HOW A LEADING SWISS BANK COMPROMISED ITS CLIENT

The sad but true story of Nevada White

 

Note: This is purportedly a transcript of a training session for the Department of Justice Employees given at Washington DC, a few years ago. According to our informant, similar training sessions were given in the United States of America over recent years. Names and a few details have been changed to protect our source's identity and for other legal reasons.

So in actual fact, the following is pure fiction. Or is it? Read it and decide for yourself.

Federal Strike Force Training Session

 

Seize The Moment!

Fast Track Financial and Career Opportunities for Law Enforcement Officers

Introducing Your Instructor: National Strike Force Organizational Supervisor, “Willard Butkus”

 

Rules:

No recording is permitted. This session is “off the record.”

 

Mr. Butkis: Our work is getting more exciting and interesting every day. We are finally armed with the powers we need to fight organized and white-collar crime. And of special interest to you, ladies and gentlemen here today, we will comment about this new era where there are more and more material incentives for individuals. Substantial bonuses can result from seizures and confiscations you recognize and report, organize, or participate in.

 

FEDERAL INVESTIGATIVE AGENCIES - SELF-FINANCING PROFIT CENTERS

From Biblical times until rather recent history, tax collectors were local warlords who had the power to collect or confiscate what was due to the sovereign. These warlords or aristocrats were expected to keep for themselves a generous percentage of all collections or confiscations. This was necessary to cover costs and provide adequate incentives for the tax collectors (who also served as courts, prosecutors, and police) in maintaining order and quelling revolts.

 New programs in the United States restore us to the more uncomplicated roles before the unworkable system of constitutional checks and balances was introduced.

 Tax and customs collectors of old always had certain duties to their government. They were autonomous, self-financing, and never needed to go hat in hand to a legislative body for money to do their work. Nor would any court second-guess them. I am happy to say we are getting back to that old, more efficient system today. Federal employees are becoming the new aristocrats.

 Our mission? To protect the government and the citizens from the terrorists and other troublemakers who infest our beloved country and threaten law and order. While not yet publicly espousing this view of our Federal bureaucracy, the courts, the house, and the Senate recognized the necessity of acquiescing on all the important issues. Rather than speaking generally, I will use the Case Study

 

Method to show you all how drastically things have improved for us over the last few years.

 

LET'S LOOK AT THE CASE OF NEVADA WHITE

 

White reputedly began his career in the 1970s as a jazz musician. For his own sake, he should have stayed in that profession. White was brought to our attention when we received complaints from the Small Business Administration that he was sponsoring a television program, Free Money, that caused our brother-agency to be swamped with applications demanding “free money.” It appeared that White produced and sponsored a long commercial disguised as a TV interview show.

 

The interviews with successful applicants (who had read White's book of course) made it appear quite easy to get government loans and grants for almost any purpose. The real purpose of his show was of course to get those watching to send for a $49.95 book which, he claimed, gave information about “thousands of little-known government grant and loan programs.” White also ran weekend seminars priced at $500 and up. Those who bought his "kit" could supposedly get further, more detailed instructions on getting government loans and grants at these seminars. Our undercover agents purchased several kits and attended several seminars. They reported that in their opinion, only a small proportion of those attending seminars or buying these kits would ever be successful in their quest for “free money.”

 Early reports indicated that by the late 1980s White was selling hundreds of thousands of these kits, and making a great deal of money (probably millions of dollars) from his seminars. His kits were nothing more than legally permitted reprints of government brochures and application forms he had personally obtained over the course of a few months of personal visits to various government agencies, mainly here in Washington DC. These brochures were available free upon request from the agencies involved.

 The loan programs White described did exist but it was never the intention of Congress or the agencies involved that they should become known to and applied for directly by members of the general public. Such loans and grants always were, and should remain the province of a small informed group of specialist attorneys and insiders. The insiders were of course former employees of the agencies concerned who, until White came along, were able to make a comfortable consulting income.

 To put information on all the government grant and loan programs directly in the hands of the general public created an intolerable burden on the government employees involved, not to mention the loss of income to our brothers who went over to the other side of the fence after putting in many years of loyal service. Where the agencies involved might have had none, or only one or two applications per week to cope with, they now had hundreds, sometimes thousands of applications to deal with.

 Naturally, supervisors at the Federal Housing Authority, the Veteran’s Administration, the Small Business Administration and various art, social work and educational bureaucracies were very disturbed with White. They asked us at Justice to do something about him. Basically they wanted him shut down.

 We at the Department of Justice saw the need to preserve order, and to prevent Mr. White from making obscene profits from government programs certainly not designed to benefit the likes of him. We quickly identified Mr. White as the sort of vermin that must be eradicated. He was a clear and present 78 threat to the orderly functioning of government. Our strategy with all such criminals is to burn them alive, to barbecue them, in Government Speak, to give them the KABBOB treatment:

 

1. KA) Konfiscate Their Assets
2. BB) Put Them Behind Bars
3. OB) Put them Out of Business

 

To this end we unleashed a Strike Force on White. As you all know, the Strike Force is assembled for top priority cases and involves assembling and assigning an interdisciplinary group from the various agencies The people involved will later be involved in persecutions, prosecutions, confiscations, licensing matters, and tax collections.

 Their main purpose is to investigate, and to put together a list of crimes committed by the strike force target. In this case White was proven to be an exemplary target.

 The strike force is used against high profile enemies of government who espouse ideas repugnant to the bureaucracy. This word, ‘repugnant,’ pretty well describes Nevada White. Once a strike force is unleashed, we always come up with several dozen crimes, and the evidence and witnesses to prosecute these creeps effectively.

 In recent years, another purpose of the Strike Force has been to identify assets for seizure and to sequester such assets. This program has been growing at an exponential rate for the past five years. Seizures and collections under it are providing billions of dollars in revenues for the Treasury, plus magnificent personal wealth enhancement opportunities for individual law enforcement officers. Finally we have a situation where the good guys have a chance to enrich themselves at the expense of the bad guys.

 We will go into more detail on this interesting topic, but first, let’s look at what’s expected of you when you get involved in such a case:

 

DO NOT LIMIT INVESTIGATION TO IMMEDIATE PAST OR PRESENT BUSINESS AFFAIRS

Because White had been a musician ten years before our investigation began, and as we know that all musicians are involved with drugs, we felt that Drug Enforcement Administration personnel should be made part of the strike force to investigate White’s undoubted links to drug users and drug traffickers from his days on stage, where he worked with many South American black musicians and singers who used drugs.

 ‘Michael Smernov’ of the DEA was assigned to investigate all past contacts and to assign other agents to work undercover in the matter. To infiltrate White’s office with one or more of our operatives was also given priority. When selecting Potential Government Witnesses, Undercover Agents and Informants, agents should remember during investigations that we have at our disposal in excess of three million Federal prisoners currently in jail and on parole. One out of every four black men has a criminal record. Any of these who have had prior contact of any sort with a target (or who form future ties as an undercover agent) are potential government witnesses.

 Mere association with underworld characters, drug users and admitted felons is often sufficient to taint any defendant in the eyes of a jury. To get very damaging testimony from our criminal element, we have to do little more than suggest that immunity will be granted, their existing sentence will be reduced, or pending charges will be dropped. We rarely need to script or invent any testimony. Usually it is enough to ask a leading question like “When did the subject last sell you illegal drugs?”

