Russian Mafia in bed with Wall Street, CEO says

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Russian Mafia in bed with Wall Street, CEO says

Postby Jeff » Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:02 pm

Russian Mafia in bed with Wall Street, CEO says

Daily Utah Chronicle, March 5

Every day, thousands of Americans look to invest their money in stocks, and many of them go through brokers and traders to simplify the process.

Unfortunately, according to Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, a majority of those purchasers will be victims of Wall Street's criminal tactics and will help line the pockets of corrupt brokers and lawyers. Byrne, a Utahn who founded Overstock.com, talked to a crowd in the Union on Monday about how New York financial media and law firms have teamed up with big-wig business elites to create massive amounts of profit at the cost of American consumers.

Byrne said when someone purchases a stock, there is a three-day stock settlement period during which a broker or a trader must provide a purchaser with that stock. However, through loopholes in the system, brokers and traders can legally not provide you with that stock almost indefinitely, giving the purchaser an IOU instead, Byrne said.

"It's my thesis that certain people have figured out how they can abuse that loophole, and flood the market...often in connivance with a broker dealer," he said.

Through this "flooding," the brokers can essentially issue the same stock to hundreds of people at no penalty. By increasing the supply of stocks, these dealers can dramatically drop the price according to the laws of supply and demand.

Byrne showed how the "cheating parties" make money off of a stock price dropping through a process called "naked short selling."

In brief, Byrne showed that "naked short selling" is a three-step process. First, certain people (in this case journalists and lawyers in the New York financial industry) receive word from brokers that a specific corporation's stock prices are about to fall and are given a certain number of shares for that company. Next, these reporters or lawyers immediately sell those stocks at the high price. The brokerage dealers then flood the market with IOUs, tanking the price. The lawyer or journalist then buys back the same number of stocks sold, only this time at a fraction of the cost. They then cut the brokers a percentage of the profits gained.

These methods are used to create huge profits, often killing the victimized corporation in the process, and leaving the purchaser high and dry, Byrne said.

In his efforts to stop this charade, Byrne filed a $3.5 billion lawsuit against Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and nine other well-known brokers. Byrne said numerous publications, including the New York Post and Forbes magazine, have protested his "crusade," painting him as a crazed lunatic who is angry about Overstock.com's own stock price drop. Byrne said the Mafia has become a silent player in the Wall Street game.

"You don't have to dig very far into this before you get to organized crime," he said.

As an example of its involvement, Byrne told a story from a trip to the East Coast.

"About 15 months ago I was invited by a stranger into a greasy bar in Long Island," he said.

Claiming that he was Russian, the informant told him, "We have a message from Russia. We are about to kill you. We are about to kill if you if don't back down."

Additionally, Byrne remarked on how his business partner, Mark Mitchell, was assaulted in New York and told to stay away from author Gary Weiss, a critic of Byrne's theory on "naked short selling." Weiss published the book Born to Steal, which is about the Mafia's infiltration of Wall Street since the 1990s.

"I've been looking at this for two years, and I'm pretty much convinced this is the single biggest scandal in the history of American journalism," said Mitchell, a former financial writer for Time magazine who is involved in the lawsuit.

Byrne posted the presentation to his website, www.deepcapture.com, along with a blog to document his "crusade" against Wall Street.

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Whew.

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:09 pm

That's a relief. The headline tells me that Russkies are the problem. Damn foreigners.

And I had thought it was CIA and their drug money laundering CEOs.

