A Day in the Life of a Busy Little Bee Mobile Notary

I think mobile notaries are much like little bees buzzing around a community pollinating with their notarial stamps spreading the love through social networking with pleasant conversations in offices or people's homes.  Sometimes things don't always work out as we'd like however such as what happened to me as a busy little bee yesterday.

Rise & Shine Campers - Attorney Needs One Notarization!

Tuesday I woke up early to get to my office to accommodate an attorney who requested I notarize one document for her client.  That's right, one document, a mere $10.  I couldn't believe how self-centered, well yes I could, an attorney could be to summon me to my office for one notarization.  I felt inclined to request she also bring her Quit Claim Deed she mentioned earlier so I could at least make $20. After I headed for the office,  I felt lucky the projected rain held back as I arrived with one minute to spare. As I was about to enter her office, I answered my cell phone.  Ms. Attorney was actually calling me as I entered the room!  I thought to myself, she couldn't wait another couple of minutes?  Geez.  Anyway, fifteen minutes later and Ca-Ching! I made $20.  

Time to Inspect a CEO's Home Retail Software Business
I got home, had breakfast and jetted out for an inspection I had to perform at a retail business, except this time it was at someone's home three miles away. Many times inspection companies call on notaries to go to a new business establishment to take photos and conduct a short questionnaire interview to make sure the business meets a credit card company's qualifications  to accept credit cards.  Usually these retail businesses are nearby but this time it was quite far and full of steep hills for my electric bicycle to handle.  As rain loomed, my Google bike map directions were off leading me in circles so I had to figure out how to get there from guessing.  Meanwhile I worried my electric bike was running low on electricity.

I finally arrived at the home of the CEO of www.Planet9.com, a 3D software company and could tell he was thrilled to see me. In other words, he was very subdued and questioning what the real purpose of it all was.  He was kind enough to offer me a cup of coffee, but there was nothing really to inspect.  It was an internet business!  I was supposed to have snapped some photos inside but felt too uncomfortable.  I was also supposed to have taken a photo of the exterior of the home but I forgot my camera and my cell phone camera wasn't too good so I thought, why not use Google Maps to get the photo of the home? The only problem was Google Maps removes the address on the face of homes and places little cartoon bubbles in photos.

After I uploaded the photo and form, the agency called wanting to know what the "little bubble" was in the photo and why the address was missing on the faceplate of the home.  It was a gotcha moment; I believe my face turned red.  I blew it and had to forfeit my fee. Ca-ching!  I made $0 on the entire effort.   It doesn't happen often, but I got distracted.  I figured at least I burned off a few calories.

Heavy Rain, A Stuck Rear Brake, Ulock Problems and Incorrect Documents!
Next, a previous loan signing where an escrow agent had provided misspelled name on a deed prompted me to offer them a courtesy return to their offices another day at 4:00 p.m.  Right at the time I was leaving on my electric bike, it started to rain fairly heavy so I arrived downtown drenched.  I had trouble with the lock sticking and the rear brake as well to add more anxiety to the day.

When I arrived at their office they weren't even there and I was a little early.  I had anticipated a 5 minute time allotment to notarize.  Once again, the deed was incorrect so I requested the lady email over the Exhibit A legal description.  I waited and what she sent once again was incorrect.  I waited another 10 minutes and the person I was notarizing for was oblivious to my unusual efforts not letting me know why I was waiting so long.  He didn't really thank me, probably because he didn't speak good English.  I got home and my backpack was soaked.  Ca-Ching!  Another $0

Corrupted PDF File & Unusual Borrower Request

After I got home I got a call for a late afternoon loan signing.  Got the PDFs of the loan documents only to find one attachment was corrupted and wouldn't open. The borrower asked me to resend the PDF too.  It's quite unusual a borrower asks to have me email her the documents prior to a loan signing but it all fit into how the day was going so I wasn't too surprised.  When I got to the borrower's home which was only, to my relief, a few blocks away from my home, the signing took the longest ever, 2.5 hours!

The borrower was sweet and offered me ice tea.  We had a nice long chat about everything under the sun as she reexamined the documents.  I learned Janice had lived in her apartment for 37 years and her rent was only $850 for a one bedroom nice flat due to rent control.  Meanwhile, as zen spa music was playing in the background, and I fought to stay awake.  When we were finally done, the borrower offered me chocolate and a persimmon fruit.  Very pleasant experience and I finally got paid to boot!  Caching!  $100  to be paid in 30 days.

