8chan/8kun QResearch Posts (9)
#18371790 at 2023-02-18 21:32:46 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #22520: Madeline McCann Returned? Edition
fentanyl Notable deaths[edit]
American professional wrestler Anthony Durante, also known as "Pitbull #2", died on 25 September 2003 from a fentanyl-induced overdose.[180]
Wilco guitarist Jay Bennett died on 24 May 2009 from an accidental overdose of fentanyl, shortly after he publicly revealed that he needed hip replacement surgery which he could not afford due to his health insurance considering the situation a "pre-existing condition."[181][182][183]
Slipknot bassist Paul Gray died on 24 May 2010 from an overdose of morphine and fentanyl.[184]
Medical examiners concluded that musician Prince died on 21 April 2016, from an accidental fentanyl overdose.[185] Fentanyl was among many substances identified in counterfeit pills recovered from his home, especially some that were mislabeled as Watson 385, a combination of hydrocodone and paracetamol.[185][186]
Author & journalist Michelle McNamara died on 21 April 2016, from an accidental overdose; medical examiners determined fentanyl was a contributing factor.[187][188]
Canadian video game composer Saki Kaskas died of a fentanyl overdose on 11 November 2016;[189] he had been battling heroin addiction for over a decade.[189]
American rapper Lil Peep died of an accidental fentanyl overdose on 15 November 2017.[190][191]
On 19 January 2018, the medical examiner-coroner for the county of Los Angeles said musician Tom Petty died from an accidental drug overdose as a result of mixing medications that included fentanyl, acetyl fentanyl, and despropionyl fentanyl (among others). He was reportedly treating "many serious ailments" that included a broken hip.[192]
In 2018, American rapper Mac Miller died from an accidental overdose of fentanyl, cocaine and alcohol.[193]
On 16 December 2018, American tech entrepreneur Colin Kroll, founder of social media video-sharing app Vine and quiz app HQ Trivia, died from an overdose of fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine.[194]
On 1 July 2019, American baseball player Tyler Skaggs died from pulmonary aspiration while under the influence of fentanyl, oxycodone, and alcohol.[195]
On 1 January 2020, American rapper, singer, and songwriter Lexii Alijai died from accidental toxicity resulting from the combination of alcohol and fentanyl.[196]
On 20 August 2020, American singer, songwriter and musician Justin Townes Earle died from an accidental overdose caused by cocaine laced with fentanyl.[197]
On 24 August 2020, Riley Gale, frontman for the Texas metal band Power Trip, died as a result of the toxic effects of fentanyl in a manner that was ruled accidental.[198]
On 22 April 2021, Digital Underground frontman, rapper, and musician Shock G died from an accidental overdose of fentanyl, meth, and alcohol.[199]
On 6 September 2021, actor Michael K. Williams, who rose to fame through his critically acclaimed role as Omar Little on the HBO drama series The Wire, died from an overdose of fentanyl, parafluorofentanyl, heroin, and cocaine.[200][201]''
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl#Overdose
#17699833 at 2022-10-20 19:11:21 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #21670: Reminder Tim Ryan and J D Vance Edition
How the pro-Ukraine NAFO troll operation crowd-funds war criminals
Celebrated in mainstream US media for its anti-Russian trolling, the Twitter operation known as NAFO was founded by a Polish antisemite to raise money for a militia that has hosted war criminals, white nationalists and wanted murderers.
Whether they know it or not, anyone who has checked Twitter for recent coverage of the Ukraine proxy war has likely encountered at least one of the thousands of trolls that comprise NAFO, or the "North Atlantic Fellas Organization." Thanks to the efforts of NAFO and its "fellas," any journalist or prominent figure critical of Ukraine or NATO on Twitter is likely to receive hundreds of replies accusing them of being paid by Russian President Vladimir Putin (or even performing fellatio on him) from accounts with Shiba Inu dog avatars.
Since its inception several months ago, NAFO has earned gushing praise from the Washington Post, which hailed it for "show[ing] that the tables could be turned on Russia, when it came to trolling." The arms industry-funded, Washington DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), meanwhile, hosted an online panel highlighting NAFO as an instrumental weapon in the Russia-Ukraine infowars.
Yet NAFO's beltway boosters often gloss over its role as a fundraising machine for the Georgian Legion, a US-backed Ukrainian fighting group that stands accused of gruesome battlefield atrocities. Several former members of the Legion have produced first-hand testimony documenting its perpetration of war crimes, including the torture and execution of POWs and civilians.
