Regarding Jimmy Carter and the "permanent pass" there are numerous references on the netSo I guess you don't have a credible source for that rumor. I've found all sorts of wonderful stuff about Rossi, but when I track it down, it turns out to be Rossi who's making the claims, and Rossi's shills (like Sterling Allan) spreading them around.
At the same time he was fully exonerated of all charges in ItalyNot according to the newspaper articles I've read.
Everyone talks about the toxic waste dumping that prompted one of Rossi's convictions, and was apparently reversed later.
However, I haven't read anything about him being acquitted on the other, unrelated convictions: fraud related to building a factory in southern Italy, fraud related to his gold shipping business that didn't actually ship any gold or the fraud conviction related to gutting a company on the verge of bankruptcy. That last one was interesting in that the paper reported that Rossi had been a fugitive in the United States for a year.
I know that Rossi and his shills have been spreading lots of statements that appear to be less than truthful, so I'm not accepting anything they say as the truth unless I can corroborate it from some other source.
Now, regarding the pass, I didn't say any of the references were of the sort where you could use them to build the case that Rossi is a con. Obviously they are friendly. At the same time none of the anti-Rossi boards tell us what happened on appeal ~ WHICH as we learned recently in the Amanda Knox case appears to be a mandatory thing!
I did find ONE reference where the writer said "and he spent 8 years in prison" ~ but couldn't find another one. He, himself, is quoted as saying something had an 8 year sentence but we need a hard reference (from an independent source) to tell us if he actually served the sentence. Let's apply the same standard to that quote as you want to apply to the others.
If you are old enough you'll remember back in the beginning of EPA SuperFundEnforcement they charged a troop of Boy Scouts with being responsible for a Super Fund Site.
Used to be they used a tag team out standard where the last person or group to own, walk on, look at or ausfahrt in the direction of a Super Fund site could be sued to clean it up! EPA made some lifelong enemies with that sort of thing (I still hate their guts, and if one of them were crossing on a red and I had the green, well it'd be a real battle to put on the brakes) ~ although that's not the point here, I doubt the Italian government was any more advanced in its thinking about cleaning up Hazmat than our government was. Most of these guys swap ideas as well as legal standards of evidence.
If you look closely at the environmental charges against Rossi you find that he was considered part of a group of 5 ~ the others are even named ~ so if one of them committed anything egregious ALL of them got charged with it.
I believe Rossi says his involvement was misrepresented by the press and when we look at the record he was cleared on all counts! The same thing happened to the Boy Scout troop in the more famous American case. The James Bovard book that goes into this deeper is reviewed at: http://www.fff.org/freedom/0399d.asp
No doubt the Italians followed the leader!
All I can say is he's darned lucky he was not raising bunny rabbits ~ you get EPA and USDA on your tail.
One more item ~ convicted felons have a difficult time getting an immigration visa ~ so how did he immigrate?