 The potential witness seldom fails to rise to the bait especially if he believes he can be released from incarceration and in appropriate cases, be given such treasures as financial support and a new identity under a witness protection program. Selling drugs is of course only one of the possible offenses to suggest. Merely discussing or giving advice about any questionable matter is the crime of ‘conspiracy.’ Any discussion or actions regarding money can be crafted into a case of ‘money laundering.’ Any use of the mails or advertising mediums can be construed as mail or wire fraud. Every investigation suggests many possibilities of the target being tangentially involved in an illegal enterprise.

 The fact that the subject enjoyed playing cards for money is clear evidence that the target was engaged in organized crime, i.e. gambling. If target provided his cronies with marijuana or untaxed liquor while playing poker, such actions are very serious felonies known as ‘continuing criminal activity’ under the RICO Act and the penalty can be confiscation of the home or building where the gambling took place.

 At the very least, new environmental laws give us the option of initiating confiscations or criminal prosecutions in connection with the improper storage of waste materials, excessive use of public utilities, excessive size of home or office windows, improper use of motor vehicles such as White’s Rolls Royce motor car with a grievous emissions problem....

 Finally, if all else fails, accusations regarding abuse of children (especially target’s own children) are easy to make, easy to corroborate, and very effective at tainting any target before a jury.

 

THE PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF NEVADA WHITE

As a first step, even before the active investigation began, our agents compared the names on the target’s 300,000 name customer mailing list (surreptitiously acquired from his mailing list broker). These names, together with the names of all persons he telephoned or who telephoned him in the past ten years were correlated using an automatic database against the names of all prisoners, drug users, suspects, known criminals, and past offenders. We came up with a goodly number of matches – approximately 3,675 potential witnesses against White. Criminal associations of one to two per cent of any target’s customer list and personal address book is common for any outwardly ‘legitimate’ business. The criminal element is very susceptible to the use of the carrot and the stick. Thus, the threat of prosecution or cancellation of parole, or merely pressing charges with a few hundred well selected witnesses, will cause a squealing and singing to warm your hearts.

 Another trick at our disposal for investigations involving retail stores is to test cash for minute quantities of contraband drugs on currency. Positive chemical analysis and the possession of tainted money justifies seizure of all cash and the business itself. Unfortunately, in this case, White dealt mainly in checks and credit cards.

 Special Agents of the Internal Revenue Service arranged for a mail intercept, as they always do. Eventually, all cash and incoming checks were photocopied for five years to see if every single one of these items were deposited to White’s bank accounts and reported as taxable income.

 We later learned that some cash items we found not reported as White had never received income because they were pocketed by dishonest IRS agents who were in the team that monitored his mail. These agents were quietly dismissed. There was no reason for us to reduce the proof of White’s income by the amounts stolen. The law is that such funds are income, whether received or not. Our indisputable evidence was IRS records of cash sent in by customers and not reported as taxable income by White.

 Mail intercepts can be very useful for other reasons too. They pick up such items as foreign bank account statements, and correspondence relating to foreign assets we can later identify and seize. Plus we find love letters and discover many other secrets that can be used as the basis for criminal charges against the subject.

 In the famous Martin Luther King case, such letters were very effectively used to discredit King and his Communist fellow travelers. Regarding White, from all sources we expect to have over 400 different criminal charges to choose from in the White case. Admittedly, none of them separately amounted to a hill of beans, but taken all together the evidence will paint a picture of an irresponsible member of society who, for instance, seldom bothered to use his recycling containers. He failed to renew his automobile safety sticker for three months after it had expired because he wanted to pollute.

 He cheated on his wife with Laura, the undercover agent we sent in.

 Correspondence with his tax lawyers and accountants proved to be very useful in getting those professionals to give evidence against their client - or face loss of their own licenses. As we all know, proof of an intention to reduce taxes legally is now sufficient to cause the loss of any tax benefits. In many cases ‘tax planning’ itself may be a crime. White spent a great deal of time on minimizing his taxes with offshore vehicles that the courts let people like California attorney Margulies and his clients get away with.

 But times have changed from the days of ‘Operation Haven’ and we have ways of avoiding judicial review. Scoundrels like White can be reduced to poverty and forced to plea bargain because the weight and variety of charges we lay on them would cost far more to defend than any private citizen could afford. But if we can seize all of the targets assets during an investigation, he can’t even afford to confer with any defense lawyers.

 

THE TRAP SNAPS SHUT

Our inter-agency strike force raid was extremely useful with regard to our objectives for White. No charges had been brought after a couple of years of surveillance and investigation. We didn’t feel absolutely confident that we could win a court case. In the old movies, the crooks could say, “You ain't got nothing on me.” If they were right, we had to back off. But not anymore. We were going to shut this culprit down!

 With guns drawn and doors kicked down, a full-scale raid is an excellent way to put most operators like White out of business immediately. No warrant or court permission is needed anymore. It is an administrative decision. In his case, the several thousand attendees at the White’s ‘Free Money Weekend’ seminar we raided were told to go home and on their way out, and we instructed them to ask for refunds. We knew that more than half the cash generated by the seminar had already been spent on promotion, the meeting rooms, salaries, refreshments, and guest speakers. Thus, having to fork out nearly $900,000 at one crack would be a considerable financial blow to White.

 Advance notification to the news media on our raid of a seminar created bad publicity to scare away future attendees. At the raid, we confiscated all or most of White’s supplies of books, tapes, scripts, projectors, computers, and so on.

 Nothing puts a lecturer out of business more quickly than a raid. It destroys his credibility, grabs his cash, and confiscates needed props. But this was only the beginning. We were also able to confiscate from White’s person several checkbooks and his US passport.

 We confiscated the cash in all of his personal and company bank accounts the same day on the grounds that they were the proceeds of money laundering. Were we correct? He made money with advertising fraud (more about this in a minute), and thus, it was tainted money – just as if it had been speckled with cocaine powder.

 

Our associates at the Federal Trade Commission examined old tapes of White TV programs. They determined there were several possible counts of advertising fraud involved. Nothing in the programs indicated that it was advertising. Yet the program was today what would be called an ‘infomercial.’ This is advertising, pure and simple, yet was described in the program itself as ‘educational.’ Unfortunately, as White was the first to present a national infomercial, the laws were not entirely clear until the FTC sent White a registered letter (a few days before the raid) informing him that past and future programs would be deemed fraudulent advertising unless they were clearly labeled as ‘Paid commercial messages.’

 White did something else that was clearly fraudulent advertising, however, and each act was a serious crime with a five-year jail term possible for each act under both past and present laws. He offered an additional ‘free book’ on a related subject to the first 100 callers. When thousands of callers rang up his 800 number to order his $49.95 Government Loan and Grant Kit, the operators were instructed to congratulate all callers (not just the first 100) that they had won a free book. In the supposed resulting euphoria, the order-takers then solicited the customer to purchase still another $25 book, which over half of all callers did. The Federal Trade Commission labeled this procedure clear consumer fraud, and with the strike force co-ordinator’s approval, instructed the target (White) that the FTC would at his expense, send out an apology to every single past customer, and offer them a full refund plus interest and postage costs, without the need for returning any of the books or merchandise.