One NAFO founder explained that he chose the Georgian Legion as a funding recipient precisely because of the unit's reputation as a band of "mercenaries and criminals" that was willing to carry out barbarous acts which could cause foreign governments to shy away from supporting it. Another NAFO founder has praised the Georgian Legion's leader for "killing Russians since the '90s."
Among the Georgian Legion's most notorious members are US fugitive and murderer Craig Lang, as well as Paul Gray, an American whose past involvement in several neo-Nazi organizations was never mentioned during the friendly primetime interviews he was granted by Fox News and its local affiliates.
While providing a financial feeding tube to a militia that revels in its own atrocities, NAFO continues to attract effusive support from mainstream US journalists and think tankers who portray the operation as little more than a grassroots expression of online solidarity with Ukraine.
Obsessively online interventionists find meaning and purpose as "fellas"
Employing cartoon memes of the Shiba Inu dog breed, NAFO's postmodern aesthetic, irreverent style and dedication to viciously trolling any critic of the Ukraine proxy war has garnered the adulation of Western media and interventionist government officials alike.
To outsiders, the lingo that flows through internal NAFO chats might seem unintelligible: "fellas" refers to members; "nafoarticle5" is a call to action that urges "fellas" to dog-pile on a particular social media post; "vatnik" serves as a pejorative for Russians and virtually anyone critical of the US-backed proxy war. Phrases such as "NAFO expansion is non-negotiable" and sarcastic claims that they are funded by the CIA (which they simultaneously claim "doesn't exist") are also ubiquitous.
Behind the anonymously named Twitter accounts of NAFO members lies a base of extremely online, mostly male civilians seeking a sense of purpose and community. Some participants have tattooed Shiba Inu avatars onto their bodies while others have published photos of their newborn babies in the arms of an adult sporting a NAFO shirt.
One member of the troll operation tweeted a photo of an elaborate NAFO tattoo emblazoned on his arm, but has since deleted it.
More
https://theGrayzone.com/2022/10/20/ukraine-nafo-troll-war-criminals/
#17699799 at 2022-10-20 18:49:07 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #21669: Thursday Morning E-bake to Victory! Edition
How the pro-Ukraine NAFO troll operation crowd-funds war criminals
Celebrated in mainstream US media for its anti-Russian trolling, the Twitter operation known as NAFO was founded by a Polish antisemite to raise money for a militia that has hosted war criminals, white nationalists and wanted murderers.
Whether they know it or not, anyone who has checked Twitter for recent coverage of the Ukraine proxy war has likely encountered at least one of the thousands of trolls that comprise NAFO, or the "North Atlantic Fellas Organization." Thanks to the efforts of NAFO and its "fellas," any journalist or prominent figure critical of Ukraine or NATO on Twitter is likely to receive hundreds of replies accusing them of being paid by Russian President Vladimir Putin (or even performing fellatio on him) from accounts with Shiba Inu dog avatars.
Since its inception several months ago, NAFO has earned gushing praise from the Washington Post, which hailed it for "show[ing] that the tables could be turned on Russia, when it came to trolling." The arms industry-funded, Washington DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), meanwhile, hosted an online panel highlighting NAFO as an instrumental weapon in the Russia-Ukraine infowars.
Yet NAFO's beltway boosters often gloss over its role as a fundraising machine for the Georgian Legion, a US-backed Ukrainian fighting group that stands accused of gruesome battlefield atrocities. Several former members of the Legion have produced first-hand testimony documenting its perpetration of war crimes, including the torture and execution of POWs and civilians.
One NAFO founder explained that he chose the Georgian Legion as a funding recipient precisely because of the unit's reputation as a band of "mercenaries and criminals" that was willing to carry out barbarous acts which could cause foreign governments to shy away from supporting it. Another NAFO founder has praised the Georgian Legion's leader for "killing Russians since the '90s."
Among the Georgian Legion's most notorious members are US fugitive and murderer Craig Lang, as well as Paul Gray, an American whose past involvement in several neo-Nazi organizations was never mentioned during the friendly primetime interviews he was granted by Fox News and its local affiliates.
