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Tag: scams
George Santos

GOP Leaders Knew Santos Was A Fraud In 2021

Despite lying repeatedly about his history during his 2022 campaign — and despite being arrested on federal criminal charges — Rep. George Santos (R-NY) remains in Congress. Many House Republicans are reluctant to criticize Santos, as they know that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has only a small single-digit majority and needs all the GOP votes he can get.

Headlines describing Santos' lies grew worse and worse in 2023. But according to an early September report by CBS News, some GOP insiders knew about the lies well before his election victory.

CBS' News' Scott McFarlane reports that in late 2021, an in-depth GOP report was designed to "dig into his vulnerabilities."

McFarlane explains, "The report raised now-familiar doubts about a college degree Santos says he earned, his marriage to a woman despite being openly gay, and his alleges ties to companies that have been accused of fraud and scamming customers."

According to McFarlane, CBS News has learned that a "group of GOP campaign strategists in Washington were aware of the conclusions while Santos was running for office."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Guo and Bannon

Bannon Repeatedly Promoted Alleged Scams By Indicted Partner Guo (VIDEO)

Several newly resurfaced videos show former Trump adviser Steve Bannon promoting allegedly fraudulent schemes perpetrated by his longtime associate and former financial backer Miles Guo, also known as Ho Wan Kwok and Guo Wengui.

Federal prosecutors arrested Guo on Wednesday on allegations that he ran a sprawling $1 billion fraud and money laundering scam, according to an unsealed indictment released the same day. Shortly after the news broke, Media Matters reported that Bannon had promoted some of the elements of Guo’s scheme that were included in the indictment.

Guo’s alleged wide-ranging conspiracy included a faux-cryptocurrency “ecosystem” called Himalaya Exchange, including a digital asset called H Coin. Unlike most cryptocurrencies, the coins in Himalaya Exchange weren’t tradable with other digital currencies unless they were first converted to U.S. dollars — requests which the platform could deny at its “discretion” — according to the indictment. Guo also ran a suite of media properties, including a broadcast service called GTV, which he used to allegedly defraud investors through selling stock in the company and pocketing the deposits, rather than investing them in the business.

The new videos raise further questions about Bannon’s potential involvement in Guo’s activities. In a video published November 17, 2021, Bannon promoted Himalaya Exchange and H Coin, shortly after the coin was publicly offered.

“I think the H Coin team and the Himalaya Exchange team is to be congratulated,” Bannon said. “I believe it’s the first time anybody's ever — in 2 weeks, we have $27 billion of market cap.”

Bannon then went on to praise a laundry list of Guo’s ventures, several of which are included in the indictment.

“One of the things about Miles, in my time of knowing him — just the, you know, the music, the fashion, GNews, GTV, association with Gettr, all these things you see popping off has been such successes really in such a short period of time,” Bannon said.

Last April, Guo allegedly illegally transferred $37 million from Himalaya Exchange to cover costs of his personal luxury yacht. Postal service agents arrested Bannon on Guo’s yacht in August 2020, for allegations of defrauding investors in the failed “We Build the Wall” scam.

Two other videos come from a panel discussion in September 2021, that included Guo, Bannon, former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, and former Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller. At the time of the event, Miller was CEO of Twitter competitor Gettr, another project backed by Guo. As part of the investigation against Guo, authorities seized over $2.7 million from a Gettr bank account in September 2022, according to the indictment. This February, Miller resigned from Gettr to join Trump’s 2024 campaign.

The panel discussion was in celebration of Guo and Bannon’s joint venture called the New Federal State of China, a rebranding of the so-called whistleblowers movement. Bannon hoped the NFSC would become a “government in exile” that could seize power once the Chinese Communist Party was destroyed, a goal he and Guo shared.

“No matter what the CCP does, it’s impossible to take down this movement,” Bannon said. “The whistleblower movement, the New Federal State, the Rule of Law, GTV and G News — GTV and G News are five times bigger than a year ago.”

Guo founded two nonprofits — the Rule of Law Foundation and the Rule of Law Society — both of which are named in the indictment as vehicles he used in furtherance of the conspiracy. Bannon was on the board of the Rule of Law Society but reportedly resigned at some point in the summer of 2020.

Earlier in the panel, Bannon made many of the same points about Guo’s various projects.

“The New Federal State, the whistleblower movement, the Rule of Law Society and Foundation, Gettr, G Fashion, all this — what the world is seeing is a new China and a new Chinese,” Bannon said.