 There had been no prior complaints to the TV stations or the Federal Trade Commission from the public, but this was only because he cunningly avoided trouble with his customers by giving a full refund to any customers who asked for them. The giving away of these free books meant that White could be charged with some 800,000 felonies calling for his imprisonment for five years on each offense. Or four million years, give or take a hundred thousand years. [Laughter in the audience]

 After our letter offering them a refund has been circulated and publicized, over two percent of all of White's 800,000 customers demanded their refund. [By the way: When a similar letter was sent to 1 million purchasers of Levi’s blue jeans whom we felt had been defrauded in a similar scheme, there were 2 million refund requests, over twice as many refund requests as Levi’s had been sold during the period in question.]

 

WE CAN FINALLY DO OUR WORK EFFECTIVELY, AND PROFITABLY!

As you recall from our introductory remarks, one of our primary goals is to put criminals like White out of business. These days, we are able to do that by means of raids, seizures, and refund orders like the above – without the need for inconvenient trials or judicial review. If there is a judicial review, administrative bodies and strike force work is undone or criticized in under two percent of all cases. American courts have correctly recognized that the end justifies the means. As a result, old constitutional restrictions have slipped away. Illegally-obtained evidence can now be admitted. In tax cases and many others, a target can no longer refuse to give us documents and evidence we can use to convict him. If we entrap a target into committing a crime, he can no longer get away with it by showing he wouldn’t have done it if we hadn’t lured him into it.

 The case of Mayor Marion Barry of Washington DC illustrates how we successfully hired the ex-girlfriend of the mayor to invite him to a hotel room offering him drugs (supplied by us) and sex (supplied by her at our request.) [Laughter].

 We videotaped the whole set-up and got him a nice long jail term for drug possession. Unfortunately, the stupid people of Washington re-elected Barry after his jail term. Our next action will be to take away the vote of Washington DC's undeserving people to ensure that responsible, appointed city managers run the town, not the convicted felons they elect. If a target like White dares to flee abroad, we don’t have to extradite any more; we just kidnap. The courts have ruled that kidnaps or even murders outside of our borders by government agents are not criminal offenses for which the agents can be charged. Bringing in a suspect from abroad with illegal force is no reason to free the suspect. But here’s the important thing!

 

THE PATRIOT ACT! OUR MOST IMPORTANT NEW TOOL

On September 11th, 2001, our nation's attack was perhaps the best thing that ever happened to us in the law enforcement community. Shortly after that day, the USA PATRIOT Act was rushed through Congress. Most members of Congress didn’t even have time to read what they were voting on. But during that frenzy that gripped the country, nobody dared to oppose what was passed off as anti-terrorist legislation. The Patriot Act finally granted us the control we needed to run the country as it should be run, without interference, checks, and counterbalances. Besides sweeping new powers to spy on our own citizens, the most exciting thing is that it makes it much easier for us to confiscate (without inconvenient court proceedings) any assets found in this country or even abroad. Even if the target is/was never found guilty of any criminal charges, we could keep the money or tainted property.

 There is no clear rule about how we have to identify or deal with such money, and it can certainly be kept or distributed within the department. Any assets can be seized upon suspicion that they are tainted in any way. If we had had the Patriot Act in White’s case, his background as a musician alone would have been sufficient to assure us that any money he earned or saved would be tainted money. But fraudulently giving away some 800,000 in free books sealed his fate.

 

ASSETS ABROAD CAN ALSO BE SEIZED?

Perhaps most exciting of all, we can now confiscate any assets of the target that we locate abroad in some of the most important countries because of mutual legal assistance treaties. Far and away, the most profitable of these agreements for us has been with Switzerland. No trial or legal proceedings in the ‘offshore’ country are usually necessary. In White’s case, we were able to use our new powers to the fullest. But this is only the beginning of White’s nightmare and our triumph.

[Buttkis rubs hands together]

 The best is yet to come. You will recall that we placed an undercover agent in the White office. This woman was an experienced embezzler and thief, who also had worked part-time as a prostitute and exotic dancer. She proved to be an excellent operative for us at no cost! ‘Laura’ was out on bail for pending charges. We agreed to give her a pass and complete immunity if she could come up with anything useful on White for us. A natural-born criminal, she produced results beyond our expectations. Our undercover operative Laura was able to get White involved in an adulterous affair with her and participate with her in tax evasion activities. That his new ‘tax planning’ activities were new for him and inspired by our agent is no longer a defense. With the letters of recommendation we had produced for her, Laura was hired by all her charms and quickly became White’s personal secretary and mistress. She suggested to White that as long as he was under a lot of heat, he should start skimming cash and depositing this to a secret account that she would set up. In fact, Laura did set up an account to which $350,000 in cash receipts were eventually diverted. With our permission, Laura took this money for herself, putting it in her own foreign bank account.

 From time to time, Laura concealed White's theft by showing him her foreign bank statements with the growing cash balance. She told White the bank did not print the name and address of the depositor and the bank for ‘security purposes.’ Of course, the statements were for her own personal account to which the White’s skim money had been transferred. Her testimony about his skimming at any trial will clearly show that he diverted these unaccounted for sums intending to use the money to pay his attorneys or to live on after he escaped the jurisdiction. The matter of her theft is not admissible, and we have agreed not to prosecute her or demand any tax on the funds. She certainly deserves them for her excellent services. [Laughter]

 Laura came up with the additional information that White had transferred a ‘mother lode’ of about $20 million in fully taxed profits to a bank in Switzerland over the years. But she wasn’t able to pry the exact location and account number out of him despite valiant efforts. [Laughter].

 

SEARCHING FOR THE MOTHERLODE

Our mail opening and wiretaps in the year before the raid also yielded some indication that White had substantial funds abroad, probably in Switzerland, because he regularly visited Zurich. Yet there were at first substantial problems in front of us if we were to seize funds on deposit in Switzerland. Under the old rules of the game, as per our treaty of mutual assistance and exchange of information with Switzerland, we had to identify the holder by the name he used in Switzerland. We had to identify the exact bank and branch, and we had to convince the Swiss Department of Justice that the funds were the proceeds of a crime that was also a crime under Swiss law. Money laundering is any activity regarding tainted money and is regarded as a crime in Switzerland. Under the new MLAT (mutual legal assistance treaty), if we knew only the name of a suspected criminal like White (and not exactly where the assets were), the Swiss Department of Justice would now circulate that name to all banks in Switzerland. In the event of a possible client account match, the info in our USA file copy of the passport, plus the passport copy on file with the bank, would be compared. In the event of a positive match, the account would be frozen.

 

THE NEW SECRET ACCORD

SWISS BANKERS WILL SELL OUT CLIENTS. That is the new secret accord. This highly profitable deal, gentlemen, is to be kept secret as long as possible. We always knew the Swiss bankers were whores who would sell out to the highest bidders. Their public relations image was to pretend that their much-vaunted bank secrecy was put in force in 1941 to protect Jews who were being persecuted in Nazi Germany. The fact is that any non-legally-resident endangered Jews were shipped right out of Switzerland during the war into the hands of the Nazi Gestapo, even though the Swiss officials knew concentration camps and eventual murder was to be their fate. The banks were then very happy to transfer the dormant Jewish accounts to their own capital. So much for the good intentions of the Swiss.