While providing a financial feeding tube to a militia that revels in its own atrocities, NAFO continues to attract effusive support from mainstream US journalists and think tankers who portray the operation as little more than a grassroots expression of online solidarity with Ukraine.
Obsessively online interventionists find meaning and purpose as "fellas"
Employing cartoon memes of the Shiba Inu dog breed, NAFO's postmodern aesthetic, irreverent style and dedication to viciously trolling any critic of the Ukraine proxy war has garnered the adulation of Western media and interventionist government officials alike.
To outsiders, the lingo that flows through internal NAFO chats might seem unintelligible: "fellas" refers to members; "nafoarticle5" is a call to action that urges "fellas" to dog-pile on a particular social media post; "vatnik" serves as a pejorative for Russians and virtually anyone critical of the US-backed proxy war. Phrases such as "NAFO expansion is non-negotiable" and sarcastic claims that they are funded by the CIA (which they simultaneously claim "doesn't exist") are also ubiquitous.
Behind the anonymously named Twitter accounts of NAFO members lies a base of extremely online, mostly male civilians seeking a sense of purpose and community. Some participants have tattooed Shiba Inu avatars onto their bodies while others have published photos of their newborn babies in the arms of an adult sporting a NAFO shirt.
One member of the troll operation tweeted a photo of an elaborate NAFO tattoo emblazoned on his arm, but has since deleted it.
More
https://theGrayzone.com/2022/10/20/ukraine-nafo-troll-war-criminals/
#16377412 at 2022-06-01 00:35:33 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #20718: Sussmann, when does a bird sing? - when it is free!!
>>16377386
Gray has also been associated with the Traditionalist Workers Party, a lead organizer of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, as well as with Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi organization whose members have trained with Ukraine's Azov Battalion, and which was designated as an illegal terrorist organization by the United Kingdom and Canada.
In leaked chat logs, Atomwaffen celebrated the bloody exploits of a member who murdered a gay Jewish college student in December 2017. Another member slaughtered the parents of their own girlfriend. Yet another member of Atomwaffen, Devon Arthurs, murdered his neo-Nazi roommates that same year after they mocked him for converting to Islam.
One of Arthurs' victims, Andrew Oneschuk, had appeared on the Azov Battallion's official podcast a year before his killing. The host encouraged the teenager and other Americans to come to Ukraine to join Azov - something Oneschuk had previously tried and failed to do in 2015.
Details of Paul Gray's involvement with Atomwaffen and the Traditionalist Workers Party were left unexplained by journalists Kit O'Connell and Michael Hayden. However, this reporter was able to corroborate Gray's collaboration with the neo-Nazi Vangaurd America organization, as well as Patriot Front.
In 2017, Gray helped organize a rally featuring Vanguard America and Mike "Enoch" Peinovich, a prominent white supremacist blogger. The event was billed as "a movement of like-minded whites are banding together to fight off the diseased hordes of anti-white, anti-fascist, communist scum parasitizing and subverting the good denizens of Bat City." The Daily Stormer, a popular neo-Nazi blog, hailed the fascist confab as a gathering of "proud white men got up and talked about Jews and their hordes without any reservation whatsoever."
Prior to the fascist jamboree, Gray successfully convinced Texas State Representative Matt Schaefer to sponsor the rally, promising him the event was simply aimed at supporting "conservative leaders and the policies they are seeking." Schaefer later apologized for accepting Gray's request, claiming he was "lied to."
Gray ultimately grew so prominent in the Texas neo-Nazi scene that he became a target of local "antifa" groups, who doxxed him and distributed photographs of him at fascist rallies. They also revealed that on Facebook he had "liked" a number of neo-Nazi pages, includinig Liftwaffe, a "Nazi-themed weight-lifting group" named after Nazi Germany's Air Force.
In one of the photos, Gray can be seen in 2017 sporting a t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of the neo-Nazi podcast Exodus Americanus. Later that year, Gray's sister opened a cafe in East Austin that became a target of anti-gentrification protests.
Gray rallied three of his friends, all fellow army veterans, to confront the protesters. When he later appeared on the Exodus Americanus podcast, his hosts introduced him as "our buddy down in Texas," and "one of our dudes," and described the protesters as "brown hordes" and "the local beaner squad."
"Do you recall," one of the hosts asked Gray, "when [co-host] Roscoe and I got really drunk and slept on your couch?"
During the interview, Gray recounted how he and his friends "fought off" the protesters. One of the hosts closed the interview by reciting the slogan, "white power!"