Writer's Block After a Long Day Prompted this Article
By 8:00 p.m. I really needed a glass of wine so I stopped by the store after I plugged in my eBike I couldn't think of what to write because I'm exhausted.  I figured I'd write something personal about a unusually tough day in the life of a mobile notary on an electric bicycle in San Francisco.  In spite of the hassle, I'd rather do this kind of work then sit as a prisoner at my desk at a law firm and be taxed to death for their overtime demands.  This way I get fresh air, meet new people, network and get to know a little about those who live and work in my community.

A Challenging Day - There's Always Something to Learn
This was one of the more challenging days where I really had to hustle to make a mere $120.  Better than nothing is what I always say, it's always better then nothing.  I was supposed to have finished up a client's divorce paperwork in my other LDA business today, it will have to wait again yet another day.  

I always felt like a trapped animal when I worked for companies or law firms.  As a mobile notary I feel like a sweet little pollinating bee.

President Obama to Award Medal of Freedom (to Murder) to George H. W. Bush

The evil despicable criminal men in the U.S. government sure are giving themselves ridiculous awards these days. The most heinous and evil men in U.S. history in my opinion have occupied government for the past several decades, one of them being former President George H.W. Bush.  President Obama will have the audacity to award Bush the Medal of Freedom early next year as reported in this article by The Clarion-Ledger.

For those with the eyes to see and ears to ear, we know how disgraceful these men are parading themselves as freedom lovers.  Freedom for them is to freely murder without consequences.  These so called men are nothing more then hard core insane criminals who have made their psychopath/sociopath illness normal by covering up and supporting one another. 

 

Freedom to murder and guilty conspirator G.H.W. Bush at the JFK assassination crime scene. Note the hairline, slant of mouth, cheek line, tie style, brow area, how the chin and lips are positioned, and his neck size and adam's apple.  For me, it's the unique jetting chin that's the clincher, along with the hair line part.  (click to enlarge)

 

Former President George H.W. Bush must be the only one in the United States who claimed he didn't remember where he was on November 22, 1963 the day JFK was assassinated.  Regardless of memory loss, a photo (above) shows strong evidence G H.W. Bush was in front of the Dallas book depository as one of the conspirators in Kennedy's death.  A Bush biographer also discovered evidence G.H.W. had tried to cover his tracks that day by flying out of Dallas to a nearby town in order to make a phone call to the F.B.I. to record his whereabouts.

Another smoking gun, clear evidence of center "tramp" photo in 1963 shows a match with the unusual facial features of E. Howard Hunt who confessed on his deathbed to being part of the conspiracy to assassinate JFK in 1963.

The Clincher - Hobo Tramp in Photograph was Confessed Bench Warmer E. Howard Hunt

In 2008, E. Howard Hunt confessed on his death bed to being a bench warmer for the JFK assassination. A photo strongly resembling Mr. Hunt was also recorded among the hobo tramps near the grassy knoll.  The unusual features of Mr. Hunt  that are identical to the hobo's photo makes it clear with his confession there was a conspiracy and top officials were involved in Kennedy's assassination including LBJ, G.H.W.  We've got a photo and a confession.  What more do we need?  Bush later became the director of the CIA, was involved in watergate with Nixon. These power drunk despicable men all thought they were doing what was best for the U.S. Their crime syndicate has been in power ever since.  Enter Obama with his signal freedom award that he's one of "them", he knows. Believe me, he knows. 

People who refuse to acknowledge this evidence are in denial, not wanting to believe their U.S. government was taken over by a shadowy government crime syndicate through its branch of the CIA and military complex. 

So I guess I'm just a bit disgusted to witness how these evil men cover up for one another in their giving each other awards for their crimes against humanity.  In the meantime, I saw Jesse Ventura's Gulf Oil Conspiracy Theory program on YouTube (video link) that shows the U.S. government has a depopulation plan in order to allow oil companies to take over the Gulf Coast area for profit.  If they can get away with killing JFK and award themselves as such, they think they can get away with anything.  The U.S. government is purportedly working for BP, that's how bad things have gotten.

