Mitt and Tagg Romney implicated in a $8.5 billion Ponzi scheme

[eridani]

https://www.politicolnews.com/romney-son-investigated-for-8-billion-ponzi-scheme/

Although, Allen Stanford received a 110 year jail sentence in the scheme the money was never recovered that thousands of investors lost around the world. As happened with the Wall Street trillions that were lost, no one has ever found out where the money really went, and in this case 7 to 9 billion dollars just plainly disappeared into thin air. Certainly, Stanford did not spend all of 7 billion dollars during his tenure at the bank. The first place to look is in the Caribbean, namely the island of Antigua where Stanford had his bank and other islands just to give investigators a hint, the money can still be recovered if they started looking for it.

Mitt Romney and his son Tagg Romney have been implicated in a 8.5 billion dollar ponzi scheme with Wall Street investors Allen Stanford and James M. Davis.

The pair are not cleared including their three partners in a court document verified, ongoing legal proceeding involving selling fraudulent CD’s to potential investors.

[spanone]

1. k&r...

[Panasonic]

2. Bring out the indictments for Rmoney!

so he can't work on his campaign and leaving it to Lyin' Ryan to try to wing it.

(I sure hope I didn't fall for a satire)

[meow2u3]

4. Wait till the last week in October to bring out the indictments

We don't want to give the pukes time to replace Rmoney

[Bjorn Against]

25. The convention is over, they can't replace Romney

Ballots are about to be printed and it is too late to make changes in many states. They could stage a write-in campaign for someone else, but good luck finding a candidate who all Republicans can agree on at this late stage. It is not easy to convince over 50% of Americans to write in the same name on the ballot especially when about 50% is already comitted to Obama. Romney is the GOP's only hope and every day seems to bring a new disaster for him.

[Zalatix]

38. Hah, let them try. If Romney gets hit with this, the whole GOP will lose favor.

It won't matter who they pick. It may even cascade down into the Congressional elections.

[SoCalDem]

3. Mitt Ponzi.. has a nice ring to it..

Now.. will reporters pick up on this and start questioning him about this??

[SmileyRose]

18. Mitt Ponzi - I like it

The supposedly liberal media won't catapult this.

[DURHAM D]

5. Please god - let there be an October surprise.

[Historic NY]

11. + 8 billion.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

6. Mitt Ponzi and the lyan king. Has a nice ring to it.

[nc4bo]

7. Why yes it does! nt

[glinda]

8. just once I would like to see follow through on

something. So many crimes so little arrests......

[On the Road]

9. The Way the Article Read,

it sounded like an attempt to drum up some kind of innocent "connection," but it looks like this news might have legs.

The big question is: at what point did Mitt or Tagg Romney know that the fund was a pyramid scheme, whether legal or illegal?

One would think that investing in a pyramid scheme is in itself incriminating, but this is not necessarily true. Early investors often make money on pyramid schemes. Some but not all are in on it beforehand. It would appear that Tagg Romney put in $10M and took out $11M (including the original principal) before the fund collapsed. This is not what one would expect from an accomplice in a scheme where $7B went missing. On the other hand, if it was a good long-term investment vehicle, why take the money out at all?

Stanford International Bank sounds like it might have worked the same as Bernie Madoff's fund, which reported high investments even though there were no actual investments -- Madoff simply wrote dividend checks off the principal. As far as I know, Madoff kept the illegality of his fund very close to the vest -- for example, there is debate about how much even his wife knew.

This particular article is not well written but there is ample room for questioning and investigation here. A lot more has to be established. Regardless of what happened, it is the kind of story that reinforces the view of Romney as a predatory capitalist.

[jberryhill]

26. You know which state is known for pyramids and why?

[On the Road]

31. I Know Market America and Zeek Rewards are Both from North Carolina

but have no idea why.

[Brother Buzz]

10. What a revolting development this is.

[colorado_ufo]

12. Loved that show

and was just thinking about it the other day - William Bendix, if memory serves, as Riley; his best friend, Gillis; Peg, Honeybee, and all the rest. Great show!

[freshwest]

14. Wow, I haven't heard of William Bendix since i was a little kid.

[mykpart]

22. And just for a little off-topic trivia,

Peg was played by Marjorie Reynolds, who helped Bing Crosby introduce the song "White Christmas" in the movie "Holiday Inn."

[Brother Buzz]

27. More off-topic trivia

Gloria Winters played Babs, the daughter, in the first season. She then landed the part as the niece, Penny, in Sky King. She was my first television crush.