Fox & Nazi friends
At some point in early 2021, Gray found his way to Kiev, Ukraine and opened a gym, which helped him insinuate himself into the mixed martial arts culture popular among local ultra-nationalists.
In early February, 2022, as war with Russia approached, the known American neo-Nazi joined the Georgian National Legion and began training civilians and volunteers in American military techniques. His exploits earned glowing coverage from a San Antonio, Texas NBC affiliate, which effused, "From the front lines of Ukraine, veteran Paul Gray is using his extensive military background to empower a nation."
Fox News had also discovered Gray around this time; the pro-GOP network cast him as an American Rambo leading Ukrainians into battle against Putin's war machine. Throughout the first two weeks of March, the network featured Gray four times, giving him ample opportunity to wax poetic about spreading "democracy" and draw favorable parallels between Ukraine and his home state of Texas.
On March 1, when Gray was featured for the first time on Fox News, reporter Lucas Tomlinson noted that "he would only give us his first name." Two days later, he was interviewed again on Fox & Friends, where he described the war in Ukraine as "their 1776."
2/2
#16377386 at 2022-06-01 00:32:53 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #20718: Sussmann, when does a bird sing? - when it is free!!
DHS 'concerned' over Nazis returning to US after fighting in Ukraine. Why isn't the media?
US corporate media has provided glowing coverage to Paul Gray, a notorious American white nationalist fighting in Ukraine. A DHS document warns he's not the only US fascist drawn to Kiev.
As the United States undergoes a national mourning process over a spate of mass shootings, American white nationalists with documented histories of violence are attaining combat experience with advanced US-made weapons in a foreign proxy war.
That's according to the Department of Homeland Security, which has been gathering intelligence on Americans who have joined the ranks of the more than 20,000 foreign volunteers in Ukraine.
The FBI has indicted several American white nationalists associated with the Rise Above Movement after they trained with the neo-Nazi Azov Battaliion and its civilian wing, the National Corps, in Kiev. But that was almost four years ago. Today, federal law enforcement has no idea how many US neo-Nazis are participating in the war in Ukraine, or what they are doing there.
But one thing is for certain: the Biden administration is allowing the Ukrainian government to recruit Americans - including violent extremists - at its embassy in Washington DC and at consulates across the country. As this report will show, at least one notorious extremist fighting in Ukraine has received extensive promotion from mainstream media, while another who is currently wanted for violent crimes committed in the US was mysteriously able to evade FBI investigators looking into war crimes he previously committed in Eastern Ukraine.
According to a Customs and Border Patrol document released thanks to a May 2022 Freedom of Information Act request by a nonprofit called Property of the People, federal authorities are concerned about RMVE-WS's, or "racially-motivated violent extremists - white supremacy" returning to the US armed with new tactics learned on the Ukrainian battlefield.
"Ukrainian nationalist groups including the Azov Movement are actively recruiting racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist white supremacists to join various neo-Nazi volunteer battalions in the war against Russia," the document states. "RMVE-WS individuals in the United States and Europe announced intentions to join the conflict and are organizing entry to Ukraine via the Polish border."
The document, which was drafted by Customs and Border Protections, the Office of Intelligence, and other Homeland Security sub-agencies, contains write-ups of interviews conducted by law enforcement with Americans en route to Ukraine to fight Russia.
https://theGrayzone.com/2022/05/31/american-neo-nazi-ukraine-hero-corporate-media/
1/2
#16375190 at 2022-05-31 17:52:04 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #20715: MIL IS THE ONLY WAY! Edition
>>16375158
Gray has also been associated with the Traditionalist Workers Party, a lead organizer of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, as well as with Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi organization whose members have trained with Ukraine's Azov Battalion, and which was designated as an illegal terrorist organization by the United Kingdom and Canada.
In leaked chat logs, Atomwaffen celebrated the bloody exploits of a member who murdered a gay Jewish college student in December 2017. Another member slaughtered the parents of their own girlfriend. Yet another member of Atomwaffen, Devon Arthurs, murdered his neo-Nazi roommates that same year after they mocked him for converting to Islam.
One of Arthurs' victims, Andrew Oneschuk, had appeared on the Azov Battallion's official podcast a year before his killing. The host encouraged the teenager and other Americans to come to Ukraine to join Azov - something Oneschuk had previously tried and failed to do in 2015.