Oh, the article does point at JOURNALISTS as complicit in the scam.
Are they Russian mafia, too?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_M._Byrne

Byrne has further argued that the same people alleged to be involved in the practice are involved in a disinformation campaign to obscure public understanding of the issue. For example, at the end of his webcast, Byrne mentioned that he thought there might be a figure coordinating these activities; he has referred to this person as the "Sith Lord".[8]

Byrne made the "Sith Lord" comments in an analyst conference call in August 2005, in which he said:

"As this went on I started realizing that there was actually some more orchestration here being provided, by what I'm calling here is the Sith Lord or the mastermind. Now, can I tell you who that designated bottom feeder was who was supposed to end up with our company? Can I tell you? I can. But I'm not going to today. The Sith Lord is, can I tell you who that is? Well, I could tell you it's a name that everybody on the phone, every single person on the phone would recognize this person's name. He's one of the master criminals from the 1980s, and he's back in business. But I'm not going to. I'll just call him the master mind today."[9]

Byrne has never identified the "Sith Lord" and he was widely derided for the comment. He repeated the conspiracy allegations several times during 2006, contending the markets were "broken." He has likened the conspiracy to Al-Qaeda, saying "There's no office, no headquarters; it's a splintered group that has learned to operate together."[8]

In a letter to the Wall Street Journal in April 2006, Byrne contended that "blackguards have practiced 'failure to deliver'" of securities, were "destroying businesses and (probably) destabilizing our capital markets," and that "I also think that if this nation ever grasps how its savings have been looted through this mechanism, a few million Americans are going to show up at the corner of Wall and Broad with pitchforks and nooses."[10]

Byrne's campaign against naked short selling has been widely criticized, with some critics saying it is absurd and malicious. Wall Street Journal columnist Holman W. Jenkins said Byrne "has been allowed to propound a theory whose logical corollary is that its shares are grossly undervalued -- diluted by millions of 'counterfeit' shares," whose price "should soar to its true, undiluted value" when "Mr. Byrne's jihad finally defeats those he calls 'miscreants'."[11] Byrne denied that he connected Overstock's valuation to the naked shorting issue.[12]

Referring to the "Sith Lord" allegation, Bethany McLean of Fortune said, "Maybe the Sith Lord is actually Patrick Byrne himself--because he has become his own worst enemy."[8] New York Times columnist Joseph Nocera said, in reference to Byrne's contention that "grandmas are eating dog food" because of fails to deliver securities: "Except for a few fellow-traveling Web sites, where Mr. Byrne is viewed as a heroic figure, most people who understand the issue or have looked into it think it's pretty bogus." [13]

In March 2006, John Byrne, chairman of Overstock.com and father of Patrick Byrne, said that he was thinking of stepping down in disagreement over his son's "jihad" over naked short-selling. The elder Byrne said "I can't tell whether this jihad adds to the value of the stock or subtracts from it, but what it does is take from Patrick's time." He said his "headstrong" son has ignored his pleas to drop the fight. Byrne said, “I'd rather keep my relationship with my son than be the chairman of the board.”[14] In April 2006, John Byrne stepped down to become vice-chairman, and was replaced by Patrick Byrne. In July 2006, the elder Byrne resigned from Overstock's board of directors.

Byrne was instrumental in Utah's passage of a law aimed at curbing naked short selling. The legislation was repealed in February 2007, after state representatives were advised that it probably could not withstand judicial scrutiny because it impinged on federal supremacy.[15] Byrne said the repeal was "worse than a betrayal...It is selling out the state of Utah."[16] Senate Majority Leader Curtis Bramble explained the repeal noting that "with the exception of Overstock's counsel, every other legal [authority] has advised us we would lose."[16]

In February 2007, Overstock.com launched a $3.5 billion lawsuit against Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and other large Wall Street firms, saying the firms "have and continue to participate in a massive illegal stock market manipulation scheme" involving naked short selling. Nocera described the lawsuit as "ridiculous." John Coffee, director of the Center on Corporate Governance at Columbia University Law School, described it as "an extremely unpromising litigation," and said that Overstock "may quickly find out they bit off more than they can chew."[17] Kerry Fields, associate professor of law and business ethics at the University of Southern California, said "Byrne may be able to help set new law if he handles this right." However, Fields said, Byrne's "best approach now is probably to persuade the SEC, which continues to wander around the issue, or the government to serve subpoenas and let them decide whether or not his company was wronged."[18]
CIA runs mainstream media since WWII:
news rooms, movies/TV, publishing
...
Disney is CIA for kidz!
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Postby JackRiddler » Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:21 pm

Hugh, both are true:

1) All stories about foreigners in crime published by U.S. media are by default a distraction, in the absence of a comprehensive exposure of the domestic system of gangsterism.