 When any Jews (wealthy or otherwise) wanted short-term sanctuary, the Swiss said, "The boat is full!" Big accounts protected by bank secrecy against victorious allies were not Jewish but were Nazi accounts. Like the secret list of the Nazi owners of the massive IG Farben Trust, these names were never to this day released. Many fugitive Nazis in South America have lived off stolen money in Swiss banks all these years. Yet I digress.

  We should all know about the deal we negotiated to cover the White case and a dozen or so similar cases where the amounts involved come to over $200 million in aggregate. From now on, we can seize and have transferred any known accounts owned by Americans in Switzerland to New York City with no trial or proof of anything. It will be almost as informal and as easy as grabbing an American-based account. We fill out a standard form and presto; the account is ‘arrested.’

 There was a price to pay, but considering the benefits, we think it is a fair price. Here’s the deal. Today, we give the Swiss Department of Justice the name of the miscreant we believe in having a Swiss account with cash or securities.

 Every American citizen's offshore account involves money laundering, insider trading, or some kind of fraud, as far as we are concerned. Our laws clearly require a detailed report of all assets. Failure to report an offshore account is felony tax fraud and money laundering – at the very least. There is no good reason for any honest, patriotic American citizen to have any assets abroad. The new agreement covers even safe deposit boxes. The Swiss will circulate the name and freeze any accounts or boxes in any name we give them. After (not before the seizure), there will be a cursory check with the owner to make sure our colleagues are not arresting a totally unrelated account from a similarly named but uninvolved individual. Subsequent to the seizure, the account is then divided into three ways.

 

DIVIDING THE SPOILS

The bank gets to keep a third. The Swiss Department of Justice gets to keep a third. And the US Treasury gets the last third. So as you see, the Swiss banks have a real incentive now to help us with cases like White. With them being able to keep a third of the account, they would give up their own mother without a fight. The target can’t do much to fight us. Even if a criminal like White has fled the jurisdiction, he can’t go to court in Switzerland to claim the old traditional defense that he did no crime under Swiss Law.

 That would have been a complete defense against seizure in Switzerland up till last year, but now, under our agreement, any defendant who shows up in a Swiss Court and is not a Swiss legal resident will simply be delivered to a waiting US Marshall without the benefit of an extradition hearing. Just like the unwanted Jews of World War Two, our accused criminals will be placed (without trial) on the next plane to the USA. This police-friendly procedure is called ‘rendition.’

 

As part of the deal whereby they keep two-thirds of the money, the Swiss have agreed that anybody we want is somebody they don’t want in their country – regardless of how good a bank customer they might have been. So, in the technically called ‘rendition’ procedure, the unwanted deadbeat, having been stripped of his Swiss assets, is escorted by Swiss police and our US Mars all to the airport. He is forcibly placed on the next plane to the US. If he yells and screams enough to disrupt the flight, we will inject him full of Thorozine™ and put him (unconscious) on a military plane.

 

HOW SWISS CONCERNS AND MISGIVINGS WERE SATISFIED

The touching concern of the Swiss authorities for human rights where foreigners are concerned is illustrated by our discussions with them about the implementation of the new accords. The Swiss Department of Justice people asked us: “What if after we take our third, and the banks get their third, and the depositor’s government takes a third - what if, against all odds, the depositor manages to overturn any convictions and he emerges ‘lily-white’ with a court order in his home country that all funds must be returned to him, with costs? Under international law, wouldn’t a Swiss court be obliged to order the Swiss government and the bank involved to return the depositor's money, and wouldn’t we be then out a lot of money for our trouble?

 The Swiss "win-win" solution was to pass regulations that in such cases, the ‘innocent victim’ of government mistakes, false arrest, and perjury would not be able to recover any damages in Switzerland, and further, the government and banks involved may, before making restitution, deduct all their costs and lawyers' fees. This arrangement gives the USA government everything that we want: If it ever turns out that we have seized money wrongly (according to a USA court), there will be so many costs and fees deducted that the depositor won't get anything back, even if he wins! The Swiss government gets to keep their blood money, win or lose! Because Switzerland isn’t a member of the European Union, there is no appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. In the case of White and others like him, I am sure you agree,  they should have no rights!

With bankers’ fees only about one percent per year, it would take 33 years for the Swiss bankers to earn what they get in one day under our deal. For public relations purposes, the Swiss banks will no doubt downplay the fact that they are selling out their customers. We can expect to see them make reassuring noises, telling other customers that only drug dealers and serious criminals are affected. But as you see from the White case, we could never have attacked his money under the old rules. Why?  Because giving away free books on television and not reporting a foreign bank account is definitely no crime in Switzerland. The Swiss don’t protect their consumers as the US does, and that is their business. But consumer fraud here is enough for any American to lose their freedom and their money. And that is as it should be.

 Aside from consumer fraud, the rest of the stuff we have on White is either petty or stuff that used to be called entrapment. But we in Justice know that if we are able to get a person to commit a crime, he would have committed a similar crime eventually anyway. Thus, we need entrapment as a crime prevention tool. White is unquestionably guilty as hell: To disrupt our entire grant and loan programs, he deserves at least the 20 years in Club Fed that we will impose on him when we get him back here. And mark my words, we will get him back here, one way or another. But for White and his ilk, for the first time, in this breakthrough, the Swiss are with us instead of against us.

 As I said at the outset, it is really sweet when the customer’s whore finally comes in out of the cold and becomes a government agent. Having tasted the easy money to be made from confiscation programs, the Swiss will no doubt be rushing to make similar deals with the Brits, the French, the Italians, and the Germans. And that will be the end of the myth of bank secrecy in Switzerland!

 But now let’s go back to the story of White. Let’s say we didn’t have his assets in hand yet. If we had him in custody, we now have legally sanctioned ways to get an inmate to spill the beans about any secret offshore accounts they may have and get him to sign it over to us. Our methods are no big secret. We throw the bastards into a metal box without any windows – without any food, water, or toilet facilities. We tell them to signal only when they are ready to co-operate. And then we ‘throw the key away’ and forget all about them. We get co-operation, or else they are dead. Our statistics are roughly 100 percent co-operation within five days. [Laughter]

 

WE NEED THE EUROPEAN SYSTEM

In White’s case, we couldn’t arrest him in the past because preparation for our criminal case wasn’t complete. In every case, when we throw someone in the can, we still have to bring charges within a few days here in the USA. Of course, we need the continental European system where suspects can be held (no bail!) indefinitely in prison without trial. But for the moment, we don’t have this system. We still have to convince a jury that the guy has committed enough crimes to warrant a jail sentence. Our 99 percent conviction rate means we are doing our job very well. Fortunately, an American jury can’t be told whether their conviction verdict carries a one year sentence or 20 years. They might refuse to convict a guy like White if they knew we would send him away for the rest of his life for giving away books. Part of the case against White will be proof that he controlled $20 million on deposit in Switzerland. Being rich isn't ipso facto always a crime, of course. But as we saw in the famous Leona Helmsley case of a few years back, anyone with serious money in cash is an automatic guilty verdict – unless they are perceived as a great philanthropist. We know from much trial experience, the American Common Man (and Woman) on a jury will always sock it to a philandering male millionaire. That is why we must carefully choose our targets and create the facts and circumstances that guarantee a conviction. The new long mandatory jail sentence laws do the rest. White will get forty years or more in the slammer when not if we get him. Applause]

 

TURNING THE WIFE

With White, a key objective in our case was to turn his wife against him: We were able to do this very effectively in this textbook case. White’s wife was shown a video taken surreptitiously by one of our investigators, clearly showing that he was having perverted sex with his secretary Laura. This screening at our offices was met with a ‘so what’ attitude on Mrs. White's part. But we know from bugs in their home that there was a mighty furious row about it that night. We also know from taps on the White’s home phone, fax, and e-mail that within days, White’s wife was cruising the Internet, looking for dates, presumably to give him a dose of his own medicine.

