator in the submission of these fraudulent tax-returns. Also responsible for submitting these fraudulent tax-returns were David Rosenberg, Lea Rosenberg, David Reed, Sheryl Cambron, Barbara Geisler, and Robert Bockwinkel.
    44. Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges that the fraudulent tax-returns were submitted because David Rosenberg, Lea Rosenberg, David Reed, Sheryl Cambron, Barbara Geisler, Virgil Smith and Robert Bockwinkel did not want the IRS and the public to become aware that Sheryl Cambron is married to David Reed, and because they were concerned that if such relationships (i.e. Lea Rosenberg is married to David Rosenberg) would be disclosed, it may trigger an IRS audit.
    45. As a proximate result of the unfair and unlawful acts of Defendants, as alleged above, Plaintiff suffered injury in fact and has lost money or property in an amount to be proven at trial.

    THIRD CAUSE OF ACTION
    Civil Conspiracy to Violate 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d)
    (Against Defendants Lea Rosenberg, David Rosenberg, David Reed, Sheryl Cambron, Barbara Geisler, Virgil Smith; Robert Bockwinkel; and Does 1 - 100)

    46. Plaintiff incorporates paragraph by reference paragraphs 1 - 45 as though fully set forth herein.
    47. Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges that Defendants Lea Rosenberg, David Rosenberg, Sheryl Cambron, Robert Bockwinkel, David Reed, Barbara Geisler, and Virgil Smith willfully and knowingly conspired and agreed among themselves to a scheme by which they agreed to violate Plaintiff’s legal rights by not complying with 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d) because they were concerned he would discover the tax-fraud perpetrated on the IRS, as described above.
    48. Some of the overt acts (both lawful and unlawful) that gave rise to this conspiracy, committed by one or more of the conspirators pursuant to their common design, were: (a) an agreement to intentionally violate 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d); (b) an agreement to ignore Plaintiff’s repeated requests for information sought pursuant to this statute; and (c) a lawful overt act to belittle Plaintiff by sending him an email which reads, “so he is at it again.”
    49. Plaintiff is further informed and believes and thereon alleges that Defendants have directly performed, or aided, abetted, counseled, commanded, induced, procured, encouraged, promoted, instigated, advised, willfully caused, participated in, enabled, contributed to, facilitated, directed, controlled, assisted in, or conspired in the commission of the above-described acts.
    50. Plaintiff is also informed and believes and thereon alleges that David Odd Fellows / Yolo Lodge 169 / Odd Fellows Hall and related entities are and were almost exclusively overseen for years by judges and selected attorneys appearing before the Yolo County Superior Court who misuse Yolo 169 and Odd Fellows Hall as a convenient forum to meet, collude, and engage in ex parte communications in a secluded and non-public setting, as well as to raise funds by lending the prestige of their offices.
    51. Said individuals include primarily Judge David Rosenberg, Judge Kathleen White, Judge David Reed, Yolo County Counsel Sheryl Cambron, District Attorney Jeff Reisig, Yolo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Raven, Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Cabral, Yolo County Public Defender Tracey Olson, attorneys Allison Zuvela, Rodney Beede and wife Christina Zambrano Beede, and Fran McGuire (wife of judge Dan McGuire). A typical event, for example, was described on May 23, 2013 in the Davis Enterprise:

    “This year, the Davis Odd Fellows Lodge took over running the popular ’A Taste of Davis’ and we are delighted to report that the event on April 18 was a great success for all concerned.

    We wish to thank the fine restaurants, wineries and breweries that treated our 250 guests to delightful food and drink: Applebee’s, Berryessa Gap Winery, Caffé Italia’s Brick Wall Pizza, California Vintage Specialties, Davis Food Co-op, Davis Farmers Market, Ding How, Dos Coyotes, Maria’s Cantina, Nugget Markets, Osteria Fasulo, Our House, Paesanos, Putah Creek Winery, Renaissance Wines, Route 3 Wines, Seasons, Senders Wines, Seka Hills Wines, Sudwerk, Sundstrom Hill Winery, Woodstock Pizza, Z Specialty Foods and Zindagi Indian Bistro.

    We thank our sponsors who helped make this event so successful. First and foremost, we offer a big “thank you” to our major sponsor, Hanlees Toyota-Chevrolet-Nissan of Davis. And we also appreciate our other sponsors: The Davis Enterprise, California Vintage Specialties, Comstock Mortgage, Davis Downtown, Cunningham Engineering, Our House Restaurant and Lounge, the Davis Chamber of Commerce, Abaton Consulting, Law Offices of Poulos and Fullerton, Attorney Raquel Silva, the Law Offices of J.B. Dath, and Cache Creek Resort Casino.