Although G Fashion is not mentioned in the indictment, another similarly branded company of Guo’s called G Clubs was allegedly a central pillar in the scheme to defraud investors.

Last June, the NFSC celebrated its second anniversary, and Bannon again promoted Guo’s ventures, praising “G Fashion and Gettr and all these different companies that have been brought together,” which also include “a news organization, … that you can stay on GNews 24 hours a day and get incredible news.”

At the same event, Guo underlined his pitch to potential investors. “Lots of investors trust us because we are in business in America,” Guo said as Bannon sat beside him. “Because they trust, believe us — we really can take down the CCP.”

The NFSC was also a big sponsor of the Conservative Political Action Conference this year after other companies, including Fox News, dropped out.

Hours after Guo was taken into custody, a fire broke out at his luxury Sherry-Netherland penthouse in Manhattan. The blaze is still under investigation.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Steve Bannon

Bannon Travels On Private Jets But Won't Pay His Lawyers (Who Sued Him)

The law firm of one of Steve Bannon’s former attorneys, Robert Costello, is reportedly suing him “over unpaid bills for a mountain of work,” according to a new filing reported by The Daily Beast. Bannon reportedly owes Costello’s firm nearly half a million dollars.

Bannon, the former Trump aide and January 6 coup plotter, reportedly refuses to pay his former lawyers. Yet he said yesterday on a right-wing radio show that he flies on private planes.

According to an exclusive from the Beast, Bannon “hasn’t paid the lawyers who spent years defending him against an onslaught of criminal charges.” Bannon allegedly owes a “significant” amount of money to his former lawyers M. Evan Corcoran and Robert Costello. Both of these counselors represented Bannon during his trial for contempt of Congress, for which he was convicted.

While discussing James O’Keefe’s departure from right-wing organization Project Veritas on The Charlie Kirk Show, Bannon admitted that he flies on private planes.

In the past, Bannon has railed against student debt forgiveness while bragging about his Ivy League education. Real America’s Voice, the platform that carries Bannon’s War Room podcast, reportedly pays producers $30,000 per year.

Bannon is a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who made millions off the sitcom Seinfeld.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

GOP Candidate Busted For Concocting Fake Child

GOP Candidate With QAnon Ties Busted Over Fake Child Trafficking Charges

A Republican candidate in the state of Maryland has been apprehended for concocting an erroneous report riddled with false child trafficking accusations.

On Friday, July 15, Ryan Dark White was taken into custody at the Harford County Detention Center after being arrested, according to a statement released by the sheriff's office.

Per HuffPost: "The Harford County Sherriff’s Office said White, an employee at an adult bookstore in Edgewood, Maryland, falsely reported in April that a girl aged 10 to 12 was being trafficked by a man at the bookstore and forced to perform sex acts on male customers. The sheriff’s office identified both the male and the young girl, and said investigators found no evidence supporting White’s allegations."

White has previously been identified by The Daily Beast's Will Sommer as a QAnon influencer with connections to former Trump attorney and conspiracy theorist Lin Wood.

Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey R. Gahler weighed in with a response to White's false report saying, “It is shameful that a candidate for public office would make up such a story and use it to further his own political agenda."

Gahler also criticized an unnamed candidate who isn't facing criminal charges as part of the investigation. “It is even more appalling that another individual, who is running for a law enforcement position, would embrace such an obviously false narrative in an effort to gain political traction — nothing more,” Gahler said.

White's arrest follows multiple appearances he reportedly made with Andy Kuhl, who is a Baltimore Count Republican candidate for sheriff. Kuhl's campaign website issued warnings about a so-called "multistate child trafficking operation," per HuffPost.

The website says, “Jon McGreevey and I go undercover to expose these sick and heinous crimes against children. We must bring these criminals to Justice.”

White also went on record saying he took a job at a bookstore in hopes of uncovering an alleged drug distribution operation as he insisted drugs were being sold out of the location.

“They started exploiting children,” White said in a clip uploaded to Kuhl’s campaign website in June. “There’s a child trafficking ring being run through there as well.”

Gahler applauded his office and the resources exhausted to for the false reporting investigation.

“I am beyond grateful this young girl is safe, but extremely disappointed someone would attempt to discredit and disparage the work of the dedicated men and women of the Harford County Sheriff’s Office and Child Advocacy Center,” Gahler said. “Fearmongering and antagonism caused wasted time and energy by our personnel, whose time would have been better served protecting the citizens of Harford County, instead of investigating lies.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.