Category: San Diego

Eric Massa's San Diego ties

The strange saga of former Rep. Eric J.J. Massa, now reportedly under investigation for allegedly groping male staffers, is being closely followed in San Diego’s Navy community.

His father, Emiddio “Mead” Massa and his father-in-law, Adolf “Jake” Jacobsen, are retired Navy captains. Eric married Jacobsen’s daughter, Beverly.

Eric Massa graduated in 1981 from the U.S. Naval Academy. He retired in 2003 when he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

“Massa and his family moved to San Diego to be near his and Beverly’s parents, and he spent six months undergoing surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. They bought a one-story house because Massa had trouble walking up stairs,” Money magazine wrote in a 2006 profile.

Diagnosed as cancer-free, Massa decided to run for Congress in upstate New York. The couple sold the San Diego home and plowed the proceeds into Massa’s campaign, according to Money.

Ray Lucia's brokerage settles SEC charges

*** Update: An attorney for Ray Lucia has threatened to sue me over this blog post. See his letter and my response here. ***

First Allied Securities, a San Diego-based brokerage firm, has agreed to pay nearly $2 million to settle charges that it failed to supervise one of its employees.

The SEC found that between 2005 and 2008, former First Allied broker Harold Jaschke engaged in unauthorized and unsuitable trading on behalf of two Florida municipalities, putting them at risk of losing millions of dollars while he reaped commissions of more than $14 million for himself.

The SEC administrative order issued Friday hasn’t attracted much interest locally, but it’s worth a look because of its relationship with investor/radio host Ray “Buckets of Money” Lucia.

First Allied is owned by FAS Holdings, which is in turn owned by Chicago-based Advanced Equities Financial Corp. A 2008 story in Forbes magazine on Advanced Equities quoted an anonymous broker for the company as saying, “This place is a stereotypical bucket shop.”

Advanced Equities is also the subject of a series of complaints filed with financial industry regulators by San Diego’s Mirch Law Firm that mention Lucia, who hosts a radio and TV show in major media markets.

Lucia offers investment advice, including his trademarked “Buckets of Money” strategy through his show and at seminars, like this one in San Diego March 20 with actor Ben Stein.

According to SEC filings, Lucia solicits business for First Allied, and receives a cut of some of the fees in return.  Fees for a Ray Lucia account run as high as 2 percent, paid quarterly in advance.

Buckets of money, indeed.

Toyota sudden acceleration lawsuit in SD

Toyota would be crazy if it ever let this lawsuit filed by relatives of CHP Officer Mark Saylor get anywhere near a San Diego jury.

Saylor and three family members were killed last year when a Lexus ES 350 accelerated out of control in Santee, east of San Diego.

This horrific 911 call recorded the family’s final minutes as they sped into an intersection on northbound SR-125. The final words heard from the vehicle were “hold on” and “pray.”

The 272-horsepower Lexus was moving at between 112 and 150 (!) miles per hour when it crashed and burst into flames, likely due to overheated brakes, according to the crash report.

Bob Baker Lexus of El Cajon better have good lawyers too.

The crash vehicle was a loaner from Bob Baker. Investigators found that the dealership installed the wrong floor mats, causing the accelerator to become stuck.

Another customer who had borrowed the crash vehicle four days earlier told Sheriff’s investigators that the accelerator had gotten stuck under the floor mat, a fact he reported to the Bob Baker receptionist.

The crash report also noted that electronic or computer-generated malfunction “should not be ruled out.”

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in San Diego Superior Court by Jim Gomez and Tim Pestotnik, a pair of local attorneys. Pestotnik declined to tell the Wall Street Journal whether settlement talks with Toyota had already occurred.

Where's Alan?

Three former directors of the nation’s customs and border patrol agency say the Senate is taking far too long to confirm Alan Bersin as commissioner.

Obama nominated Bersin, a former U.S. Attorney and schools chief in San Diego, in September.

The nomination is stalled in the Senate Finance Committee, which hasn’t even scheduled a hearing. A staffer tells Government Executive that the committee is “reviewing Bersin’s paperwork.”

Raymond Kelly, Robert Bonner and W. Ralph Basham, who led the agency from 1998 to 2009, have written letters urging senators to get a move on.

Having experienced the nomination process ourselves, we would hope that the “forest” of filling this critical position expeditiously is not getting lost in the “trees” of pre-hearing questions designed to elicit policy positions or parochial commitments from the nominee before he even has the benefit of knowing the agency from the inside.

Parochial commitments? What’s up with that?

San Diego a mecca for gay prosecutors?

Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group, praised President Obama today for nominating Laura E. Duffy, an out lesbian, for U.S. Attorney for San Diego.

If confirmed by the Senate, Duffy would be the second openly gay person to serve as a U.S. attorney, DC Agenda reported last week. The Senate confirmed Jenny Durkan last year as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington.

San Diego’s District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis made national headlines in 2002 when she became the first openly gay district attorney elected in the United States. Her sexuality hasn’t been much of an issue.

Duffy, who has earned high marks for her prosecution of the Arellano-Felix drug cartel, would have been  disqualified during the Bush administration. The DOJ’s Inspector General found that two former aides to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had used sexual orientation as a litmus test in personnel decisions.