From out of the clear blue of the western sky comes Sky King.

[freshwest]

13. Holy Mackerel! Read this from a link on the page:

Romney’s Friend Gets Welcomed in Jail
Posted bypoliticol on June 27, 2012

Sir Allen Stanford was arrested for the biggest ponzi scheme since Bernie Madoff and finally sentenced to 110 years in jail for his scam.

Stanford’s trial was to begin in January 2011 and he was imprisoned at a private prison, before the trial was to begin in Conroe which is near Houston, Texas. Unfortunately, Stanford did not receive a warm welcome in jail, and other inmates beat the living daylights out of him. Not once but twice. Stanford was placed in a cell that held 15 other inmates, with no air conditioning, no electrical power and in darkness. Some inmates claimed the conditions of the prison caused the beat up of Allen Stanford.

Stanford was the CEO master brain behind a ponzi scheme of fraud also linked to Mitt Romney’s son Tagg Romney who set up a secondary subsidiary after Stanford’s ponzi scheme was revealed.

http://www.politicolnews.com/romneys-friend-gets-welcomed-in-jail/

Is Poitico a reliable source? I thought it was a right leaning website, I may have it mixed up with another one. I know that Politicususa is a good website.

I was looking for the Business Insider link mentioned in the OP and found Think Progress and Crooks and Liars but not that one and chanced upon this.

What do you guys think of this?

[DeSwiss]

15. K&R!!!

[ChazInAz]

16. Schaenfreude.

Remember the long years of pointless investigations the Republicans did into Whitewater? Let's see how they enjoy being on the receiving end of some real charges!

[DemKittyNC]

17. Is this why?

Mitt has gone into hiding?.... I'm sorry, I mean gone *poof* to prepare for the debates that will not take place for just over a month away...

[siligut]

19. If Mitt, by some act of the devil, becomes POTUS

Do you think he will pardon Stanford? BTW, Ponzi schemes and Mormons go hand-in-hand.

[JEB]

20. Time to air out

the dirty magic underwear.

[niyad]

21. well, I don't know about a website that cannot even spell corectly, but found this from new yorker

Tagg Romney and His Father’s Money


“No one we went to as an investor said, ‘Oh, your dad is Mitt Romney, I’m going to give you $10 million dollars,’ ” Tagg Romney told the Times. And yet a good number of people did give him that kind of money: as the Times reports, sixty-four investors put two hundred and forty-four million dollars into Solamere, a private equity fund that Tagg started after the 2008 campaign, operating, at first, out of the same offices as the campaign headquarters, soliciting people who had been campaign contributors, with ten million dollars from his mother’s blind trust; and later with his father speaking at an investor’s conference and a number of employees who had worked either for the campaign or for another company that turned out to be “a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme.” (That one was an actual financial Ponzi scheme, not a political one like, say, the Gingrich campaign.) The Times story doesn’t suggest that there was anything untoward or fraudulent in Solamere’s own practices. But it does offer some answers to the question of whether, and why, Mitt Romney’s money will be a problem for him in the Presidential campaign.

The Solamere story comes across as a clumsily loose thread in the tangle of the Romney family’s business and political interests and associations. Journalists are going to spend the next six months looking for and unravelling others. Some may be bad; others may just look and sound that way, or come across as financially alien to voters. The Obama campaign released an ad Tuesday called “Swiss Bank Account.” It points to headlines about Romney outsourcing jobs (including to an Indian call center) and ends with the line, “It’s just what you’d expect from a guy who had a Swiss bank account.” A Swiss bank account may have made complete sense for a man with his money. There is nothing inherently wrong with it, any more than there is with naming a private equity fund, as the Times notes, “after a wealthy enclave in Utah’s Deer Valley where the Romneys have a winter home”—a phrase that, with variations, is likely to add a tinge to all stories about Solamere—it’s just not very appealing, at a time when Romney is trying to make an appeal.

This weekend, John Boehner, on CNN’s “State of the Union,” said that he didn’t think that Romney’s money would really be a problem for him: “The American people don’t want to vote for a loser…. They don’t want to vote for someone who hasn’t been successful.” Putting aside the question of Boehner’s definition of “loser”—at what income level does one qualify?—this raises another question. Why hasn’t there been much of an entrepreneurial glow around Romney? Part of it is that he hasn’t really made things, not even shiny boxes for looking at stocks, like our mayor. A second is that one area in which Romney is most certainly a loser is his ability to talk about his own money. He is just bad at this—worse, even, than he is on the subject of faith. (Tagg isn’t much better, defending himself to the Times by saying that there were only five investors whom he knew solely through the campaign, and that it was through other networks that he’d met the rest, including two N.F.L. quarterbacks, the former head of Walmart, and the father of one of his ex-girlfriends.)