Clear evidence of body guards being ordered off of JFK's motorcade.

JFK's wife Jackie suspected LBJ was involved and so did RFK. 

What more evidence does one need? Our U.S. government is corrupt and has been for a long time.  Money, power and greed corrupt absolutely. 

• President Obama to Award George H.W. Bush the Medal of Freedom 
• Bush Crime Family Connection with Nazi Germany - YouTube

Be Careful When Searching for New Business Models

Someone called a few weeks ago to ask my opinion of his thoughts on becoming a Legal Document Assistant after he was laid off in his job as an engineer.  I wrote back offering the honest truth, "I wouldn't recommend this field to anyone right now.  It's a waste of time and money in this economy."  I hope the guy appreciates I potentially saved him a lot of time and money with such advice but I never heard back.   I'm sure he was disappointed.  We're all looking for ways to overcome the current economic situation. 

I thought I'd take this opportunity to offer the reason why I started a legal services business and why people should invest more time and research than I did prior to investing time and money into a new business model.   After a year, my business model is clearly a case for the best selling book Rework.

Here's my little business start-up story I hope some find helpful:

When I first considered opening my business At Your Service Legal Document Prep (AYSLDP) as a registered Legal Document Assistant it seemed the logical thing to do.  For those unaware, LDA's formerly were referred to as independent paralegals. A law in the 90's changed the profession by separating paralegals, those under the supervision of attorneys, from LDA's who are really glorified typists of self-represented people's legal forms. What I later learned was that being an LDA was a lot more complicated than just typing forms since the work involved far more legal skills and knowledge than I initially thought. 

After working 10 years at law firms as a legal word processor I thought it would be a breeze typing legal forms for people.  After investing $4,200 in a nationally accredited paralegal certificate program from National Paralegal College, I obtained a paralegal certificate. The logical progression seemed for me to begin a business helping self-represented people.

David vs. Goliath - Most Attorneys Are a Pain in the Ass as a Nuisance & Plague on Society

My vision for my business involved a form of social conscious evolution in offering an alternative to high lawyer's fees for people who really couldn't afford them for non-complex legal issues.  I've been ripped off several times by attorneys in my life, and most all of them were much like parasites sniffing for easy money who performed very little work.  In many cases attorneys are nothing more than glorified criminal pundits for a criminal syndicate government overseen by many corrupt judges.  Such is why as a whole I hate these lawyer parasites who drain wealth from Americans as a whole.  I thought I could somehow help to begin to turn the tide. Here's what I learned.

I Learned the San Francisco Superior Court Is a Fine Tuned Money Making Machine Under The Careful Watch of Its Overseers
For the past year since I began helping the public as an LDA I learned the San Francisco Superior Court and city is hostile to my profession.  San Francisco is one of the few cities that has a strong self-help center where government uses tax payer's money to help people fill out their legal forms.  The San Francisco Superior Court has preempted Legal Document Assistants by offering free services for low income people to fill out their divorce forms and restraining order cases.  What this means is when an LDA turns in their work on behalf of their clients, the San Francisco Superior Court can play politics and throw anything out they wouldn't otherwise do.


This kind of highly political court system protective of its own interests potentially places my clients at a disadvantage.  For instance, judges and court clerks often make note of who prepared a pro se's divorce documents.  LDA's must stamp their work for the court to see.  The judge and clerks can potentially ask, "why wasn't it prepared by the court's self-help center?" This question is where the barrier to an LDA first begins.  The court wants low income people to use their tax funded self-help center to keep everything under the court's watch and umbrella.  If people don't use the city's self-help center, the government would revoke funding and that would put people out of jobs.

When it finally dawned on me how aware the court system is of the potential threat of LDA's to their tax payer funded self-help center, I realized it's practically a rigged game.  Everything is so under the careful watch of those who monitor their well oiled money making machine!  (See post New Evidence of San Francisco Superior Court Corruption) Their court system is what a doctor is to a patient, and its overseers are always looking for ways to feed and keep it alive in these poor economic times. I personally don't want to experiment and observe any damage a politically influenced court would have over my client's divorce case.  I've already taken a couple blows from this court personally based on attorney mischief and that's enough of an indicator for me the court makes decisions based on politics whenever possible.  In other words, the court acts only in its best interests and on behalf of its local legal community as its overlord.

