Brent Wilkes Is Unjailable

This week, a federal judge ordered Cunningham briber Brent “The Enigma” Wilkes to go to jail, but once again Wilkes remains a free man while he appeals his case.

At this point, it’s a pretty safe bet that Randy “Duke” Cunningham, sentenced to more than eight years in prison, will be released from prison later this year to begin his new life in a cabin in the Ozarks before Wilkes really has to make sure he never, ever drops the soap in the prison shower.

Judge Larry Burns sentenced Wilkes to 12 years in prison back in February 2008. He served a few months and then the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals freed him on bail so he go off and play poker and steal from his employee pension funds to pay his living expenses.

Enough is enough, prosecutors said. But for those who now how to manipulate it, the justice system serves to delay and mitigate punishment rather than deal it out.

So it’s become a sad, familiar pattern for Brent-o:

He gamed the system as a defense contractor sucking on the taxpayer’s teat and flying around in private jets with the help of Randy “Duke” Cunningham, a congressman he corrupted with hookers, lavish vacations, and Hawaii scuba trips.

Today, a team of court-appointed (read: taxpayer funded) team of attorneys are delaying his day of reckoning, essentially buying Wilkes freedom with money lifted from the pockets of his victims.

It’s really just another form of welfare, but Wilkes is the worst kind of welfare bitch: a man who espoused a Republican ideology that sneered at big government and “socialism” and wrapped itself red, white and blue fantasies of a country that no longer exists, if it ever did, where the playing field was level, the rules were fair and hard work and determination won the day.

Study Confirms Ray Lucia is Selling Snake Oil

Investment News reports on a study that finds that the non-tradeable REITs that Ray Lucia is so fond of have consistently underperformed the broad market of real estate investing for the past two decades.

Interestingly, the study notes that the industry is seeing more and more independent broker-dealers like the Lucias out there, raising money for these stinkers.

The reason why these non-tradeable REITs are such dogs will be familiar to readers of this blog: the high fees.

The fees on nontraded REITs, which can be as high as 12% to 15%, are particularly egregious, one industry executive said. “An investor gives $100,000 to a program, and he’s immediately at $85,000,” said Wes Tellie, director of operational risk due diligence and independent broker-dealer due diligence with Duff & Phelps Corp. “That’s a hell of a hurdle rate.”

The nontraded REIT industry had some $84 billion in assets under management at the end of 2011.

Remember, that just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t make it a reasonable investment. Valuations of non-tradeable REITs, the article concludes, are “at a point of comedy.”

I’m going to make some popcorn, sit back and enjoy watching the silver-tongued “guru” explain his way out of this one.

 

US: Brent Wilkes Is Still a Douchebag

In my last post on Cunningham briber Brent Wilkes, I noted that he has been playing poker and farting around while his team of court-appointed attorneys fights to keep him from serving a 12-year sentence for plying Duke with hookers, lavish trips to Hawaii in exchange for defense contracts.

In court papers filed ahead of a hearing granted by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, prosecutors say Wilkes has been doing more than that: Wilkes has been committing crimes by stealing more than $100,000 from the pension fund of his now defunct company to pay his living expenses.

Since Wilkes’s release from custody on January 5, 2009, Wilkes has engaged in additional fraudulent conduct: just as he once raided his children’s college funds to obtain operating cash, he has unabashedly raided the Wilkes’s Corporation’s employee benefit plan to obtain spending money for himself – while failing to reimburse the public for his taxpayer-funded attorneys.

Update: After a day-long hearing, Judge Larry Burns decided that Wilkes has to go to jail on Friday unless the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals saves his ass again.  (U-T San Diego)

US: Brent Wilkes Belongs in Jail

Narco-Grenades: Made in the USA

Via Wikileaks:

March 3, 2009 Consulate Monterrey

S E C R E T

SUBJECT: MEXICO: TRACKING NARCO-GRENADES CLASSIFIED

1. (SBU) During recent months Mexican narco-traffickers have directed a series of grenade attacks directed against, inter alia, Mexican law enforcement and military facilities, civilian crowds, and U.S. consular installations. The escalation in the strength and power of the weapons used by the narco-traffickers has not only cost lives, but has taken its toll in terms of the damage done to local civil society.

2. (S) AmConsulate General Monterrey’s ATF Office, the ATF Explosives Technology Branch, and AmEmbassy Mexico DAO have been working with Mexican law enforcement authorities to identify the origin of various grenades and other explosive devices recovered locally over the past few months, including the unexploded M26A2 fragmentation grenade hurled at the Consulate itself during the October 11, 2008 attack. Other ordnance recovered includes 21 grenades recovered by Mexican law enforcement on October 16, 2008 after a raid at a narco-warehouse in Guadalupe (a working class suburb of Monterrey), and twenty-five 40mm explosive projectiles, a U.S. M203 40mm grenade launcher, and three South Korean K400 fragmentation grenades recovered the same day in an abandoned armored vehicle that suspected narco-traffickers used to escape apprehension.

3. (S/NF) Local Mexican law enforcement has recovered a Grenade spoon and pull ring from an exploded hand grenade used in a January 6, 2009 attack on Televisa Monterrey, a Monterrey television station. Based upon ATF examination, it appears that the grenade used in the attack on the Consulate has the same lot number, and is of similar design and style, as the three of the grenades found at the narco-warehouse in Guadalupe. On January 7, 2009, the Mexican Army recovered 14 M-67 fragmentation grenades and 1 K400 fragmentation grenade in Durango City, Durango. Finally and perhaps most disturbing, on January 31, 2009 three men tossed a K-75 grenade into a night club near Pharr, Texas — an East Texas border town –but the grenade did not explode. The attackers may have been targeting three off-duty police officers who were in the club at the time.

4. (S) The lot numbers of some of the grenades recovered, including the grenade used in the attack on Televisa, indicate that previously ordnance with these same lot numbers may have been sold by the USG to the El Salvadoran military in the early 1990s via the Foreign Military Sales program. We would like to thank AmEmbassy San Salvador for its ongoing efforts to query the Government of El Salvador as whether any of its stocks of grenades and other munitions have been diverted or are otherwise unaccounted for.

1st Annual Conference of Screwed Ray Lucia Investors

I’ve recently been contacted by a few disgruntled Ray Lucia investors who found their way to my website and asked for my help. Short of recommending they file complaints the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and FINRA, there was little I could do.

However, since I’m one of the few people writing about Lucia, I’ve become a sort of clearing house for these people. One investor who recently contacted me on behalf of her 75-year-old father wants to organize a meeting and speak to others in the same situation. This person was able to get dad out of one of the non-tradeable REITs that Ray Lucia (senior, not junior) stuck him in and is willing to share with others how to do it themselves.

So, if you’re interested, let me know and I’ll pass along the details.