Free Republic

Here’s one case where no one can deny that corporate DEI was a scam. A former head of DEI programs for Facebook has pleaded guilty to swindling the company out of $4 million, not including whatever money they were spending on her actual salary.Barbara Furlow-Smiles, who served as lead strategist and global head of employee resource groups and diversity engagement at Facebook, used the stolen funds to live an extravagant lifestyle that spanned from California to Georgia, prosecutors said.From approximately January 2017 to September 2021, Furlow-Smiles led Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs at Facebook and was responsible for developing...

While admitting that "7.5% inflation is concerning," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen insisted that "it's not all bad. Things would be worse without it." "I can understand how the average consumer might be worried that rising prices will negatively impact their standard of living, but the erosion of the purchasing power of the US dollar also has its benefits. To most ordinary people the government seems an all-powerful master of its situation. What they don't realize is that the government is the biggest debtor in the nation." "The declining purchasing power of dollars means that we can pay back our debt...

Anna Sorokin, a woman who once pretended to be a wealthy German heiress named Anna Delvey to swindle friends and banks out of tens of thousands of dollars, is out of prison. After serving nearly four years, she was released on parole Thursday from the Albion Correctional Facility in upstate New York, according to Department of Corrections records. In April 2019, Sorokin, 30, was convicted by a Manhattan jury on four counts of theft services, three counts of grand larceny and one count of attempted grand larceny. She was acquitted of grand larceny and attempted grand larceny, according to The...

What's the deal with Trump Wine? by Aaron Smith @AaronSmithCNN Donald Trump doesn't drink but he owns his own vineyard - Trump Winery - with a landing pad for his helicopter. CNNMoney (New York) First published March 11, 2016: 9:18 AM ET he site says the winery has 50,000 square feet of winemaking facilities, tank capacity of 100,000 gallons, and a 750-barrel cave. Trump also operates the vineyard's Albemarle Estate, a 26,000-square foot, 45-room mansion, as a hotel that can fetch up to $999 per night. The winery produces 40,000 cases annually and receives 100,000 visitors a year who taste...

In the past, I documented the overstatements by both the IEA and EIA in 2014 & 2015 in terms of supply, inventory and understatements of demand. Others also noticed these distortions and, whether intentional or not, they exist and they are very large in dollar terms. These distortions, which are affecting price through media hype and/or direct/indirect price manipulation, are quite possibly the largest in financial history. Putting numbers behind it, with worldwide production running some 95 million barrels per day, and assuming $55 per barrel for oil, the market for crude oil is about $5.2 billion per day. Each...

Cops: Woman claiming she needed 'spinal transplant' scams $1.2 million from man, 86 Candy Ely, 35, lured an 86-year-old Chicago man into a romantic relationship and stole more than $1.2 million in cash and items from him, including a car, police said. (Cook County Sheriff's Office) By Liam Ford Chicago Tribune contact the reporter Crime Theft A 35-year-old woman is accused of luring an 86-year-old man into a romantic relationship and then stealing more than $1.2 million in cash after claiming she had cancer and needed a "spinal transplant," police said. Candy Ely “baited” the man “into a false relationship...

"Does DOL believe that the new policy is consistent with the First Amendment? What precedents exist for forcing journalists to utilize government-owned systems and networks to report the news," Sen. Roy Blunt, R-MO, asked Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis in a letter today.

Willard & Kelsey Solar Group LLC laid off about 40 people indefinitely at the beginning of January until changes to its production line are completed, a company official said Monday. Michael Cicak, the company's chief executive officer and chairman of the board, would not say when the changes would be completed or when the laid-off employees could return to work. "We have some technical people in here improving the efficiency of the assembly line," Mr. Cicak said, adding that the Perrysburg-based facility still has about 30 employees. He said Willard & Kelsey has a little more than 80 employees when...

MF Global's missing money mystery has taken a twist after a bankruptcy trustee said the figure is double what the firm reported to regulators. James Giddens said up to $1.2 billion is missing from customer accounts at the broker, which filed for bankruptcy protection three weeks ago. He said his plans to release $520million from accounts that have been frozen will mean nearly all the assets under his control will be distributed. Court-appointed trustee Mr Giddens has been going through the accounts and finances of MF Global since it filed for bankruptcy protection. But an investigation source told the New...

It happens occasionally even to the best chess players in the world. You're only eight or nine moves into the game, but somehow you've drifted into a position so bad that it looks like the loss is inevitable. But before tipping the king, one last strategic gambit: Seek complications. You try an aggressive counterattack, a piece sacrifice or giving up the exchange for an extra tempo - anything that will make the situation more complicated and confusing. Maybe your opponent will lose his way and you can pull off a swindle, winning a game you should have lost. And if...