Most of all, though, it may be that voters just don’t see a political dividend in Romney’s wealth. There is a model of wealthy politician whom voters trust, because they believe his money secures ideological independence for him, and an incorruptible officeholder for them. Romney comes across as nothing if not dependent; his money makes his changeable record seem more crawling, more an effect of character, because he actually has the resources to say no—to not nod at every suggestion. He hasn’t used it that way; the considerable cash he has put into campaigns has been spent learning how to best to accommodate, rather than as a safeguard against ever having to do so. Voters might well ask what Romney’s money has bought for them, politically, beyond his own nomination.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2012/05/tagg-romney-and-mitt-romneys-money.html#ixzz25TXlorqb

[defacto7]

23. Friendly slaves....

” They’re friends of ours, they used the Solamere name, we own a piece of them”.

Don't you love it when these guys think they OWN a "piece" of someone? Isn't that called indentured servitude?

[SleeplessinSoCal]

24. This is from May. What has happened since?

[Why Syzygy]

29. here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1265170

[Why Syzygy]

28. This is what's happened .. the scheme is in receivership

http://www.stanfordfinancialreceivership.com/

These are links to various parts of the receivership records.

SEE THE OFFSHORE details

Receiver's Statement Regarding IRS Notice of Claim
Receiver's Interim Report Regarding Claims Process
Court Issues Order Directing the Antiguan Liquidators to Cooperate with the US Receiver and Denies the Antiguan Liquidators' Request to have the Antiguan Proceeding Recognized as the Foreign Main Proceeding for Stanford International Bank Ltd.
Notice of Ruling in SEC v. SIPC
Receiver's Fourth Interim Report Regarding Status of Receivership, Asset Collection and Ongoing Activities
Receiver's First Monthly Report Regarding Fees and Expenses Incurred as a Result of the Claims Process
Second Joint Report Regarding Pending Litigation
Notice of Private Equity Auction
Update on Return of Political Campaign Contributions
Notice of Change of Plea in United States v. Laura Pendergest-Holt
Notice of Sentencing in United States v. Robert Allen Stanford
Sentencing Hearing Scheduled in Stanford Criminal Case
Notice of Bar Date and Procedures for Submitting Proofs of Claims
Court Issues Order Granting Receiver's Motion to Establish Bar Date for Claims and Procedures for Submitting Proofs of Claim
Notice of Public Auction of Miscellaneous Assets
Notice of Public Auction of Real Property in Harris County, Texas
Sentencing Hearing Scheduled in Stanford Criminal Case
Examiner's Comment Concerning Frozen Stanford Funds
Receiver Files Amended Motion To Establish Bar Date for Claims and Procedures for Submitting Proofs of Claim
Court Issues Order Granting Attorneys' Fees in Political Campaign Committee Cases

(...) more

ABC carries the story:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/romney-camp-dismissive-of-ponzi-accusations/

[Yooperman]

30. All I know is that if this had been Obama... ALL HELL would have broke loose from the right!

It would have been plastered on every headline in every news source in the country.

Just sayin...

YM

[SammyWinstonJack]

39. IOKIARDI

It's ok if a republican does it.


Isn't that right, liberal mediawhores?

[Liberal_in_LA]

32. anything to gain more $$

[philly_bob]

33. Never heard of the source given in link. Need second source. (nt)

[AnnieBW]

34. So That's What's In His Taxes?

A Ponzi Scheme? The same dude that says that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme?

[burrowowl]

35. K&R!!!!!

[lindysalsagal]

36. Oh, please, oh, please

Please, Lord, make this be true!!!

[Dalai_1]

37. One of many October Surprises? n/t

[kitty22]

40. Why?

I had just read about this in HP and had to hunt the info to see if it was real. I wonder why this isn't dominating the news and the democratic campaign. If (God forbid) he should happen to win the election and then all this hits the fan with a conviction we would be stuck with the other horror Paul Ryan. Can someone explain why this isn't being talked about on tv political stations?

[librechik]

41. who cares? this just proves they are crafty businessmen, right?