 With this information, we were able to arrange for her to be complimented, courted, and eventually invited to move in (with her two kids). Her lover was to be one of our own people, that famous Romeo, ‘Kevin Wooster.’ And at this point, after a 15-minute coffee and toilet break, I’ll let Kevin take over the floor and tell you how to make a government witness out of a broken-hearted woman.

 

THE SEDUCTION OF IRIS WHITE

Mr. Kevin Wooster: I'm ‘Kevin "Rooster" Wooster,’ not my real name as you might have guessed [Laughter] Formerly an FBI agent, I am now specializing in undercover work as a freelance private detective. I work only for government agencies. I am hired as a last resort when serious matters are involved and when the undercover agent's reliability and credibility might be a big issue – if there is a trial. With my FBI background, I am much more effective as a witness for the prosecution than the zonked out freaks they get out of our penal institutions. Too often, these convicted felons are pathological liars who couldn’t tell the truth if their life depended upon it. Such scumbags often fall apart under cross-examination. And then we at Justice don’t look good. Courts have always found me to be a ‘credible witness.’ There are no surprises when I testify for the government. I don’t get emotionally involved with my targets, and I always get the job done.

 My old friend Butkus came to me with this White situation. The fraudster White was believed to have moved his entire net worth of something between ten and forty million bucks outside the jurisdiction. He was in contact with a lawyer in Liechtenstein and another in Switzerland. Preliminary investigation with our moles in Zurich indicated that if he had any accounts with the banks favored by Americans, they were not in his own name. Maybe he used another name (for which he would have to have a passport), and maybe he had his money in some sort of corporate or trust set up. If I was able to find the details of his account, under the new accord with the Swiss, it could be seized.

 Better yet, if Mrs. White had signature authority over the account, I might be able to convince her to transfer it to the USA where it would be seized immediately, without the need to give up a substantial portion to the Swiss.

 My deal was up to 20 percent of any net recovery to myself as a personal bonus, plus all expenses and $1000 a day while working on the case. The weak link in the case for White, as it is for almost any man, was, of course, Mrs. White. Could we turn her? As you see, I am a well-developed male in my early 40s. She was about 40. Butkus had found out she was very vulnerable. I was the kind of guy who could conceivably be attractive to her. After seeing our feature film of her husband fornicating with our undercover agent Laura, we knew she was contacting chat groups on the Internet, sending out sexy messages. These clearly indicated she was looking for either short-term sex or a ‘relationship.’

 My experience has been that most wives of long duration know all their husbands' secrets. If I can get them into bed, most wives are eager to inflict maximum damage and happy to tell every nasty secret they have on their cheating husband. Before I ever contacted or met Mrs. White, whom I’ll call Iris from now on, I had my assignment and a game plan in mind. The main object was to get a balance sheet out of Iris and discover her husband’s secret accounts abroad' exact location and identity. Of course, my personal objective was to end up with a possible 20 percent of $40 million bonus, or $8 million for my trouble. As it turns out, my bonus will be quite a bit less, but still in the million-plus range, not bad pay for two weeks’ work – if you can call it that. I tuned into the dating sites that Iris was known to frequent and sent her an informal message, portraying myself as a lonely single guy who liked kids and was anxious to meet someone attractive, with good breasts and around forty. I was tipped earlier that Iris had a boob lift and was proud of her new breasts.

 After a few e-mails, I volunteered to visit her in her town, then Las Vegas. On our first date, after a good dinner, she was in my motel room. Then she visited me at my home in a nearby town in California. Iris apparently enjoyed the sex, the first in twenty years, not with her husband. Obese at the time, he was no longer attractive to her. She was still good looking and had an excellent figure. I did not press her for financial information during our first two dates because I knew that everything she knew would be coming out sooner or later. Of course, it all worked out according to my plan. Iris poured out all her complaints on her second weekend at my home. She confided that she would love to get a divorce and send her husband away for a long stretch in prison – if only she had an alternative place to go with her two kids. For the wife of a very wealthy man, she was not thinking rationally. She was looking for revenge and another man to support her. I suggested that she might get a cash settlement from her husband. Like so many middle-aged housewives anxious to ‘find themselves’ and dump a husband who took care of all their material needs for years, she was blissfully unaware of the difficulties of supporting herself and her two kids by getting a job. Without any work experience, she would be slinging hamburgers at minimum wage. Yet she insisted she didn’t want a penny from White. She conveyed her thought that I would be there to take care of her. Fat chance!

 

"MOVE IN WITH ME"

My line was that I didn’t like to carry on with married women, but if she did, in fact, get a divorce (and could then, as you all know, be compelled by Justice, if need be, to testify against her ex-husband), I would invite her to live with me – along with her two kids.

 She took the bait and did in fact, move in with me, bringing her two brats, ages 8 and 12. She filed for divorce and began child custody proceedings. The kids hated me and wanted to stay with their father. Iris was not in control of herself from the moment she moved in with me. Even if I had not had another motivation, she would have been an impossible woman to live with. She was often hysterical, crying, and flailing herself around senselessly – like a chicken with its head cut off. When her husband contested child custody, he brought in witnesses and experts to testify that she was emotionally unstable and unable to care for her children properly. That’s the American system: Whoever has the money for the best lawyers wins the case! As a result, Nevada won the divorce and interim custody order for him to keep his kids with him.

 

IRIS CO-OPERATES!

At this point, Mrs. White lost the little coherency, sanity, and self-control she had left, screaming at the divorce hearing that she wanted to crucify her ex-husband. Back alone with me, she had wild ideas like hiring a mob hitman for $50,000 to cut off his hands, feet, and testicles. “Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned.” Naturally, I worried for my own safety when this nutcase found out the truth about me. But then if you expect to earn $8 million for a few weeks of bonking, there has to be some risk [Laughter].

 Once Nevada White gained custody of their kids, Iris gave me every bit of damaging information she had on him. The most important bit was that [after we began our strike force activities] Nevada had sworn under oath to his own lawyer that he was insolvent.

 Using this false oath, his lawyer represented that there was no point in sending out 800,000 notifications of entitlement to refund since his client did not have the resources to meet such claims. The truth, according to Iris, was that Nevada was far from insolvent. He had a net worth of over $20 million at the time. He had stashed his money abroad in a Liechtenstein ‘family trust’ or Anstalt. Technically he didn’t control the Anstalt’s money – a board of directors had the signing power. But the reality and understanding (as it had been explained to Iris when they were on good terms) were that Mr. White called the shots. The Board did whatever he told them to do. This meant that White was guilty of perjury, obstruction of justice, and unlawful concealment of assets. He didn’t list the Anstalt’s income as his income on his tax returns, and for the purposes of his insolvency statement, he ‘forgot’ about his $20 million altogether. As documented by Iris, these lapses of memory would be worth some 55 years in jail and several million in Nevada White fines.