2) The CIA and U.S. intel complex including the many private organs and tentacles, and their allies/antagonists (who tend to switch around) all over the world constitute the only truly effective Internationale: that of spooks, gangsters, financiers and transnational corps seeking profit maximization and positional advantage. (Is that list redundant?) Russians ain't no slouches in the game.
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Postby JackRiddler » Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:28 pm

Love it when people say stuff like this:

"I've been looking at this for two years, and I'm pretty much convinced this is the single biggest scandal in the history of American journalism," said Mitchell, a former financial writer for Time magazine who is involved in the lawsuit.


The story of the century, folks! It's always the one I'm covering!
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Postby elpuma » Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:56 pm

No shit! Let's blame the Russians for this. How conveeeeeeeenient as Church Lady would say...

What a crock!
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Postby AlanStrangis » Wed Mar 05, 2008 2:12 pm

I don't see how Russian mob and CIA money laundering have to be mutually exclusive. I'm sure a better case could be made for them being mutually beneficial. In fact, haven't some of the threads, especially in the data dump and deep politics sections, made the latter abundantly clear?

Sounds more like Mr. Byrne just isn't aware of the other side of the dirty little coin.
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Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Wed Mar 05, 2008 2:20 pm

JackRiddler wrote:Hugh, both are true:

1) All stories about foreigners in crime published by U.S. media are by default a distraction, in the absence of a comprehensive exposure of the domestic system of gangsterism.

2) The CIA and U.S. intel complex including the many private organs and tentacles, and their allies/antagonists (who tend to switch around) all over the world constitute the only truly effective Internationale: that of spooks, gangsters, financiers and transnational corps seeking profit maximization and positional advantage. (Is that list redundant?) Russians ain't no slouches in the game.


Oh, I know. I was pointing at the very same thing Byrne is, the complicity of media in disinforming.
Y'know. My pet peeeve.

I'm sure the less-restricted gangster-fication of Russia post-USSR was dialed into the CIA economy quite methodically. Anthony Sutton's work exposing Wall Street's ties to Moscow during the Cold war revealed a timeless relationship, not an isolated event.

Enough of that- I hear the very institution of marriage is being threatened by California again!
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Postby JackRiddler » Wed Mar 05, 2008 4:10 pm

Enough of that- I hear the very institution of marriage is being threatened by California again!


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Re: Russian Mafia in bed with Wall Street, CEO says

Postby MinM » Sat Apr 15, 2017 11:16 am

@BuzzFeedNews

Why Trump’s lawyer was sued over $350,000 he says he doesn’t remember cashing
Image

In 1999, Michael Cohen, now the president’s personal lawyer, cashed a $350,000 check from an NHL hockey player
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From left; Michael Cohen, the president's personal attorney; Vladimir Malakhov, a former NHL player; and Symon Garber, Cohen's partner and a taxicab magnate

Long before he became Donald Trump’s feared attack dog, or began to visit the White House as the president’s personal attorney, or took a position with the Republican National Committee, or partnered with powerhouse lobbying firm Squire Patton Boggs, Michael Cohen ran a small legal practice in Hell’s Kitchen.

He was a one-man show and handled a little bit of everything, from personal injury cases to a Ukrainian investment fund to a fleet of taxis to a trust account he managed for clients.

One day in 1999, a check for $350,000 was deposited into that trust account, to be disbursed to a woman living in South Florida. As the lawyer in charge of the account, Cohen was supposed to ensure that she got the money.

But he didn’t.

Why not? And what ultimately happened to all that money?

“I don’t recall,” Cohen said in a deposition.

The missing $350,000 — which has never been recovered — became the centerpiece of a 2009 lawsuit in Miami, where Cohen was accused of civil fraud. After years of litigation, Cohen prevailed, in part because the suit was filed past the statute of limitations.