Details of Paul Gray's involvement with Atomwaffen and the Traditionalist Workers Party were left unexplained by journalists Kit O'Connell and Michael Hayden. However, this reporter was able to corroborate Gray's collaboration with the neo-Nazi Vangaurd America organization, as well as Patriot Front.
In 2017, Gray helped organize a rally featuring Vanguard America and Mike "Enoch" Peinovich, a prominent white supremacist blogger. The event was billed as "a movement of like-minded whites are banding together to fight off the diseased hordes of anti-white, anti-fascist, communist scum parasitizing and subverting the good denizens of Bat City." The Daily Stormer, a popular neo-Nazi blog, hailed the fascist confab as a gathering of "proud white men got up and talked about Jews and their hordes without any reservation whatsoever."
Prior to the fascist jamboree, Gray successfully convinced Texas State Representative Matt Schaefer to sponsor the rally, promising him the event was simply aimed at supporting "conservative leaders and the policies they are seeking." Schaefer later apologized for accepting Gray's request, claiming he was "lied to."
Gray ultimately grew so prominent in the Texas neo-Nazi scene that he became a target of local "antifa" groups, who doxxed him and distributed photographs of him at fascist rallies. They also revealed that on Facebook he had "liked" a number of neo-Nazi pages, includinig Liftwaffe, a "Nazi-themed weight-lifting group" named after Nazi Germany's Air Force.
In one of the photos, Gray can be seen in 2017 sporting a t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of the neo-Nazi podcast Exodus Americanus. Later that year, Gray's sister opened a cafe in East Austin that became a target of anti-gentrification protests.
Gray rallied three of his friends, all fellow army veterans, to confront the protesters. When he later appeared on the Exodus Americanus podcast, his hosts introduced him as "our buddy down in Texas," and "one of our dudes," and described the protesters as "brown hordes" and "the local beaner squad."
"Do you recall," one of the hosts asked Gray, "when [co-host] Roscoe and I got really drunk and slept on your couch?"
During the interview, Gray recounted how he and his friends "fought off" the protesters. One of the hosts closed the interview by reciting the slogan, "white power!"
Fox & Nazi friends
At some point in early 2021, Gray found his way to Kiev, Ukraine and opened a gym, which helped him insinuate himself into the mixed martial arts culture popular among local ultra-nationalists.
In early February, 2022, as war with Russia approached, the known American neo-Nazi joined the Georgian National Legion and began training civilians and volunteers in American military techniques. His exploits earned glowing coverage from a San Antonio, Texas NBC affiliate, which effused, "From the front lines of Ukraine, veteran Paul Gray is using his extensive military background to empower a nation."
Fox News had also discovered Gray around this time; the pro-GOP network cast him as an American Rambo leading Ukrainians into battle against Putin's war machine. Throughout the first two weeks of March, the network featured Gray four times, giving him ample opportunity to wax poetic about spreading "democracy" and draw favorable parallels between Ukraine and his home state of Texas.
On March 1, when Gray was featured for the first time on Fox News, reporter Lucas Tomlinson noted that "he would only give us his first name." Two days later, he was interviewed again on Fox & Friends, where he described the war in Ukraine as "their 1776."
2/2
#16375158 at 2022-05-31 17:48:25 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #20715: MIL IS THE ONLY WAY! Edition
DHS 'concerned' over Nazis returning to US after fighting in Ukraine. Why isn't the media?
US corporate media has provided glowing coverage to Paul Gray, a notorious American white nationalist fighting in Ukraine. A DHS document warns he's not the only US fascist drawn to Kiev.
As the United States undergoes a national mourning process over a spate of mass shootings, American white nationalists with documented histories of violence are attaining combat experience with advanced US-made weapons in a foreign proxy war.
That's according to the Department of Homeland Security, which has been gathering intelligence on Americans who have joined the ranks of the more than 20,000 foreign volunteers in Ukraine.
The FBI has indicted several American white nationalists associated with the Rise Above Movement after they trained with the neo-Nazi Azov Battaliion and its civilian wing, the National Corps, in Kiev. But that was almost four years ago. Today, federal law enforcement has no idea how many US neo-Nazis are participating in the war in Ukraine, or what they are doing there.