 Iris came through for me by going back to Nevada for a weekend visit with him and her kids, pretending she was returning to him for good. During this reconciliation visit, she swiped Nevada’s most secret papers. These included all his offshore bank account statements. The Anstalt accounts didn’t have his name on them, just an account number. But as she had broken open his well-hidden attaché case and had given us an affidavit that she knew these were his secret funds, we now had the ammunition to go after White’s main stash. The KABBOB was ready to roast.

 

STRIKING IT RICH - THE MOTHER LODE UNCOVERED

In this case, the big prize was what Iris referred to as the ‘Mother Lode.’ It turned out to be $18 million dollars in securities and cash on deposit with the ‘B’ Bank of Zurich in the name of a Liechtenstein Anstalt or Foundation. Although the assets were registered to a foundation, the papers that established the foundation (which Iris provided) indicated that the person in control was none other than her husband – who was identified as an American citizen. This was important because, as you will note, our deal with Swiss Justice clearly covers Americans who use Swiss accounts to conceal assets. White had legally obtained a foreign passport too. But fortunately for us, he didn’t refer to his foreign citizenship when setting up his foundation or the bank accounts that it controlled. The "B" Bank account might have given us a bit more of a hard time to seize it, had it been marked as ‘Foreign-owned.’ Maybe we would have been able to seize White’s money anyway, but USA-owned private funds are clearly within the scope of the secret agreement, making things much easier for us.

 Our seizure agreement with the Swiss banks only covers American citizens at present. Possibly dual citizens are included, but this was not an issue here. Iris gave me the exact name and number and agreed to deliver this information personally – the bank statements she had snatched – to the IRS criminal investigations division).

 Ostensibly to help Iris with her revenge plan, I arranged for her appointment with the Department of Justice prosecutors. They worked quickly and two months later were able to initiate the seizure of White’s account in Zurich. To this day, Iris doesn’t know I am an undercover agent, nor what my real purpose was in wooing her. But Iris betrayed her husband big time that day. Essentially she made a gift of her husband’s $18 million to the Federal Government. In one way, part of me understands that she wanted to hurt her husband, but she would have also protected her own interests in any sense. Her children and she herself were the beneficiaries of the foundation! Under her state's marital property laws, half that money was legally hers, and the other half would one day be inherited by her children. Had she told her own lawyer about this account, it might have been frozen for her benefit instead of the government. Had she told White about giving this information to us, he could have moved the money out in time. But she didn’t tell him over the next 60 days, and he didn’t have a clue that he was about to be KABBOBed. I guess he thought the Anstalt’s money was well protected, and she, well, she just wasn’t thinking at all.

 

BREAKING A LIECHTENSTEIN ANSTALT

In case you don’t know it, a Liechtenstein Anstalt or Foundation is sort of a private trust established only to conceal the true owner’s name from tax authorities. All instructions regarding asset management and withdrawals must come from a ‘Board of Directors,’ usually a firm of lawyers. These Swiss lawyers, usually with two signatures, are the only ones empowered to give the bank orders. In this case, without Iris's information, we wouldn’t have been able to identify this account because even the bank didn’t know it belonged to White. All they had was the name of the ‘Kid's Foundation.’ Once Iris went to the IRS with me, we quickly put in place the mechanisms to raid White’s personal home, office, USA banks, and stockbrokers, seizing all his personal assets and the company cars. Most important was the mother lode in Zurich.

 We knew he wouldn’t get any warning and a chance to move his assets if the raid on everything came the same day. It took over two months to make all the arrangements for the raid and seizures. It was important to keep our plans secret and seize all of White’s assets one day. Suppose we hadn’t been able to do this. In that case, he might have been able to afford a high-priced dream team of lawyers that could have applied for court injunctions, prevented the seizure of his Swiss money, and also beaten the criminal rap he was eventually going to be convicted of.

 But White went on giving seminars and made no effort to move the mother lode even though he was now involved in bringing criminal charges against Laura for theft. The stupid oaf had to know that his wife was no longer his trustworthy best friend!

 The Feds don’t ever want an O.J. Simpson case. We used to win 98 percent of all cases a few years ago. If we are able to prevent a defendant from having a good lawyer, by tying up his assets before trial, we will be batting 100 percent. Even if White were able to beg, borrow, or steal for lawyer’s fees, we can claw back those lawyer’s fees as tainted money in money laundering cases like this.

 

Asset seizure is one of the most effective prosecutorial tools available.

 After creating enough evidence to make a case to a jury, the second most important thing is making sure the defendant doesn’t have a pot to piss in. [Laughter] That’s why cutting off his income stream is important by putting him out of business. When we KABBOB someone, we do it right.

What does KABBOB stand for? [Audience response:]

 

KA, Konfiscate Assets!

BB, Behind Bars!

OB, Out of Business!

[Applause & Laughter]

 

WE WIN ALL THE CHIPS

The raid and the seizures went off like a charm. The money at "B" Bank in Zurich was ‘arrested’ as the proceeds of crime, and moved immediately to the "B" Bank's branch in New York City. Eventually, if White does not come to the USA to defend or is convicted, it will be transferred to Treasury. Without any lawyer and without any money, White is now pretty powerless. He’s in no position to negotiate anything. I feel he has no choice but to cop a plea and spend around 14 years serving out a 20-year sentence. We won’t settle for anything less than a guilty plea bargain and 20-year incarceration.

 If he defends with an incompetent lawyer, he is likely to get 40 years.

 At his age, 50, that means he will be 80 before he sees the light of day again. His other alternative is to flee the country and spend the rest of his life as a fugitive. If he does that, he will never see his kids, friends, or relatives again. As we have his three passports, a flight abroad may not even be possible for him. Being a fugitive certainly can’t be a pleasant life for a penniless man. Suppose he is somehow able to get a lawyer in Switzerland. In that case, he won’t be able to defend his claims to the mother lode in a Swiss court because we have a deal with the local police to ship him back to us without any trial or hearing as an undesirable. Our financial arrangements with the Swiss police put the cooler on any judicial review in Switzerland: If he shows up there to defend his phony foundation, we get his ass. We predict White will straggle in to beg for mercy during the next few years. He will try to work out a deal and take his medicine. He can’t stay afloat long without money. He can’t work in the States or get a work permit or legal residence abroad. As a fugitive, he can never again take a high profile and do the only things he knows how to do – playing jazz or peddling his worthless television products.

 

White is history! He is a KABBOB! Applause!]

 

QUESTION? WHAT HAPPENED TO IRIS?

Well, once we had the needed information, I picked an argument with her. This wasn’t hard as she was hysterical and running around like a freshly killed chicken most of the time I knew her. I told her we couldn’t go on with her emotional state and said that after seeing how she treated her last husband, I was fearful she’d do the same hatchet job on me someday. This was met by a lot of screaming and a physical assault on me – as was usual with her. The next time I had the opportunity, when she was out of my house, I piled her luggage and the brats’ stuff on the street and changed my locks. I bolted the shutters and then left for a week. Never saw them again. I will probably move out of my old place. Who knows what she might be capable of when she learns the truth about me? I heard that after I threw her out she moved back in with White –even though they were divorced by this time. He was foolish enough to take her back. But I guess he didn’t want his kids on the street. Of course, she didn’t mention spilling the beans on his Zurich account and all the other stuff.