Breaking Even Working One's Ass Off Just Doesn't Cut It

In September, 2010, I attended the California Association of Legal Document Assistant (CALDA) conference at Pacific Grove, CA where I stayed at the infamous Asilomar Conference Center.  At the conference I spoke with some of the best LDA's in the business.  There I learned word-of-mouth that business was way down for some due to the economy.  One long time LDA who specialized in divorces even concentrated on a new business after her's dropped off by 70%.  Another LDA in Los Angeles only broke even in his second year of business who works very hard on living trusts for people.  He's about to take the State Bar and get out of the work.

Paralegals Are Infringing on the LDA Profession as Noted on Craigslist

I also noted the lack of regulation and oversight of paralegals (not LDA's) in advertising on Craigslist taking business away from registered LDA's.  Nothing's being done about it.  If I'm required to follow the laws that limit my earning potential, only for paralegals who work for attorneys to have a part time business doing my kind of work, it's obvious this LDA work in San Francisco isn't a good business model.  The only LDA's doing good business are those well established in divorces.  Divorces are a goldmine for some well established LDA businesses.  Some LDA's have said it takes 3-5 years to build a long term profitable business in this field. No thanks!




Rework author Jason Fried gives his presentation on why the office is the worst place to work.  This is true, but make sure to choose the right business model prior to leaving a well paying office job.

Time For a Rework - Throwing It In the Trash Can

In retrospect, my business should have been more carefully evaluated on paper, then into the trash can as a bad idea.  Regardless, I don't regret being an LDA, it was an experience I learned from.  I met a few nice people and saved one mother thousands of dollars by filing a default divorce for her for $300.  What clearly drove me to this work was my dread of attorneys and motivation to help people save money from attorney fees.

My LDA registration expires in March, 2011. I have no plans to renew it.  Until such time, I'm currently accepting only limited cases in this work such as for deed transfers or retrieving public court records for people out of state.  I'm currently working on my final divorce case.

• Why the Office Is the Worst Place to Work - CNN

Law Student Writes Death Threat Note to Imaginary Lunch Bag Thief

I just couldn't resist posting this hilarious story about a Boston University Law School student who became enraged when he believed someone was stealing his lunch out of the campus refrigerator.  His note was posted on the Above The Law blog a few days ago.  What a way to begin one's career!

The mark of a future litigation attorney who feels victimized imagining a guilty party while litigating based on delusions.  (Click to enlarge)

After litigating his intentions in a note to the thief, Frank asked to check the video records of the campus refrigerator area.  What he discovered were the janitors were removing his old moldy lunches he left too long in the refrigerator.  The law school posted on the refrigerators they'd be cleaned out every Friday.  As Above the Law blog stated:

Dude, you’re not being victimized by some asshole who steals lunches. You’re the a**hole who is leaving your lunch around too long and fouling up the community refrigerator.

I will now wait patiently until Frank sends me pictures of himself kicking his own ass. - Source

This is a good example of the delusional nature of a law student and how lawyers, who often live inside their heads, take out their personal frustrations on victims in their briefs with baseless imaginary and/or fabricated and/or exaggerated accusations.


I thought I'd add a few more similar related notes of others - Here's one from a lady who believes she has a peeping Tom neighbor:

Response:

• BU Law Student Threatens Beatings and Death to (Non-Existent) Lunch Thief

Royal Bubble World of Prince Charles Popped By UK Student Furor

Living in a royal bubble world, the royal couple is shocked after they had the audacity to drive their Rolls Royce through a major UK student uprising over inflated college expenses.

 Video of the royal attack

Imagine how out of touch with your people you'd have to be to have your Rolls Royce driven through a major student riot on the way to some snobby royal performance event?  These students in this video are shouting "tory scum" and "off with their heads!".  According to reports and photos, their royal highness scum were shocked and drop jawed over the incident.  Imagine the nerve these royal people have to do such a thing.  What did they expect, to be applauded and bowed to?

Camilla was prodded in the ribs with a stick through the open window of their Rolls Royce as she and Charles were driven to the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium.

