Mitt Romney, Damon Corp, Medicare Fraud,& Blood Money (MUST SEE)

Winning our Future and Newt Gingrich were excoriated for their perceived attack on Capitalism in their previous film When Mitt Romney Came to Town.

In my opinion, it was fair game to examine Mitt’s record of job creation since that was one of his campaign pillars. Many did not agree and Newt took a beating from no less an authority than Rush Limbaugh and Rudy Giuliani amongst others. Granted that film wasn’t the best use of Newt’s and Winning Our Future’s War Chest.

It is about the largest federal medicare fraud in it’s time and most of those frauds occurred under the management of Mitt Romney. In one of the debate, Romney stated explicitly that he had never done any business with the government (another lie).

Just as the Feds were completing the investigation on Damon Capital, Mitt Romney sold Damon Capital to Corning (questionable timing!).

Initially Romney claimed to have no knowledge of the medicare fraud which happened under his watch. Then he changed his tune that he reported the fraud to the authorities (so which is which Mitt?). The sale of Damon Capital netted Bain Capital $12M of which Mitt Romney netted $437,000 ( not much!!!!).

So if Newt was asked by Mitt to return the $1.6M earned from Freddie Mac over 6 years, shouldn’t Mitt return that $437,000 of blood money earned in a single sale transaction plus all the fraudulent billing to Medicare under his watch?

It is unlikely that supporters of Romney will be able to spin this as another attack on Capitalism (I have no doubt they will try). This simply reinforces the prevalent opinion that Mitt plays to a different set of rules from the rest of us and will be a perfect 1% foil for Mr Obama’s 99% (Personally I detest Obama’s class warfare but it is what it is and are we going to walk right into his trap by nominating Romney?)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2839181/posts

Romney Was Manager and Board Member of Corp Guilty of Medicare Fraud (More info - the sauce thickens
Newsmax ^ | 1/27/2012 | Dave Eberhart

(MORE AT FR LINK)

http://www.deseretnews.com/m/article/680195957

Perhaps the most legally thorny was Bain Capital’s 1989 purchase of Damon Corp., a Needham medical testing firm that later pleaded guilty to defrauding the federal government of $25 million and paid a record $119 million fine.

Romney sat on Damon’s board. During Romney’s tenure, Damon executives submitted bills to the government for millions of unnecessary blood tests. Romney and other board members were never implicated.

More than a decade later, when Romney was in pursuit of the Massachusetts governorship, his Democratic opponent Shannon O’Brien accused him of lax oversight at Damon and failing to report the fraud.

Romney replied that he had helped uncover the illegal activity at Damon, asking the board’s lawyers to investigate. As a result, he said, the board took “corrective action” before selling the company in 1993 to Corning Inc.

But court records suggest that the Damon executives’ scheme continued throughout Bain’s ownership, and prosecutors credited Corning, not Romney, with cleaning up the situation. Bain, meanwhile, tripled its investment.
Romney personally reaped $473,000.

(snip)

In 1997, he balked again, at the acquisition of a Los Angeles video distributor and movie producer that would be renamed Artisan Entertainment and become famous for producing the movie “The Blair Witch Project.”

Romney worried that Bain Capital’s image would suffer from the perception it “had gone Hollywood,” according to Rehnert, the Bain partner who proposed he deal.

Romney had another problem. The studio had an extensive library of R-rated films, which The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints discourages its members from watching.

Rehnert calmed Romney’s image concerns by enlisting a Chicago firm to join the deal, sharing the risk and deflecting attention from Bain.

Romney, balancing his duty to make money for his investors with his religious beliefs, let the deal go through, but declined to co-invest his own money, which partners usually did.

“I didn’t want to profit from a studio that made R-rated movies,” Romney said recently.
By the time Bain Capital sold its interest in Artisan in 1999, it had more than tripled its investment.

(snip)

http://www.allbusiness.com/services/motion-pictures/4927634-1.html

Can an upstart born in porn become the premier independent film studio? That’s what the founders of Artisan Entertainment are betting, despite the odds.

Ever since last summer, when a group of investors took LIVE Entertainment private in a $150 million buyout, they have pledged to turn the newly named Artisan into a major Hollywood contender.

(snip)

At Bain Consulting, Curcio was a partner in the Los Angeles office, where he worked on entertainment mergers and acquisitions. In doing so, Curcio and his partners realized the industry’s potential.

“It’s a huge industry with high growth rates that historically do not invest well,” he said.

As a consultant, Curcio met Block, who at the time was with ICM.

“We looked at buying October Films, but then the price went up, and Universal bought them,” said Curcio. Then, Bain stumbled onto LIVE Entertainment, which at the time was trying to recapitalize.

LIVE had a checkered history. The company started as Caballero, a firm whose output included numerous pornographic videos. In the mid-1980s, Caballero sold LIVE Entertainment its children’s titles.

LIVE will be forever associated with the Menendez Brothers, whose father, Jose, headed the company in the late 1980s. When Jose and his wife, Kitty, were gunned down at their Beverly Hills home in 1989, the sons, who were later convicted of the crimes, suggested that a porn-film purveyor was the murderer.

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