Cohen, in an interview with BuzzFeed News, said he was first questioned about the money eight years after it was deposited, by which time he said he could not recall much about it. “I honestly don’t remember who gave me the deposit at the time,” he said. “This is another poor attempt to malign my impeccable reputation and attempt to connect me to a Russian conspiracy.”

But Cohen’s own testimony in the case reveals that the man who is now the president’s personal lawyer failed to execute one of the core duties of an attorney — properly handling money placed in his trust — and was cavalier about that failure.

“One of the things lawyers are most likely to be disciplined for is misusing clients’ funds,” said Deborah Rhode, a legal ethics expert from Stanford University, who said that properly accounting for and disbursing funds is a critically important obligation for many attorneys.

“A lawyer who, incident to his law practice, comes into possession of funds belonging to a client (or third person), has very clear obligations,” Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University, wrote in an email. Like Rhode, he declined to comment on the particulars of Cohen’s case, which he was not familiar with, but said that in general a lawyer “may not commingle the funds with his own. He must keep them in a separate account, sometimes called an escrow or special account. He must ‘promptly’ notify the client or third person of his receipt of the funds and ‘promptly’ deliver them.”
“This is another poor attempt to malign my impeccable reputation and attempt to connect me to a Russian conspiracy.”

New York State Bar Association records show that Cohen has never been disciplined. A spokesperson for the association said cases that were investigated but resulted in no discipline are kept secret.

The $350,000 mystery involves four other important characters: Vladimir Malakhov, a professional hockey player who wrote the original check; Yulia Fomina, a Russian woman who asked Malakhov to loan her the money and put her condominium up as collateral; Vitaly Buslaev, a Russian businessperson who was Fomina’s boyfriend; and Symon Garber, a Ukrainian-born taxi baron who was Cohen’s business partner.

In 1999, Malakhov was playing defense for the Montreal Canadiens. He would play in the NHL for a decade, win a Stanley Cup, and collect about $30 million in salary. Along the way, he attracted the attention of Russian organized crime. During Senate hearings, a former gangster testified that someone tried to shake down Malakhov at a restaurant in Brooklyn’s heavily Russian neighborhood, Brighton Beach. The man who made the threats reportedly worked for Vyacheslav Ivankov, a notorious Russian mafia boss who was later assassinated in 2009.

“Malakhov spent the next months in fear,” according to the testimony, “looking over his shoulder to see if he was being followed, avoiding restaurants and clubs where Russian criminals hang out.”

Malakhov was playing for Montreal in 1999 when Buslaev and Fomina entered the picture.

Yuri Felshtinsky, a Russian-American historian, reports that Buslaev was dating Fomina and supported her in the United States, helping her purchase a condominium, an Aston Martin, and a Mercedes-Benz. There are few public records available on Buslaev, but Russian business registrations show him as a manager of at least three companies near Moscow.

Court records show that around that time, Buslaev encouraged her to ask Malakhov and his wife, with whom she was friendly, for a loan.

Buslaev was looking for a hedge against “the instability of the Russian ruble on the foreign exchange market,” Malakhov’s sports agent wrote in an affidavit. At the agent’s suggestion, Malakhov demanded some collateral. (The agent, Paul Theofanous, did not return a message left at his office last week.)

So Fomina put up the deed to her condo and Malakhov wrote the check.

But he didn’t write it to her. At what he would later say was Fomina’s request, Malakhov wrote it to the trust account that Cohen controlled.

Two years later, claiming that Fomina failed to repay the loan, Malakhov’s wife went to court to take possession of the condo.

Fomina was in Russia at the time. When she returned to Florida, she filed suit, claiming she had been taken advantage of and didn’t speak enough English to understand the loan documents she signed. She and the Malakhovs did not return phone calls seeking comment, and Buslaev could not be reached. But Fomina’s lawsuit set off more than five years of litigation, and Malakhov’s lawyers eventually questioned Cohen about his role in the matter.

During a deposition, they showed him the check that Malakhov wrote, which had been endorsed with what appeared to be Cohen’s signature. Cohen declined to say whether it really was his.

