Posted on 11/30/2007 10:16:12 AM PST by Liz
EDITED EXCERPT
Behind the ongoing professional disintegration of Bernard Kerik, is a tax-exempt foundation that serves as the venue for investigations earning former NYPD Commissioner Kerik unwanted headlines.
When Rudy Giuliani appointed Kerik Commissioner of the City's Department of Correction and later, Police Commissioner, Kerik also ran the tax-exempt New York City Correction Foundation, serving as President.
During Kerik's watch, the sole authorized signatory for the Foundation, named Frederick Patrick, looted the foundation of $137,000 (the amount prosecutors got him to cop to). A rising star in the City's law enforcement bureaucracy, Patrick was at one point Commissioner for Juvenile Justice, and the Police Department's Deputy Commissioner for Community Affairs. According to prosecutors, the thieving Patrick used part of his tax-exempt swag for phone sex with Riker's Island jail inmates.
Kerik was shocked, shocked! that such things would be happening to the Foundation during his watch..... but there was more.......reports of money missing from the Foundation, maybe $800,000, perhaps as much as a million.
One source of Foundation money was rebates on overpriced cigarettes sold to jail inmates (the NYC Correction Foundation was not much focused on inmates' health and longevity).
The Foundation seems to have been spent on something, but it isn't clear exactly what. Foundation spokespersons said it paid for holiday parties for inmates and "promotional videos", though evidence, records, and receipts for the expenditures seem to be difficult if not impossible to locate. Promotional videos for the jails? Come again?
According to Newsday, one foundation board member quit when Foundation aforementioned treasurer Patrick (phone sex addict), refused to produce financial reports. Kerik blissfully floated abve the scandal. When challenged about his protege Patrick's dipping into the foundation kitty, Kerik reportedly said: Why should the president of a charitable foundation know what's going on?
Claiming an undocumented nanny problem, Kerik withdrew his name to be President Bush's Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. It seems like more than a nanny problem was in play here....including the lackadaisical, slipshod purported philanthropic operations of Kerik's NYC Correction Foundation.
As the press plumbs Kerik's NYPD track record, other items related to charity and philanthropy have emerged:
(1) reports of using $3,000 in Police Foundation funds to manufacture 30 busts of Kerik, then-NYPD commissioner, to be handed out as mementos;
(2) reports of a questionable law enforcement support group, the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation, headed by a Milstein Properties bigwig, providing top floor Battery Park City apartments for Kerik and his chief of staff;
(3) reports of Kerik's being extra-nice to publisher Judith Regan in return for her nearly $500,000 contribution to the New York Police and Fire Widows and Orphans Fund.
(1) Kerik's tax-exempt New York City Correction Foundation, where he served as President, was looted by the treasurer (who went to jail for using tax-exempt money for phone sex).
(2) a questionable law enforcement support group, the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation, headed by a Milstein Properties bigwig, provided top floor Battery Park City apartments for Kerik and his chief of staff. Maybe married Rudy was also using the hideaway to pork his mistress?
The IRS has targeted tax-exempt foundations as major money launderies. Phantom employees on the payroll, fraudulent accounting entries for "bogus consultants, legal fees, admin and phony bldg expenses," are much-used ways crooked operators siphon off tax-exempt monies for their own use.
There's a million ways Kerik could have helped Rudy use tax-exempt monies to upkeep his mistress.
Suspected tax fraud should be reported here: PHONE THE IRS TOLL FREE 1-800-829-0433 You may remain anonymous if you wish.
Dirty NY politics. Who would have thought.....
ROFL! Is Beezy just a tad bit narcissistic, or what?
I wonder if they sell these "mementos" on ebay.
Kerik makes organized crime looks like philanthropy. Read on.
Washington Post: “Kerik profits astonishingly from post 9/11 Board position in Taser International”
In 2002, Kerik was appointed to the board of Taser International Inc., which manufactures high-voltage stun guns. Critics have accused the company’s weapons of contributing to dozens of deaths. Kerik received options on more than 100,000 shares of stock.
Company records show Kerik recently exercised those options and sold $5.8 million worth of stock, whose value increased by more than 19 times in the past two years.