 

He was a sitting duck when we grabbed all his books, papers, files, computers, bank accounts, safe deposit boxes, and the Swiss mother lode!

 Once the raid took place, White disappeared, leaving the family home. Iris was evicted for nonpayment of the mortgage soon after. The kids were abandoned and will become street kids, I suppose. His 12-year-old daughter has already been arrested several times for shoplifting and drug offenses. A 12-year-old pretty girl on the streets of Las Vegas doesn’t have a bright future, but that’s what happens when you choose a criminal for a father. His boy is eight. He sleeps at a youth shelter. The White kids will both end up in a juvenile detention home. We are keeping them under surveillance just in case

 White tries to contact them. I foresee Iris White being a bag lady. She is too crazy to hold down any job and care for herself, much less her children.

 

WHERE IS NEVADA WHITE TODAY?

We believe White is floating around Mexico somewhere. At this writing, we haven’t filed any criminal (or any civil) charges against him. The beauty of it is that we have put him out of business and seized all his assets. White, the criminal, has been turned into a cringing, hiding dog with his tail between his legs by Justice's mighty and magnificent force. Maybe, if he doesn’t turn up, we won't do anything, and he can just dangle in the wind for the rest of his life! Questions? Does White have any money left? We thought he had upwards of forty million stashed away at one time. We’ve uncovered around 21 mils. In my opinion, he’s broke, down and out for the final count. And now, finally, to answer the question you’ve all been waiting for:

How does a Federal Agent (or ex-Federal Agent like myself) make money in these confiscation deals?

THE WELL-DESERVED REWARD OF ROOSTER WOOSTER?

How much will I personally make out of this all? It looks like the total seizure of assets uncovered by me will amount to $20 million. After giving two-thirds to the banks and the Swiss government, I personally could net up to 20 percent of the remaining $7 million, and that comes, of course, to $1.4million. But Iris, in the unlikely event she can snap out of her irrational mode long enough to hire a contingent fee lawyer, may be able to claim a ten percent finders fee. In the worst-case scenario for us, she could even go after all the Foundation assets because technically she, not White, was the beneficiary.

 But assuming she just claimed the standard IRS finder’s fee for informants, that would reduce my take by ten percent. I still stand to make over a million personally. Then too, those agents who seized cars, furniture, files, computers, books, and other things out of safe deposit boxes get to use them for undercover work and such. Our somewhat loose procedure for seized cash and assets from our targets does provide for individual agents holding on to them as a sort of incentive awards. For example, I got Nevada’s $40,000 Rolex watch as a gift from Iris, and I’m keeping it, of course. It’s all legal. This sort of gift is duly reported, and possession worked out in meetings between the agents involved and their supervisors. Of course, a lot of things just ‘disappear’ these days. Especially creeps like "KABBOB" White and their ill-gotten gains! [Laughter]

So, ladies and gentlemen. There we have it. End of session. [Applause].

NEVADA WHITE: WHO AM I?

Here’s my life story, at least the short version. After reading it, you decide if I am such a bad guy – a dangerous criminal. Should the government have put so much time, planning, and effort into putting me out of business?

 I was born in 1948 in Baltimore, Maryland. Came from an ordinary, poor, honest, working-class family. My widowed mother raised two children, my brother, and myself. After high school, my brother and I went our separate ways, both becoming moderately successful professional musicians. He was into classical music, and I was into jazz.

 As a jazz musician, I went on many tours all over the world and performed for many years with The Charlie Byrd Trio. Then Stan Kenton. There were many other bands I worked with – and countless one night stands. Many of our shows were paid for by the US Government. Some of our government-sponsored shows were meant to inspire goodwill towards America in trouble spots like South America and Southeast Asia. During 1976, my Trio was sponsored by the US State Department as part of the American Bicentennial and performed all over Central and South America for months promoting America. In those days, I was a true red, white, and blue patriotic American who proudly represented the ‘Land of the Free.’ After about ten years in show business, when I was nearly 30, I realized that I’d had a wonderful time and a good life. However, like most musicians, there was nothing in the bank to show for a decade of travel, discomfort, and hard work. By this time, I had a new wife, Iris, a lovely girl whom I’d met at one of our concerts. Her brother was the bass player in one of the countless bands I had formed. Iris and I were very much in love and wanted to start a family. We both agreed that show business did not provide the stability needed for us to have a real home, roots, and steady income.

 

MY FIRST PROFITABLE REAL ESTATE DEALS

Looking for a new career, I attended several seminars: Bob Allen’s How to Buy Property for Nothing Down, plus Think Like A Tycoon, and another one on how to make a fortune in mail order. As a result of what I learned, we (my sweet wife and myself) tried out the ideas and decided that our best opportunity to earn serious money was by creating low-income housing with government financing. In 1977, anyone could find run-down housing in the Baltimore/Washington DC area and get substantial low-interest-rate government loans and free grants to restore these often abandoned slum-dwelling units. Developers, such as my wife and I became, were then obligated to rent the refurbished units out to low-income tenants. Rent was paid or subsidized by the government welfare system.

 After a few years, because the tenants were usually unemployed, destructive slobs, with a very bad attitude about property maintenance, the units were slums again. The government programs provided that the ‘urban renewal’ process could then be repeated. More time was spent on red tape than on construction work, but once into my first project, I learned the ropes. Soon I was providing the government with hundreds of approved federally subsidized dwelling units. It turned out that my wife and I were managing and marketing them more successfully than my competitors. We were finally earning serious money: Profits? Close to half a million a year, net after taxes. Not bad for a former jazz drummer who barely graduated from high school. My income taxes were low to non-existent because government rebates and tax credits for those engaged in this sort of fairly unpleasant work were granted considerable tax relief.

 It was nice to be earning this kind of money. Especially nice that it was tax-sheltered. If the government gave me all this money in the forms of grants and loans, and if they let me keep more than most people could via a special tax break, I figured my great and wonderful country must be appreciative of the work I did was doing. I was providing decent housing for the needy. Could I show others how to do the same thing?

 

THE MONEY WAS GOOD, BUT I WASN’T ENTIRELY HAPPY

Why? The people I had to deal with in government and my tenants/employees were not nearly as stimulating as my associates from the world of music. I liked the money but hated the job. Because I had originally attended a seminar that exposed me to this new opportunity, I decided to teach my new trade (opportunities in government loans and grants) by means of a weekend seminar in the Baltimore area, where I was operating. It was a way to get back ‘on stage,’ tell a few of my favorite jokes and make interesting friends. Once again, I enjoyed the applause and audience adulation.

 OK, I am an egoist. But as Zsa Zsa Gabor said when asked if she slept with perfect strangers: “Nobody is perfect.” Giving seminars was a lot more fun than running construction crews and collecting rents. It provided me with interesting new business associates. Being a lecturer and author enhanced my stature as an ‘expert’ with the government housing bureaucrats I worked with. In fact, many of them were guest speakers at my early seminars.