“It could be,” he allowed.

He said that he didn’t know Malakhov, Fomina, or Buslaev.

The trust account, he explained, was used for “negligence settlements” or “property damage claims.” Perhaps the money was meant for the Ukrainian investment fund he managed, Cohen said.

Again and again — at least six times — Cohen said he didn’t recall why the $350,000 was deposited or what became of it.

Because many of the players in this deal were Russian or Ukrainian, lawyers pressed Cohen about his connections to those countries. He said that he had visited “Russia or the Ukraine” in the past but that he never sent money from one of his business accounts to anyone living there. He said that he had foreign clients and partners, including Garber, who helped him manage a fleet of taxis in America. Garber was listed as a witness in the case but was not interviewed by attorneys. Visited recently by reporters at his taxi headquarters in Queens, Garber declined comment.

“Somewhere along the line, I was asked to hold somebody’s funds for whatever the purpose was,” Cohen said during his deposition in 2007. “Whether it was A, B or C, I don’t know the reasons and I can’t even begin to guess.”

The money, according to court filings, has never been found.

https://t.co/EQ0ghwSrU6


*****



MinM » Wed Jul 08, 2009 8:05 am wrote:
seemslikeadream wrote:Image

The Web site Zero Hedge found legal documents from a 1997 civil case in California naming a Sergei Aleynikov, a charge of trademark infringement brought by the owners of the game show Wheel of Fortune.

A Kansas City site called the Pitch writes that a co-defendant in that case, Leonid Ivanutenko, also ran a firm called Express Shipping Services that was named as a front for the Russian mafia in a separate case.

That 1997 case involved an effort to copy the game show Wheel of Fortune as an online game called Fortune Wheel, which was finally shut down in 1998 after a complaint to its Web host.

A third defendant in that case, Vadim Resyev, had an alias of Vadim Arefiev. I may be talking here about a different person, but Linked In lists a Vadim Arefiev as a senior developer and system analyst at Merrill Lynch.

Small world, especially if this Arefiev is the same Arefiev whom Aleynikov previously worked with. Although it is possible neither ever met or did business with Ivanutenko a decade ago. For all I know those names are as common in Russia as Smith, Jones and Brown are here. What I have given, in the previous five paragraphs, is pure speculation based on a littie Googling.

But it makes a great story.

Security expert Bruce Schneier told The New York Times Goldman made all the right moves in this case, but if Russian gangsters got the Aleynikov code from Germany then Goldman’s trading secrets may be blown anyway.

Since the arrest happened Friday the question needs to be asked. Assuming the Sergei Aleynikov arrested at Newark is the same Sergei Aleynikov who tried to steal Wheel of Fortune with a mobbed-up partner, did President Obama bring this up with President Putin in their meetings earlier today?

If Goldman Sachs’ trading secrets are now in the hands of Russian gangsters, who benefits? How much cooperation will Russia offer in cracking the case, and what might that mean for bilateral relations?

1997 was a big year for the Russian Mob :shrug:

"Russian Organized Crime"
Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) Task Force Report (1997)

frontline: mafia power play: the russian mafia in north america: rcmp report
Image
Image
Image
Image
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... /csis.html

:backtotopic:
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Re: Russian Mafia in bed with Wall Street, CEO says

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Apr 15, 2017 11:22 am

as always ....thanks MinM

Jeff ....copy and pasting... :P

about Russia...Russian mob..... :P :P :P

9 years ago :P :P :P :P

he should have been advised to take it to the Data Dump :P :P :P :P :P
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Russian Mafia in bed with Wall Street, CEO says

Postby JackRiddler » Sat Apr 15, 2017 2:25 pm

So not the point. So childish. Just stop doing this to every thread, stop multiplying your Russia panic threads or dupes, and stop throwing a daily tantrum in which you do worse.
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The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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Re: Russian Mafia in bed with Wall Street, CEO says

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Apr 15, 2017 2:27 pm

whatever

haven't you got something better to do like count OP topics correctly?
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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