    Thank you to many individual sponsors: County Supervisors Jim Provenza and Don Saylor, Mayor Joe Krovoza, and Davis City Council members Dan Wolk, Rochelle Swanson, Brett Lee and Lucas Frerichs, as well as Tracie Olson, Dr. Arun Sen and Bob Schelen.

    Special thanks to Stewart Savage of Abaton Consulting, who put together a terrific slide show that was shown on a continuous loop at the event.

    Finally, we offer a big thank you to the committee that worked with us to plan and execute this successful event: Margie Cabral, Sheryl Cambron, Robin Dewey, Bill Grabert, Nancy Sue Hafer, Lewis Kimble, Steve Lopez, Fran Maguire, Amanda Maples, Joyce Puntillo, Dave Rosenberg, Raquel Silva, Robin Souza and Christopher Young. What a great, hard-working group.”

    52. Plaintiff is further informed and believes and thereon alleges that Davis Odd Fellows’ officers, directors, and members who are otherwise private actors — David Rosenberg, Lea Rosenberg, Kathleen White, David Reed, Sheryl Cambron, Jonathan Raven, Tracie Olson, Allison Zuvela, Michael Cabral, Rodney Beede and Christina Zambrano Beede — conspired amongst themselves to fraudulently conceal the fact that Sheryl Cambron is married to Judge David Reed and is otherwise an attorney employed by Yolo County Counsel and is in a confidential attorney-client fiduciary relationship with Odd Fellows’ members Jeff Reisig, Michael Cabral, and Jonathan Raven on the account of representing them and/or their office in matters such as Gore v. Reisig, In Re Garcia, and Yilma v. Agonofer.
    53. Plaintiff is further informed and believes and thereon alleges that as part of a common scheme and conspiracy to defraud in order to advance said conspiracy, in the hundreds of articles written and published by Davis Odd Fellows/Davis Rebekah Lodge (or about the activities of Davis Odd Fellows by outside publications such as the Davis Enterprise or Daily Democrat), the fact that Reed and Cambron are actually married to each other, that Reed is a judge, and Cambron is an attorney with Yolo County Counsel is never mentioned, in order to mislead and defraud the public and litigants by means of a plan they conceived and executed.
    54. Plaintiff is further informed and believes and thereon alleges that as a further overt act by which to advance the objective of said conspiracy, Sheryl Cambron conceals from the public her association with Yolo County Counsel by causing numerous legal web-sites to misrepresent her employment status. Most, if not all, of those web-sites state that Sheryl Cambron is in fact in private practice representing litigants in matters dealing with bankruptcies, family law, and criminal law.
    55. Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges that private actors Yolo Lodge 169, David Rosenberg, Lea Rosenberg, David Reed, Sheryl Cambron, Jonathan Raven, Allison Zuvela, Tracey Olson, Michael Cabral, and Kathleen White and Does 1 - 100 willfully and knowingly conspired and agreed among themselves to a scheme by which they agreed to conceal from the public and Plaintiff Cambron’s employment as an attorney with Yolo County Counsel, that she is the spouse of David Reed, as well as the confidential fiduciary relationship between Cambron on one hand and Reisig, Cabral and Raven on the other hand.
    56. Plaintiff further alleges that private actors Rosenberg, Reed, Raven, and Zuvela conspired to fraudulently conceal the fact that Zuvela is an Odd Fellow by intentionally removing her name from the web-site davislodge.org — which yields a zero return when a search is performed for her name . Additionally, Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges that David Rosenberg, David Reed, and Allison Zuvela conspired to further delete from the web-site davislodge.org all articles which mentions Zuvela’s name.
    57. These conspiratorial acts were substantial factors in causing Plaintiff monetary losses and damages in an amount to be established at trial.
    FOURTH CAUSE OF ACTION
    Fraudulent Concealment
    (Against Private Actors Defendants Yolo Lodge 169; David Rosenberg; Lea Rosenberg; David Reed; Sheryl Cambron; Jonathan Raven; Allison Zuvela; Michael Cabral; Tracie Olson; Kathleen White; and Does 1 - 100 )