One of the vintage car's windows was left open by mistake before the vehicle was surrounded by a snarling mob of rioting students and activists.

The car was kicked, rocked and hit with paint bombs as up to 20 demonstrators attacked it and chanted 'Off with their heads!' and 'Tory scum', leaving the couple visibly shaken.

One thug managed to lean into the car through the window nearest to Camilla, who was left terrified by the biggest Royal security lapse in a generation.  - Source - Slate.com

That was a dumb thing for the royals to do.  One could even say they clearly lack common sense.

• Prince Charles and Camilla Assaulted and/or Menaced and/or Inconvenienced by Teeming (Yet Invisible?) Mob - Slate.com

Singers Be Afraid, Very Afraid of Holographic Vocaloids!

Just when you thought outsourcing might have reached its peak, here comes a new wave of technology to take more jobs.  After the successful introduction in Japan of holographic vocaloid performers, aspiring future singer and dance performers should be freaking out everywhere.

Just as many pianists who played gigs in hotel bar lounges lost their jobs to technology with self-playing pianos, who needs singers when people will pay real money to go to concerts and be entertained by holographic 3D performers?  Japan is going wild for its vocaloid performers and many countries want a worldwide tour.

Japan has successfully launched the first vocaloid concerts.

I must be honest, I never thought something so ridiculous as this soulless, spiritless machine projection performance would cause such excitement and enjoyment as it apparently does.  The concerts in Japan have been sold out!  Who needs real singers when people are willing to pay hard cash for a 3D cartoon performance?  There would be limited overhead of replacing the performer's million dollar contract with low cost computer programming.  

I hate to break it to the audience but in reality what they're really watching is math formulas playing out from a computer. It's all pure math.  As people become more open to androids, robots and artificial intelligence I sense there's a certain danger up ahead.  Human beings may become disposable, replaceable as machines take our jobs in all aspects of life.  I recall the Wired Magazine article in 1999, Why the Future Doesn't Need Us. (PDF download)  Well, here's hard evidence humans are gradually being phased out of everything.  

• Forget Robots.  Holographic Rock Stars Are Where the Creepy is At

God Help Us! Narcissistic Personality Disorder Removed as Mental Disorder by American Psychiatric Association

I'm still waiting on any response from the author Anna Valerious of a popular blog Narcissists Suck over my email disclosure the American Psychiatric Association has decided to remove Narcissist Personality Disorder as a mental disorder from its disorders index.  The prolific NPD blogger retired her blogging a while back but occasionally provides book reviews, the last being in January, 2010 on The Narcissism Epidemic.

On November 29, 2010, the New York Times published its article Narcissism No Longer a Psychiatric Disorder - A Fate That Narcissists will Hate: Being Ignored rehashing what N.P.D used to be.

The central requirement for N.P.D. is a special kind of self-absorption: a grandiose sense of self, a serious miscalculation of one’s abilities and potential that is often accompanied by fantasies of greatness. It is the difference between two high school baseball players of moderate ability: one is absolutely convinced he’ll be a major-league player, the other is hoping for a college scholarship.

The second requirement for N.P.D.: since the narcissist is so convinced of his high station (most are men), he automatically expects that others will recognize his superior qualities and will tell him so. This is often referred to as “mirroring.” It’s not enough that he knows he’s great. Others must confirm it as well, and they must do so in the spirit of “vote early, and vote often.”

Finally, the narcissist, who longs for the approval and admiration of others, is often clueless about how things look from someone else’s perspective. Narcissists are very sensitive to being overlooked or slighted in the smallest fashion, but they often fail to recognize when they are doing it to others.

Hmmm, sounds familiar (see www.smbtech.com/ed)  Perhaps the aforementioned NPD attributes are too widespread in this day and age for the APA to consider abnormal.  Like court cases that set legal precedent, perhaps the APA is denoting how common NPD has become with all the social media Internet activities and crazy politicians.  Like homosexuality which was removed from the APA's mental disorders index decades ago, the commonality of the alleged abnormal symptoms have made it "normal" in many doctors eyes.  I never believed homosexuality was a mental disorder to begin with but I may have had I grown up in a different time period of history.  God help us!  Victims of NPD's go through an enormous amount of personal damage that could now be delegated to being "just their imaginations".

