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Vegas was better when the Mafia ran it. There, we said it. Back then, the city wasn’t a soulless corporate cash machine; it was a destination built for working-class Americans to have a good time, blow off some steam, and feel like high-rollers for a weekend. The Mafia understood their customers because they were their customers. They knew you didn’t nickel-and-dime a guy on his way to the blackjack table. You gave him cheap rooms, free drinks, affordable and abundant buffets, and enough glitz to make him feel like a big shot for a few days. The real money came...

Federal agents descended upon a California home connected to the “TikTok Cult” pastor who was the subject of a recent Netflix documentary series Friday — as part of an investigation into sex trafficking and other criminal claims. Several people were detained after a Tujunga home partially owned by Pastor Robert Shinn was raided by agents from the FBI, IRS, US Postal Service and Department of Labor, the Los Angeles Times reported. Officials served warrants related to allegations of sex trafficking, money laundering, mail fraud, tax evasion and COVID-19-related fraud, according to the outlet. The identities of those detained were not...

Bill Gates pledged on Thursday (May 8) to give away $200 billion (S$260 billion) via his charitable foundation by 2045 and lashed out at Elon Musk, accusing the world's richest man of "killing the world's poorest children" through huge cuts to the US foreign aid budget. The 69-year-old billionaire co-founder of Microsoft said he was speeding up his plans to divest almost all of his fortune and would close the foundation on Dec 31, 2045, years earlier than previously planned. Gates said he believed the money would help achieve several of his goals, such as eradicating diseases like polio and...

Rep. Eric Swalwell’s campaign spent thousands of dollars after the election on childcare expenses for the California Democrat, raising potential ethics concerns for a lawmaker who has been accused in the past of using his campaign war chest as a "personal piggybank." According to campaign finance records, the Swalwell campaign spent at least $20,000 on "childcare" from Nov. 8, three days after the election, to March 31. The payments went to two of the Swalwell family’s longtime babysitters as well as a Washington, D.C.-area Spanish language immersion preschool where tuition is around $3,000 per month. The payments raise potential ethics...

A former FBI informant pleaded guilty on Thursday to lying about a $10 million bribe that a Ukrainian businessman paid to then-vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter to “protect” his firm from a looming corruption investigation. Alexander Smirnov, 43, entered into a plea agreement with special counsel David Weiss and confessed to having created “a false and fictitious record” as part of a multi-year federal probe into the Bidens. The falsehoods included the bribery allegation, which was memorialized in an FBI FD-1023 form in 2020 and released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) last year, and other aspects of...

It was Christmas 2011, a year after Roman Abramovich had taken delivery of his new superyacht, Eclipse. But it seemed the oligarch would not be using it over the festive period - records show it had been chartered by a company based in the British Virgin Islands. And yet photographs from Christmas Day that year show Mr Abramovich in the Caribbean sunshine, standing on the swim platform at the rear of the yacht, with Eclipse's large letter-E logo behind him. Charter records such as this were part of a decade-long scheme to mislead tax authorities, now uncovered in an investigation...

Kamala Harris has strong ties to U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves and his activist wife. Which is why a Harris Department of Justice could be more dangerous than Biden's DOJ. Democrats ended their four-day convention on Thursday with a vacuous speech by the party’s installed candidate, Kamala Harris. Her short stint on the main stage made the regime media, which has blessed her with 84 percent positive news coverage since the Pelosi coup according to one analysis, drunk with joy. Harris, like the roster of speakers before her, spent most of the speech demonizing her general...

EXCLUSIVE — Over 800 Internal Revenue Service employees still owe millions in back taxes despite heavy criticism from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who is hoping the level of tax waste will be squashed by billionaire Elon Musk, the newly tapped co-leader of the Department of Government Efficiency. In a letter to the Iowa senator sent on Nov. 8 and shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner, the IRS noted that of the 2,044 employees who reported having balances totaling more than $12 million, 860 employees still have not paid overdue taxes. Only 20 of the 70 employees who “willfully evaded” paying...

When does a government bureaucracy move quickly? When it's threatened by a whistleblower, among other things. IRS-CI Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley, one of the two whistleblowers in the Hunter Biden tax evasion case, had already experienced the speed with which his agency could move in retaliation, but was reminded of it once again when he received a "be demoted or resign" letter less than an hour after his latest interview with journalist Catherine Herridge dropped. Tristan Leavitt of Empowr Oversight, which represents Shapley and Ziegler, shared the letter, which was dated October 15 (emphasis added): Less than an hour...

DETROIT - A former federal agent who pleaded guilty to faking a marriage to gain U.S. citizenship and improperly searching FBI databases was sentenced Tuesday to pay $975 in fines and other fees, but will serve no prison time. U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn said Nada Nadim Prouty, 38, "erred in judgment" 19 years ago when she lied to enter the U.S. in 1989 from her native Lebanon, but has provided "exemplary service to the country" as a federal agent. Cohn also signed an order revoking Prouty's citizenship, but Prouty's attorney Thomas Cranmer said after the hearing she will...

Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks (D) will pay back taxes after improperly claiming homestead and senior property tax credits for homes in D.C. and Prince George’s County. Her campaign said Alsobrooks, who is running for an open Senate seat in Maryland and is currently the chief executive of Prince George’s County, was not aware of the errors. The improperly applied tax credits were first reported by CNN and confirmed by the Alsobrooks campaign. It is not clear how much money Alsobrooks owes the District or Prince George’s, but in letters to both jurisdictions, her lawyer said Alsobrooks intends to pay any...

Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, will go on trial for gun-related charges on June 3, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. If it holds, the early-June trial date could pit the president’s son in back-to-back trials in the two cases brought by Weiss. In addition to the gun case, Hunter Biden faces nine tax-related charges in California over an alleged conspiracy across several years to avoid paying over $1 million in taxes and is set to go to trial in the case on June 20.

John Anthony Castro, a Texas man known for his legal efforts to challenge former President Donald Trump’s eligibility for the 2024 presidential ballot, has been arrested on charges related to filing false tax documents. Castro, who filed challenges in 27 states against Trump’s ballot placement, was indicted last week on 33 counts of aiding the preparation of false tax returns. Castro operated a virtual tax preparation business that deceitfully inflated tax refunds for clients, The Hill reported. Castro was the proprietor of Castro & Company LLC, a digital tax preparation firm with establishments in Orlando, Mansfield, and Washington, D.C., per...

The Linux Foundation has released their 2023 Annual Report... and it is an absolute doozy. The first big headline? As of 2023, The Linux Foundation now spends just 2% -- that's two percent -- of their revenue on their namesake: The Linux Kernel. "Ask yourself this: If there is a foundation named after a specific thing... what percentage of that foundation's revenue would you expect to be spent on said thing? Let's say... "Save the Orange Trees Foundation". How much of their revenue should be spent on, you know, orange trees? 100%? 50%? 10%? If "Save the Orange Trees" only...

The indictment against Hunter Biden filed in the US Court for the Central District of California this week charges him with evading $1.4 million in taxes owed to the federal government for the years 2016 through 2019. Instead of paying his taxes during these years, he spent $683,000 on prostitutes, $397,000 on clothing, $309,000 on tuition, $237,000 on health & beauty products, $189,000 on porn, $72,000 on rehab, $24,000 on entertainment, $24,000 on sports, $237,000 on miscellaneous, and withdrew $1.6 million in cash from ATMs. Hunter Biden blamed Donald Trump for his troubles, saying "Trump's Russian-aided theft of the 2016...

House Oversight Chairman James Comer discussed the latest evidence revealed from the investigation into the Biden family business deals during "Sunday Morning Futures."The Kentucky congressman revealed to host Maria Bartiromo a bank investigator's concerns regarding loan payments made to Hunter Biden from China, saying the evidence "fits a pattern" with the Biden family. REP. JAMES COMER: … What we see here, Maria, is this fits a pattern that we've been talking about on your show for months, where the Bidens were taking in, you know, millions of dollars from our enemies around the world, and they were calling them loans,...

Biden’s repeated denials that he participated in his son’s foreign business transactions or ever spoke to his son about them have shifted in recent weeks amid an accumulation of evidence from bank records and eyewitness testimony that show he likely played a pivotal role in securing the lucrative deals. Biden opted to remain silent on Friday when reporters shouted questions at him about a new Justice Department special counsel investigation of his son Hunter Biden for crimes related to tax evasion, financial schemes and .. acting as an unregistered lobbyist for foreign entities ... Biden helped his family pocket millions...

As many as two in five adults in the U.S. have a side hustle, according to a recent Bankrate survey of 2,500-plus adults, backing up LendingTree data from earlier this year that found side gigs are up by 13% over the past two years and recent Deloitte data that found more millennials and Gen Zers are adding on part-time jobs. Younger workers are more likely to need an extra job: 53% of Gen Zers and half of millennials have one, Bankrate finds, compared to only 40% of Gen Xers and 24% of baby boomers. It's a reflection of the state...

Attorneys for Hunter Biden met with Department of Justice prosecutors Wednesday to discuss criminal charges that might be filed against President Joe Biden’s son, NBC News reported, citing sources. Hunter Biden has been under investigation since 2018 by the office of U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, a Trump appointee. Prosecutors have considered charging Hunter with four criminal counts, NBC reported last week. Two of those would be misdemeanor failure to file taxes, while a third would be a felony count of tax evasion in connection with a business expense.

Federal prosecutors have considered charging Hunter Biden with three tax crimes and a charge related to a gun purchase, said two sources familiar with the matter. The possible charges are two misdemeanor counts for failure to file taxes, a single felony count of tax evasion related to a business expense for one year of taxes, and the gun charge, also a potential felony. Two senior law enforcement sources told NBC News about "growing frustration" inside the FBI because investigators finished the bulk of their work on the case about a year ago. A senior law enforcement source said the IRS...