[heyhey]

FBI seeks manager over missing funds

BY JOHAN FERNANDEZ
NEW YORK: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is looking for a Malaysian manager of a Chinatown bank in connection with the embezzlement of over US$1mil (RM3.8mil) that caused a panic among thousands of depositors.

The FBI went to arrest Carol Lim, the branch manager of the Abacus Federal Savings Bank, to assist in their investigations but found she had disappeared from her home in Sunset Park, Brooklyn on Wednesday.

People known to the Lim family said they believed the woman, who had been working in the banking sector here for over 10 years, was still in New York.

Lim was sacked from the Abacus Federal Savings Bank's Canal Street branch two weeks ago after an internal audit revealed a number of irregularities in the accounts.

According to the chairman of the bank, Thomas Sung, Lim is alleged to have taken more than RM3.8mil through a complicated scheme using bogus accounts and falsified bank records.

Following a newspaper report of Lim’s sacking, rumours spread that the bank was in trouble and about to shut. This led to a mad scramble by depositors to withdraw their savings at the six branches of the bank.

The worst scenes were at the bank’s branches in Canal Street and Bowery Street in the Chinatown area that led to police being called in to control the crowd.

There were wild scenes as people scrambled to get into the bank. Police managed to get the crowd under control and allowed batches of 20 to enter the bank.

Besides withdrawing their money, clients also emptied their safety deposit boxes.

There were similar scenes, albeit on a smaller scale, at the bank’s branches in Brooklyn, New Jersey and Philadelphia.

The situation seemed to have improved later following reports that the federal office of Thrift Supervision, which regulates institutions like Abacus, confirmed that the bank was solvent, but had liquidity problems caused by the run on the bank. They appealed for calm.

Despite these assurances, customers were not convinced and more are expected to withdraw their savings.

[Publicus]

The Bureau is largely composed of top notch professionals.

Like everyone, it too has its share of superstars and bad apples.

Sep-11 and the accounting/legal scandals since then have harmed millions of productive, law-abiding Americans and have cost our economy over seven TRILLION dollars.

We simply cannot afford to allow slothful, corrupt, or otherwise incompetent individuals to infest our institutions of commerce and governance- ESPECIALLY law enforcement. Period.

Hopefully, the Bureau will continue to expel the bad apples and hold them accountable.

[Nick Danger]

[cake_crumb]

There will always be some bad apples in the best and most well run organizations. It's more a matter of human nature than incompetence. However, when the bad apples are NOT weeded out, they just increase. Your organization winds up with enormous problems which will take a very long time to fix. Reno did a spectacular job of maiming the FBI.

[csvset]

Another jewel in the FBI's crown in general and in former FBI director William S. Sessions' crown in particular.

[Happy2BMe]

"Leung, a vivacious Los Angeles socialite, is accused of serving as a Chinese double agent who had affairs with the FBI's top China spycatchers on the West Coast and beguiling Smith out of FBI secrets, charges that cast doubt on 20 years of political intelligence that she and Smith supplied on China's top leaders."

That 20 years spans Ronald Reagan, G. Bush Sr., and Bill Clinton - I don't doubt it for one second.

"Snort - Can Yu Beweeve it! - Snort - Snort" First Their Spies, Now Their Spypranes!

[piasa]

Second Former FBI Agent Quits U.S. Lab in China Spy Case
By Curt Anderson Associated Press Writer
Published: Apr 11, 2003




WASHINGTON (AP) - A second former FBI agent who acknowledged an affair with a suspected Chinese double agent has resigned his sensitive security post at a California nuclear weapons lab, law enforcement officials said Friday.
William Cleveland Jr. worked in Chinese counterintelligence before taking a job at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He resigned Thursday as chief of security, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Livermore spokeswoman Lynda Seaver did not immediately respond to a message left early Friday morning.

Cleveland is one of two former FBI counterintelligence agents who acknowledged lengthy affairs with the alleged double agent, Katrina Leung. Leung is being held without bond on charges of passing secrets to the People's Republic of China while also an intelligence "asset" on the FBI payroll.

The other agent, James J. Smith, is free on $250,000 bond on charges of gross negligence for allegedly allowing Leung access to classified materials during their two-decade affair.

Cleveland is not charged and is not referred to by name in affidavits filed after Smith and Leung were arrested. But law enforcement officials confirmed he is the former agent referred to in the documents.

Throughout the affidavits, Cleveland is referred to as an unnamed supervisor in Chinese counterintelligence in the FBI's San Francisco office. Smith worked in Chinese counterintelligence in Los Angeles, where Leung is a prominent political activist and socialite.

The court documents say Cleveland acknowledged a lengthy sexual relationship with Leung that continued after he left the FBI and went to work at the Livermore lab. The documents also say that in 1991, he listened to a tape of Leung and her Chinese intelligence contact that made clear to him she was passing secrets to China.

After Cleveland confronted Smith about it, Smith insisted that he had addressed the problem - and nothing more was done until an investigation that began a few months after FBI Director Robert Mueller took office in September 2001.

The documents do not say whether Leung obtained any classified information from Cleveland. The items that she allegedly obtained from Smith include lists of FBI agents' names, a memo about Chinese fugitives and a telephone list involving an investigation into Peter Lee, an employee at defense contractor TRW Inc. who pleaded guilty in 1997 to passing secret information to China.

FBI officials say the investigation is continuing and that more charges are possible. They also say that so far, nothing has emerged to indicate that the information provided by Leung constitutes a major breach of national security.

In congressional testimony Thursday, Mueller called the case "an isolated event" and that ongoing changes at the FBI would ensure better oversight and management of intelligence sources.

"We as an organization must learn from the mistakes of the past so we do not repeat them," Mueller told a Senate appropriations panel.

AP-ES-04-11-03 1032EDT