When there's no such thing as NPD, our society will suffer for failing to recognize how destructive the disorder can be, especially when superficial politicians aspire to high positions in government.

A recent article from the Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog Why Narcissism Defines Our Time supports my view NPD is so widespread it has become the norm.

Most troubling about not including NPD as a personality disorder is that there is evidence of narcissism in all of our social lives. It’s alarming that in an age when narcissism is so evident, and with new ways for narcissists to get attention so apparent, that it would not be considered a personality disorder. The new world of democratic celebrities—on Facebook, reality TV and Twitter—where there are fewer traditional constraints on runaway narcissism, demonstrates the need to take this personality disorder seriously. -WSJ Speakeasy blog

The APA decision has its critics and many are complaining:

One of the sharpest critics of the DSM committee on personality disorders is a Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. John Gunderson, an old lion in the field of personality disorders and the person who led the personality disorders committee for the current manual.

Asked what he thought about the elimination of narcissistic personality disorder, he said it showed how “unenlightened” the personality disorders committee is.

“They have little appreciation for the damage they could be doing.” He said the diagnosis is important in terms of organizing and planning treatment.

“It’s draconian,” he said of the decision, “and the first of its kind, I think, that half of a group of disorders are eliminated by committee.”  - Article Source       

I guess this means we're supposed to ignore people whom we believe have NPD who endlessly torment and humiliate us as a form of their own self gratification.   Oh . . .

• Narcissism No Longer a Mental Disorder According to APA - New York Times
• Why Narcissism Defines Our Time WSJ

U.S. Banks Are Virtual Pirates on the High Seas of America

I thought a story on mortgage fraud would be appropriate today since the largest bank in the United States, Bank of America, has agreed to pay $140 million after a government probe.  BofA pleaded guilty to being involved in conspiracies to rig bids on the contracts over U.S. bonds.

"The US Department of Justice says Bank of America employees were involved in illegal conduct including a conspiracy to rig bids on investments linked to municipal bonds." - Bank of America Admits Fraud

I've been noticing on various message boards there are many people who still take the position in defense of banks as if Americans who obtained mortgages are the perpetrators of crime and deserve to be foreclosed upon.  The general perception of these people is the borrowers shouldn't have taken out a mortgage for a home they couldn't afford.   The reality is few people can really afford any home these days because few know what the future holds for their jobs in the shaky U.S. economy.

People who think the banking crises in America is due to those who took advantage of banks are ignorant of the facts, probably the types who always believe anything they're told by authority figures.  The reality is the banks made a killing during the real estate boom by reselling the borrower's mortgages in the derivatives market. The reason banks offered easy no question home loans is they could actually make more money on the derivatives market.  Banks also coordinated inflated appraisals of properties in order to make it appear the property assets on their books were higher then they actually were.

I've spoken with a few intelligent educated people who truly believe it's the borrower's own fault and that banks are the victim of spoiled Americans.  "They should have known they couldn't afford the home, now I the taxpayer have to bail out these people" is the common belief.  This couldn't be further from the truth.  A couple years ago when an attorney at the law firm of Chapman & Cutler in San Francisco expressed this attitude to me, I had no rhetorical response.  Today it's very easy to denote evidence that the profitable derivatives market is why banks provided easy no question loans to people.

Banks do a fantastic job in their marketing materials making you feel like they're your pal giving you a nice shiny personalized debit and/or credit card.  Bank employees tend to be very nice and friendly too.  The sad thing is, bankers who run these institutions that employs friendly people are neither your friend nor my friend. These banks took 2.2 trillion dollars from U.S. taxpayers holding our country hostage claiming the market and economy was going to crash in 2008.  They've got their little pundits all over the country claiming it's all Americans fault for purchasing homes they couldn't afford.  The bottom line is, this is a rigged game.  The banks knew what they were doing and what the outcome would be from the outset.

“This ongoing investigation has helped to expose wide-spread corruption in the municipal reinvestment industry,” Robert Khuzami, director of the S.E.C.’s Division of Enforcement, said in a statement. “The conduct was egregious — in return for business, the company repeatedly paid undisclosed gratuitous payments and kickbacks and affirmatively misrepresented that the bidding process was proper.” - New York Times

Thousands of Americans have since lost their homes and the "ships are abandoned" so to speak, the work of pirates on the high seas of the real estate market.