    58. Plaintiff incorporates paragraph by reference paragraphs 1 - 57 as though fully set forth herein.
    59. Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges that Defendants committed the above described acts and omissions with intent to defraud the public and Plaintiff and deprive him of other interests he was entitled to. In particular, Defendants affirmatively concealed the existence of a marital relationship between Reed and Cambron, the fact that Cambron is an employee of Yolo County Counsel, and the fact that Allison Zuvela is an Odd Fellow member by affirmatively deleting her name from Odd Fellow web-site.
    60. Plaintiff is further informed and believes and thereon alleges that Defendants have directly performed, or aided, abetted, counseled, commanded, induced, procured, encouraged, promoted, instigated, advised, willfully caused, participated in, enabled, contributed to, facilitated, directed, controlled, assisted in, or conspired in the commission of the above-described acts.
    61. Plaintiff reasonably relied upon the statements, acts, and omissions of Defendants to his detriment.
    62. As a proximate result of Defendants’ conduct, as alleged above, Plaintiff suffered injury in fact in an amount to be proven at trial.
    FIFTH CAUSE OF ACTION
    42 U.S.C. § 1983
    (Against State Actors Defendants David Rosenberg, Sheryl Cambron, Jonathan Raven, Allison Zuvela, Tracie Olson, Michael Cabral and Does 1 - 100)

    63. Plaintiff incorporates paragraph by reference paragraphs 1 - 62 as though fully set forth herein.
    64. Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges that state actors David Rosenberg, Sheryl Cambron, Jonathan Raven, Tracie Olson, Allison Zuvela and Michael Cabral and Does 1 - 100 willfully and knowingly conspired and agreed among themselves to a scheme by which they agreed to conceal from Plaintiff Cambron’s employment as an attorney with Yolo County Counsel, that she is the spouse of David Reed, the confidential fiduciary relationship between Cambron on one hand and Cabral and Raven on the other hand, and that Allison Zuvela is an Odd Fellow member, by among other things, deleting her name from the Odd Fellow web-site.
    65. Plaintiff is further informed and believes and thereon alleges that Defendants have directly performed, or aided, abetted, counseled, commanded, induced, procured, encouraged, promoted, instigated, advised, willfully caused, participated in, enabled, contributed to, facilitated, directed, controlled, assisted in, or conspired in the commission of the above-described acts.
    66. Plaintiff reasonably relied upon the statements, acts, and omissions of Defendants to his detriment.
    67. As a proximate result of Defendants’ conduct, as alleged above, Plaintiff’s state and federal civil rights were violated and resulted in legal damages in an amount to be established at trial.
    WHEREFORE, Plaintiff respectfully requests judgment against Defendants as follows:
    1. For general and special damages under all causes of action where available by law;
    2. For costs of suit;
    3. For prejudgment interest;
    4. For an injunction directing Defendants to comply with 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d); and
    5. For such other and further relief as the Court may deem just and proper.
    Plaintiff also demands a jury trial in this matter.
    DATED: February 4, 2014

  • E-Mail message to Donna Lucas of Lucas Public Affairs — donna@lucaspublicaffairs.com

    Hello Ms. Lucas:

    I an investigative reporter, a whistleblower, and a rabbi. Unfortunately, we cross path because many of your allies were involved in a scheme known as CaliforniaALL, to wit, AARP, Jeannine English, Dennis Mangers, George Davis, Darrell Steinberg, Kip Lipper, Pat Fong-Kushida, and the like.

    Consequently, I am conducting a background search of you and Lucas Public Affairs and hope you can address the following:

    1. Will it be correct for me to assume that Lucas Public Affairs is an extension of Porter Novelli ? Can you please clarify the legal relationship between you, Lucas Public Affairs, and Porter Novelli.

    2. Are AARP and AARP Foundation clients of Lucas Public Affairs ?

    3. An employee of Lucas Public Affairs (Ms. Barbara O’Connor) serves as Director of AARP and AARP Foundation ( http://www.aarp.org/aarp-foundation/about-us/info-06-2012/barbara-oconnor-board-member.html) . Did you or Lucas Public Affairs urge O’Connor to omit from the AARP online-profile the fact that she is an employee of Lucas Public Affairs ?

    4. Can you please describe the circumstances surrounding your appointment as director of Golden Pacific Bank ?

    5. Can you please describe the circumstances surrounding your appointment as director of California Forward ?

    6. Can you please describe the circumstances surrounding your appointment as member of Scripps’ Advisory Council ?

    7. Can you please describe in details the circumstances surrounding your appointment as director of Venoco ?

    Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your prompt response

  • A Potted History of #Failed_States
    http://africasacountry.com/a-potted-history-of-failed-states

    Tweet What version of the Third World in 2013 does Washington DC want to tell itself, and why? In the same week that investigative reporter #Jeremy_Scahill spoke of the need for the USA to “take a humility pill” in order to become a properly functioning democracy with a government truly accountable to its people, [...]

    #FEATURED #JOURNALISM #Latest #MEDIA #POLITICS #Boutros_Boutros-Ghali #Claire_Leigh #Failed_States_Index #Foreign_Policy_Magazine #Fund_for_Peace #Gerald_Helman #JJ_Messner #Steven_Ratner