Posted on 09/22/2007 6:36:56 AM PDT by george76
A Laguna Beach investment firm filed a lawsuit against Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu on Friday, claiming he defrauded investors out of at least $23 million and required them to donate to Democratic candidates.
According to the lawsuit filed by Briar Wood Investments, Hsu persuaded the company's operator to do business with him by taking him to star-studded Democratic Party events. There, the 56-year-old Hong Kong native was praised by New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown and others, the lawsuit said.
As a condition of doing business with the fundraiser, Hsu directed investors to make contributions to certain Democratic candidates, the lawsuit said. The investors turned over tens of thousands of dollars, including $30,000 worth of checks to Clinton's campaign on a single day.
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal troubles that continue to mount for Hsu.
Last week, New York investors filed a similar suit against Hsu. On Thursday, federal prosecutors unsealed a criminal complaint accusing Hsu of operating a national Ponzi scheme and reimbursing investors for donations made in their names. And on Friday, a San Mateo County judge ordered Hsu held without bail in a 1991 theft case.
According to the lawsuit, Waters invested with Hsu in part because "prominent persons, including Sen. Hillary Clinton, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, national Democratic political adviser James Carville, film director Steven Spielberg, actor (Tobey) Maguire, grocery store magnate/billionaire Ron Burkle and others introduced and/or endorsed Hsu as a friend, colleague and trusted associate."
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
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Starting in 2006, the lawsuit says, Hsu told Waters that new investors in his deals had to contribute to political campaigns he designated and that each investor would have to give the maximum allowed by law.
In a May 7, 2007, e-mail submitted as part of the lawsuit, Hsu told Waters that he would allocate deals based partly on loyalty and friendship, and what he called "exchange favor."
Waters got the message, Bollard said, even though in writing Hsu was more circumspect about asking for political contributions.
"He always used that phrase -- 'favor' -- in communications with the contribution demand, so Marty [Waters] knew what he meant," Bollard said. Verbally, the demand for contributions "was explicit and unqualified."
robin.fields@latimes.comdan.morain@latimes.comchuck.neubauer@latimes.com
Times researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to this report.
Blog Bits:Hsu and Clinton;******************EXCERPT******************
Hsu and Clinton
Norman Hsu, the Democratic fundraiser with a habit of fleeing the law, confessed to FBI agents last week that he pressured investors in what he now admits were phony business deals to contribute to political campaigns, prosecutors said in an indictment.
The FBI is saying that Hsu used his political contributions to give his scheme a certain “allure.” That may well be true. But there are still numerous unanswered questions about Hsu’s relationship to the Clinton campaign as well as questions about many donors who are claiming to have fallen for the scheme but should have known better.
As agent for all of these candidates, he forced people to give money. Every one of those donations was illegal. Major DNC figures vouched for the guy. I think that these investors need to go after the deep pockets of the DNC. This is a major conspiracy in which they took part.
ping!
I wonder if any ot the other bundlers used some of those cute phrases?
That would help establish a pattern.....
ping!
see some of these updates.....
Hsu was really working the political contributions angle.,....wonder if he had help setting up his scheme....
See the updates above for how Hsu worked his donors......was he coached?
http://flprogressive.blogspot.com/2007/09/norman-hsu-hes-not-just-for-democrats.html
You've done a great job keeping up with this important story.
The curious thing about the California lawsuit against Hsu is that it mentions Clinton herself and many other DemonRat big wigs as providing the references for Hsu that many of the "investors" allegedly relied on, but does not, at least as yet, include those individuals as defendants, even though Hsu is a bankrupt grifter facing major jail time. The logical thing for an attorney representing a group of bona fide investors who got conned this way to do would be include all the people who gave references on a negligent representation causing detrimental reliance theory.
It looks like such a theory might work pretty well in this case for bona fide investors, given Clinton's defense of lack of knowledge. Her campaign is saying they checked Hsu through the Lexis/Nexis data base, found nothing, and, thus, regarded him as clean. Their departed West Coast Finance Director, in a reply to to other DemonRats who asked whether Hsu was straight, affirmatively stated that he was not involved in any Ponzi schemes and was clean. However, the LA Times, in its first article about Hsu, described how it learned about his prior bankruptcy and being a fugitive from justice by nothing more than a fairly cursory search of public records. The Clinton people definitely should and could a similar search have done a similar search as a part of ordinary due diligence before they started giving Hsu the very references that enabled him to run his Ponzi schemes.
Now the ball's in the "defrauded investors" hands. I put the term "defrauded investors" in quotes because I seriously question whether some really were defrauded. Instead, I suspect many of the fat cat "investors" actually knew what was going on, realized they weren't ever going to get their money back, and were trying to make illegally tax deductible contributions that were illegally large and illegally laundered to the Witch and the DemonRats. If, OTOH, the "investors" were actually bona fide, they'd be crazy not to go after the deep pockets of Hillary and the other DemonRats on the negligent representation theory. Whether they do or not will give us a good idea of what they were up to.
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ALL ROADS LEAD TO FLORIDA
Presidential wannabe Hillary Clinton may be the highest-profile pol who received funny money from disgraced Democratic fund-raiser Norman Hsu.
But some of the Hong Kong native's cash ended up in Florida, too.
Sen. Bill Nelson's staff admitted Friday that his campaign received as much as $7,500 from Hsu.
Florida's Democratic Party also benefited — to the tune of $6 Gs.
And while Hsu funded mostly Dems, two of his associates reportedly gave to one Republican: Former Florida CFO Tom Gallagher. He bagged $1,000 in his ill-fated attempt to beat Charlie Crist in last year's gubernatorial race.
Hsu was supposed to appear in a federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday but skipped town on an Amtrak. Authorities caught up with him Thursday when he fell ill while crossing Colorado.
Hsu was convicted in 1991 of felony theft for bilking investors. He never showed up at the sentencing and went on the lam for 15 years, funneling hundreds of thousands to political campaigns under his and dozens of associates' names.
In e-mails, two Nelson spokesmen wrote Friday that the senator directed his staff to calculate the total in Hsu contributions and give the money to a yet-to-be-picked charity.
One aide, Brian Gulley, wrote to Page Two: "Nelson wouldn't know Mr. Hsu from Adam. He was one of some 200,000 people who gave money to Nelson's campaign. ... Nelson tries to screen all his contributors."
With Clinton getting rid of $23,000 from Hsu, the Florida Dems weren't feeling so generous. They're keeping their fistful of dollars.
"As Charlie Crist would say, our contributors buy into our agenda. We don't necessarily buy into theirs," said party spokesman Mark Bubriski. Actually, it was state House Speaker Marco Rubio who said that recently, explaining why he took a contribution from a horsetrack while arguing against gambling.
Gallagher said he hadn't even heard about the Hsu scandal. The $1,000 he supposedly received from two Hsu minions didn't trigger alarms. "I received money from 10,000 to 12,000 people."
As dumb as I am I could not have been forced to give money to Hsu.
1 Timothy,6:10
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows
The Holy Bible, King James version
Hillary has NOT RETURNED ANY MONEY!!! This is such BS!!! THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT SHE HAS!! except her wor....HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHA....which means she LIED>
Thanks! I believe thats the one of the only Republicans to get money from Hsu.
Gosh and we forgot to ping ‘unspun’. unspun and The Ancient Mariner are old friends, lol.
Lol, knowing you, you probably still remember it!!
I know, it’s hard to describe, lol.
.
“.....and not a drop to drink.....”
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