But one thing is for certain: the Biden administration is allowing the Ukrainian government to recruit Americans - including violent extremists - at its embassy in Washington DC and at consulates across the country. As this report will show, at least one notorious extremist fighting in Ukraine has received extensive promotion from mainstream media, while another who is currently wanted for violent crimes committed in the US was mysteriously able to evade FBI investigators looking into war crimes he previously committed in Eastern Ukraine.
According to a Customs and Border Patrol document released thanks to a May 2022 Freedom of Information Act request by a nonprofit called Property of the People, federal authorities are concerned about RMVE-WS's, or "racially-motivated violent extremists - white supremacy" returning to the US armed with new tactics learned on the Ukrainian battlefield.
"Ukrainian nationalist groups including the Azov Movement are actively recruiting racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist white supremacists to join various neo-Nazi volunteer battalions in the war against Russia," the document states. "RMVE-WS individuals in the United States and Europe announced intentions to join the conflict and are organizing entry to Ukraine via the Polish border."
The document, which was drafted by Customs and Border Protections, the Office of Intelligence, and other Homeland Security sub-agencies, contains write-ups of interviews conducted by law enforcement with Americans en route to Ukraine to fight Russia.
https://theGrayzone.com/2022/05/31/american-neo-nazi-ukraine-hero-corporate-media/
1/2
#15162735 at 2021-12-09 06:37:52 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #19182: I Have Not Yet Begun to Fight Edition
Number of Indigenous children being removed from homes increasing at 'staggering rate', new report says
The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children being removed from homes and placed into Australia's child protection system - and staying there permanently - is increasing at a "staggering" rate, according to a new report.
Key points:
The report found Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children represent 39 per cent of all kids in out-of-home care
Family Matters co-chair Paul Gray says the figures are "getting worse for our kids"
NSW applied permanent care orders at the highest rate of all states and territories in 2019-2020
The Family Matters report, released by Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC), found 21,523 Indigenous children were in out-of-home care as of June 30, 2020, which represents one in every 15.6 First Nations children living in Australia.
It also found 79 per cent, about 17,000 children, lived permanently away from their birth parents, with less than 15 per cent being reunified with their families.
SNAICC is the national peak body for First Nations children.
Wiradjuri man and Family Matters co-chair Paul Gray said the figures were "getting worse for our kids".
"They are sadly almost becoming the majority of children in out-of-home care and I think that should give us significant pause," he said.
"It should be of deep concern to everyone the experiences and these statistics that we're seeing nationally but also the sorts of response that we're seeing from government."
Despite last year's historic National Agreement on Closing the Gap to reduce the rate of over-representation of children in out-of-home care by 45 per cent by 2031, the report said future projections of Indigenous kids in care "remains deeply concerning" and could increase by more than 50 per cent over the next decade without major reform.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-09/family-matters-report-indigenous-children-removed-from-homes/100685932
#4964405 at 2019-01-30 16:08:24 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #6338: Winning Wednesday Edition
>>4964388
"When union leaders misdirect the organization's money for personal gain, they're breaching their obligation to members - and breaking the law," said Michael T. Harpster, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Philadelphia Division. "Such corruption must not go unchecked. No matter how long it takes, the FBI and our partners will investigate and work to hold accountable unscrupulous union and public officials."
"Union officials who are elected to positions of trust have a responsibility to their members and organizations," stated IRS Special Agent in Charge Guy Ficco. "That trust is broken when these officials serve to enrich themselves at the expense of their members. No public official gets a free pass to ignore the tax laws, and IRS CI will continue to ensure that everyone pays their fair share."
"An important mission of the Office of Inspector General is to investigate allegations relating to labor racketeering and corruption in employee benefit plans," stated Richard Deer, Special Agent in Charge, Philadelphia Region, U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General. "We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners and the U.S. Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration to investigate these types of allegations."
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service - Criminal Investigation, the U.S. Department of Labor Employee Benefits Security Administration, the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Labor Management Standards, the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General, and the Pennsylvania State Police, with assistance from the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Richard P. Barrett, Chief of the Corruption, Tax and Labor Racketeering Unit, Frank Costello, John Gallagher, and Paul Gray.
An Indictment, Information, or Criminal Complaint is an accusation. A defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
This is a huge deal when it comes to hamstringing the Philadelphia Democrat Political Machine. Johnny Doc is responsible for getting the Mayor elected. This could be a house of cards that tumbles down some big networks on the east coast.