Click the link above for his so-called opinion. Click below to pay out da ass. Roger Waters Fri. May 11, 2012 8:15 PM AT&T Park in San Francisco, CA

Some 200 California Democrat clients have fallen victim to a Madoff in their midst. Could it turn the state light blue? It's said that word-of-mouth advertising is the best kind. It certainly worked for Ms. Kinde Durkee for more than 12 years. It would still be working if she hadn't helped herself to some of her clients' bank accounts once too often. Durkee's nearly 200 clients weren't stores and small factories. They were California Democratic office holders, candidates, and committees. For all those years she was the go-to person to be treasurer for any Democrat's campaign accounts. Campaign treasurers serve...

Remember when the 60s were fun? Father Jegath Gaspar Raj SJ has had a lot of interesting connections, playing an intermediary in the peace talks between Tamil Tigers and the government of Tamil Nadu, running businesses and then becoming implicated in running the 2G Spectrum Scam. Now he's worshipping Shiva to promote his musical endeavor and get himself and the local Archdiocese out of a financial jam. Some people seem to think that the Jesuits in India are pretty good. We're inclined to think they might be even worse than the ones in the West. Has anyone warned Father that...

The climate conference in Cancun was a turning point for the world’s greens. There were two possible outcomes. One was a total political meltdown in Cancun that would have been hideously embarrassing in the short run but that in the long term would have cleared the way for more hopeful approaches to carbon issues. The other was a cobbled together pseudo-deal of some kind that would have avoided short term embarrassment but over the long run would doom the greens to a future of frustration and futility. The news at Cancun is that the global green agenda has now turned...

Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010 - and House Democrats don't have a clue that he did. In the deal struck this week, the president negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history, larger than his $814 billion 2009 stimulus package. It will pump a trillion borrowed Chinese dollars into the U.S. economy over the next two years - which just happen to be the two years of the run-up to the next presidential election. This is a defeat? If Obama had asked for a second stimulus directly, he would have been laughed out of town. Stimulus I...

USAA and San Antonio police said they uncovered a complicated scheme by a group of people that skimmed thousands of dollars from the financial firm's bank and two other banks over the past year. Meilee Diaz, 25; Deonte Kershaw, 24; Rhonda Ellison, 27; Takeisha Martin, 30; Shanika Todd, 32; Frances Griffin, 36 and Beverly Ellison, 52, were arrested this week in connection with the scheme, according to Bexar County records. Each of the seven faces one count of engaging in organized criminal activity with theft from $20,000 to $100,000. Arrest warrant affidavits state Todd was one of two people who...

Leaders are considering a hike of roughly $300 billion to the nation's $12.1 trillion deficit, though the final figure has not been nailed down, congressional aides said on condition of anonymity. Democratic leaders had previously hoped to raise the limit by at least $1.8 trillion, enough to take care of the government's debt needs through the November 2010 congressional elections. What was your first hint the former $1.8 trillion increase attempt was a bad idea? Perhaps this? Or was it China buying a literal zero of Treasury debt in October? Or was it the TIC report this morning (which I'm...

It's Possible for Both Houses of Congress to Ratify a Treaty by Majority Vote Though arguably the most powerful man on the planet, U.S. President Barack Obama heads to Copenhagen later this month wearing handcuffs. The failure of Congress to pass domestic climate legislation has meant the president has had to advance slowly, lest he get ahead of lawmakers in the Capitol. After all according to the Constitution, international treaties must be ratified by 67 "yes" votes in the Senate.Also still fresh in everybody's mind is the 95-0 vote the Senate cast in opposition to US participation in the Kyoto...

Swindles in which someone overseas seeks access to a person’s bank account are so well known that most potential victims can spot them in seconds. But one man found success by tweaking the formula, prosecutors say: Rather than trying to dupe an account holder into giving up information, he duped the bank. And instead of swindling a person, he tried to rob a country — of $27 million. To carry out the elaborate scheme, prosecutors in New York said on Friday, the man, identified as Paul Gabriel Amos, 37, a Nigerian citizen who lived in Singapore, worked with others to...

Hoping to halt what it called "a fraud of shocking magnitude that has spread its tentacles throughout the world," the Securities and Exchange Commission charged billionaire R. Allen Stanford and other executives at his massive financial services company, Stanford Financial Group, with operating a multibillion-dollar fraudulent investment scheme. In a complaint filed early Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Dallas, the SEC alleged Antigua-based Stanford International Bank (SIB) fabricated investment returns in order to market and sell high-yielding certificates of deposits. The complaint charged SIB with selling approximately $8 billion of CDs to investors by promising improbable and unsubstantiated interest...