Unfortunate Error by Bank and a Home is Gone - MSNBC.com

Embezzlers Who Couldn't Wait to Win the Lotto

I try to keep up with the latest embezzler stories posted on Fraud Talk Blog but there are so many of them I must say I'm very shocked.  Apparently these folks lost patience waiting for their winning lotto ticket numbers.

Florida Woman Indicted In Alleged $113 Million Ponzi Scheme Case

Lydia I. Cladek, 66, of St. Augustine, Florida, has been indicted on charges she bilked investors out of more than $113 million. Cladek, the owner and principal of investment firm Lydia Cladek, Inc., is alleged to have used investment funds to purchase high interest auto loans, then issued promissory notes secured by the vehicles, and used the proceeds to enrich herself and pay off earlier investors. Cladek reportedly was guaranteeing investors a return of up to 20 percent per year in the scheme. The 14 count indictment charges Cladek with wire fraud, mail fraud and conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud. -Article link

Former Executive Of Virginia Company Sentenced To 5 Years For $580K Misappropriation

Iraj "Roger" Ahmadian, 54, of Williamsburg, Virginia and Memphis, Tennessee, was sentenced to 5 years in prison for misappropriating nearly $580,000 from Dillon Stone Corporation where he had been employed as Executive Vice President. According to authorities, Ahmadian received additional unauthorized paychecks and caused checks to be issued to fictitious subcontractor he created known as Phoenix Tile for his own benefit. The scheme spanned approximately four years, from 2003 to 2007. Ahmadian, who was indicted in February 2010 on 20 counts, plead guilty earlier this year to one felony count of bank fraud and one felony count of tax evasion.

New York Man Charged With Embezzling $4.5 Million From Columbia University  George Castro, 48, of the Bronx, New York, has been arrested and charged with misappropriating some $4.4 million from Columbia University. According to authorities, Castro added a TD Bank account he controlled to Columbia's authorized electronic payment system and received $3.4 million in October and another $1 million in November. His relationship with the university is unclear at this time. However, the account he controlled was under the name IT Security Solutions LLC.  Article Link

Calfornia Woman Admits To $116K Embezzlement

April G. Hale, 38, formerly of Windsor, California, pleaded no contest to charges she embezzled some $116,000 from the Law Offices of Michael A. Villa (pictured at right) where she had been employed as the firm's bookkeeper/office manager. According to reports, Hale made electronic funds transfers to pay for personal expenses such as credit card bills, utility bills and the like. Attorney Villa claimed Hale supported a "lavish lifestyle" through the thefts from his firm. Hale pleaded no-contest to six felonies including one count of grand theft and five of identity theft. She was originally charged in June on 41 felony counts and is scheduled to be sentenced on January 31, 2011. Article link

Former Finance Director for Texas School District Charged With Embezzling $111K

Sylvia Yvonne Ruiz, 58, of Hidalgo County, Texas, was arrested yesterday and charged with embezzling $111,100 in tuition fees from the Hidalgo Independent School District where she had served as finance director. Authorities have not released the details in the case yet, but Ruiz is alleged to have misappropriated the funds between August 2009 and January 2010. Ruiz, who apparently took tuition receipts for herself instead of depositing them for the school district, has been charged with Theft By Public Servant. Article link

Former Non-Profit Exec From Texas Sentenced For $390K Embezzlement Scheme

Michael Woodson Burney, 54, of Midland, Texas, was sentenced to two consecutive terms totalling 51 months in prison for embezzling more than $390,000 from Camp Fire USA where he had served as executive director. According to authorities, beginning in June 2007 through November 2009, Burney wrote numerous checks from the non-profit's accounts to himself to support a gambling habit forging the signature of two board members. He had plead guilty in August after being indicted in July to one count of bank fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. Burney was also ordered to pay full restitution to Camp Fire USA and its insurer.  Article link


There's plenty more at the Fraud Talk Blog

Best TSA Groping Parody Videos

SNL skit

Makes me wish I learned piano when I was young

This reminds me of one of those home studio novelty 1970's pop song productions

The Who Music to Pat Down By

Sign Petition: www.BoycottAirTravel.com