Another news story; “Kerik has made $6.2 million dollars in profits from his relationship with Taser International, a Scottsdale, Ariz., manufacturer of stun guns.”
Kerik was appointed as a director of the company immediately after he had the NYPD purchase the guns as police chief. Since 2002, Kerik has hawked Taser’s products to police departments around the country. Recently the company has made an “aggressive push to enter markets either regulated or controlled by the federal government, most notably the Department of Homeland Security.”
Thomas Smith, the company president, said the company would “continue to go after that business” at the Department of Homeland Security should Kerik be confirmed.
http://www.compassiongate.com/nominees/kerik.htm#2A_16
URL has scads of Kerik scam-related articles
KERIK QUIT L.I. FIRM IN A HURRY
CHRISTOPHER BYRON. New York Post. New York, N.Y.: Dec 15, 2004.
(snip)
In late October, Kerik abruptly submitted a resignation letter as an adviser to the firm, Hauppauge-based Defense Technology Systems Inc., failing thereafter to return phone calls asking for an explanation, said the company’s chief operating and finance officer, Philip Rauch.
Three weeks later, Kerik returned certificates for 400,000 shares of stock and the surrender of a slew of options he’d been granted by the firm, Rauch said.
Rauch said no one at Defense Technology has any idea why Kerik cut ties to the company, except perhaps in the hope of distancing himself from its association with a Queens-based security-door company, Georal Inc., if questions about that company should have come up at his confirmation hearings.
In late October, Georal’s owner, Alan Risi pleaded guilty to submitting inflated and excessive invoices to the city under various contracts, and is scheduled for sentencing this Friday.
In June 2001, when Kerik was running the New York Police Department, Risi’s company sold the department four automatic high- security door systems for 1 Police Plaza, at a price that published reports say was roughly $200,000. Georal’s general counsel, Theodore Pryor, said that figure is “somewhat low.”
When the doors arrived, they were never installed, and wound up being shipped to Rikers Island for use there.
(snip)
Phone calls to Kerik at his office at Giuliani Partners, seeking comment on the matter, were not returned.
Rauch said ... he knows “from principals at Georal,” that Kerik’s deal with Defense Technology Systems was “very similar” to an arrangement he had with Georal owner Risi. ...
But press accounts have referred to an individual named Lawrence Ray, identified as a “close friend” and best man at one of Kerik’s weddings, claiming that Ray had given Kerik $7,000 in cash and other gifts while Kerik was NYPD boss.
SEC filings show that an individual of the same name recently held more than 200 million shares of stock and options in a penny- stock company called FINX Group Inc., which lists Risi and Georal as sole supplier of its main products.
N-i-c-e find-———wonder what Rooty’s cut of that deal was.
FEDS' DOUBLE-TAKE (Kerik)
NY Post ^ | December 20, 2004 | CHRISTOPHER BYRON
Posted on 12/20/2004 12:57:47 PM PST by calcowgirlDecember 20, 2004 -- IT is entirely possible that there is an inno cent explanation for everything Bernard Kerik has said and done in recent days, and for the information about his past life that has surfaced as a result.
But Kerik has not yet provided it and more information dribbles out daily to fan the flames that are devouring his reputation. In a minute we'll turn to the newest revelation — that Kerik may not have fully informed federal investigators about the nature and duration of his involvement with a Long Island penny stock company called Dataworld Solutions Inc.
But first some perspective on what this entire matter is really all about: the ex-commissioner's solidifying public image as a man tied far too closely to the world of oraganized crime. Kerik's choice of a lawyer to represent him before the public has certainly not helped. The attorney in question, Joseph Tacopina, is by all accounts a skilled and able lawyer, and he has several high profile-acquittals to point to in that regard, including one of the defendants in the Abner Louima case. But when it comes to public relations advocacy, Tacopina is proving to be a real liability for Kerik.
That is because Tacopina's own past includes membership on the criminal defense team that defended Gambino crime family boss John Gotti. Most recently, he has been lead lawyer at the trial of a bag man for John Gotti's brother, Peter. As a result, every time Tacopina steps up to defend Kerik, he cannot help but remind one of what this is really all about.
(snip)
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