 It is surprising to hear at this late date that the government wanted to keep these programs secret! I always understood that the grant and loan programs were underexposed because the government lacked PR skills and funds to promote them. I thought they welcomed chaps like me who would popularize them and bring in ‘customers.’ today, as we know, many HUD officials from those days were indicted and sent to jail for self-dealing as a result of the HUD (Housing & Urban Development Department) scandals. Now I understand why they didn’t want me to focus attention on these giveaway programs. They did not want anyone except their cronies and themselves to get the giveaway goodies. The same thing has gone on for years at the Small Business Administration. My prediction? It is just a matter of time before some investigative reporter uncovers the (bureau) rats in the cheese at SBA. In any event, to get people to buy tickets to my weekend seminars, I did radio and TV talk shows and gave a free public four-hour‘ preview.’ At my preview, I promised to give away a free book to the first thirty people who arrived – but then, to eliminate hard feelings, I gave away free books to all who came and signed up for my course. Strange as it may seem, the offer of a free $25 book was a big inducement for people to sign up. At the end of my free talk, I would invite my attendees to my Government Grant and Loan Program, a $ 349.95-weekend seminar. A quarter of the freebie people came, and probably a third to a half of my early seminar attendees actually went into some aspect of the business and did well at it.

 Why is this fact important? Because if you think back to the government accusations, my program was a ‘completely worthless fraud,’ and nobody benefited but me. That just wasn’t so. As might be expected, there were those who did not make any effort. I called them ‘seminar junkies’ because they seemed to be people who just liked to go to various seminars and night school classes for social or other reasons. They were lookers, not doers. Some admitted they were on a never-ending quest for the holy grail – what holy grail? A perfect business: No work, no effort, no investment, and no risk. Just cascades of cash falling down on them from heaven for reading a book or attending a seminar. The seminar junkies took my course, were told they could make a million – but that successfully running a construction outfit could be a fourteen-hour a day, stressful job. Then they decided that their ‘Holy Grail’ was somewhere else. Even so, I offered a refund (at the end of the weekend) to anyone who was not happy with my seminar for any reason.

 

A STANDARD OF SUCCESS THAT NO TEACHER CAN GUARANTEE

The government claims that my program was some kind of fraud because 100% of my graduates didn’t have success. I ask, does everyone who reads a diet book lose weight? Of course not. They have to do what the book advises – and that is usually to cut down on intake and exercise a bit. Some people, maybe the majority, can’t hack it. My course was the same. If you took my prescription to heart and actually did it, you couldn’t help but succeed. If you sat on your fanny and waited for a magic cascade of cash to blow through the nearest keyhole, nothing happened.

Some of those seminar junkies from the 1980s will no doubt make a life-changing career move sooner or later. Everyone finds a niche somewhere. But while I usually heard from my successful graduates, I could not determine what happened to those who did not persevere with my business start-up government loan and grant program. Like someone who teaches diet and exercise, I can educate and motivate, but not everyone who takes my course or any course will follow through. But the Federal Trade Commission insisted that I offer every single person who ever took my course a full refund! Does Harvard Law School have to give a lifetime refund offer of tuition? Seventy percent of the Harvard grads do not end up practicing law? Is Harvard Law School a fraud?

 

THAT'S SHOW BIZ

Back to my life on the seminar circuit before Big Brother came into my life and put an end to it. As time passed, I noticed that I had a lot more fun talking about my old deals than I experienced doing them. Enthusiastic audiences laughed at my stories. The applause gave me a rush.

  It was great to be back on stage – in show business again. I turned over my real estate mini-empire and actual construction business (by then a corporation) to others and decided to spend most of my time touring the States, giving more seminars. For a long while, I was having fun and making good money – a few thousand dollars a day. For around five years after I left the old business, income kept rolling in from my rental units and those low-income rental projects, even without me at the helm. Thus, my seminar income was insulated from tax by all those low-income housing tax shelters I owned. The seminar business itself became quite profitable.

 

Only a few years after quitting music, I was a multi-millionaire.

 

My relationship with my wife was excellent. We acquired a comfortable, upper-middle-class home, and a new baby daughter, then another child. It was too good to last. I didn’t know I was under surveillance, having been targeted by a Federal Strike Force for prosecution.

 I later realized that the government cut down just about everyone who made it big on the seminar circuit. Just as with Al Capone, agents were diligently fishing around to discover some federal crimes they could pin on me. The process took almost five years. The tenacious Feds always look very hard, not stopping until they can fit some offense to the facts. If they don’t find exactly what they need, they create the needed ‘facts.’ To help the process along, they send in their people to infiltrate and entrap.

 Once they get someone in their sights, that someone can be as innocent as a lamb, but they’ll get their target. At that time, in my life, I had no reason to believe my fate to become a disgraced, bankrupt fugitive had already been decided in Washington. Before the Feds gave me the hook and threw the book at me, my thoughts were on improving my seminars.

 

A NEW IDEA – THE TV INFOMERCIAL

When you are in show business, the audience is always demanding new material. Less talented imitators steal old material. The same was true of my low-income housing seminar. I started out by explaining how low-income housing, a tiny segment of the trillion-dollar real estate market, worked.

 Later I broadened the seminar to cover other investments. Few people were interested in going into unglamorous low-income housing (regardless of how good it was financially), but almost everyone was interested in at least buying or fixing their own home or condominium, with government-sponsored zero or three percent interest rate loans and free grants. I tried out many different ideas and materials to come up with new seminars, plus book and cassette tape ‘products’ that could be successfully marketed. Some ideas worked, and some fell flat. My seminar, Funeral Homes for Fun and Profit, was an opening night flop.

 

Nobody showed up. People just do not want to hear about certain topics.

 

REPLICATION AND TV EXPOSURE – MY TICKET TO SERIOUS MONEY

Doing live seminars every weekend was fun, but putting educational material on video or cassette tapes and in books was, I felt, going to be my future. Replicating myself mechanically would be less strenuous than all those personal appearances. I knew that a bestselling recording or book would make me as much or more money than running a thousand low rent tenement apartments. There would be less grief and no exposure to drug-crazed tenants with guns who despised landlords. So I dumped the real estate business by giving it to my brother.

 I had tired of endless travel and stays in hotel rooms to put on my weekly live seminars. A one-shot correspondence course would be cheaper and better for the buyer because a live seminar was $350, and I could put the same material in a mail-order ‘kit’ and sell it for $50. The tapes could be played or viewed over and over. It would certainly get to more people than my performing life.

 After several years on the road with my seminars, I wanted to spend more time at home with my family and no longer needed the show biz ‘razzmatazz’ that initially attracted me.

 My first real estate home study courses were not particularly good sellers. Why? There was too much similar material on the market at that time. Also, government changes in the tax laws had made real estate far less attractive. With property free-falling prices as a result of the changes, nobody showed up for real estate oriented seminars, nor did they buy my books and tapes. I looked at the more successful mail-order books on the market and zeroed in on a few winners that seemed to be selling well:

 

How To Do Your Own Divorce,

Published By Nolo Press.

How To Do Your Own Will Or Set Up A Trust Without Lawyers,

By Norbert Dacey.

How To Set Up Your Own Corporation For Under $100 Without A Lawyer,

By Ted Nicholas

 

The big selling point for each of these popular books or courses seemed to be giving the common man the ‘secrets’ of how to do something technical without paying lawyers, accountants, or other experts.

 Their ads always offered a free bonus something-or-other ‘if you act now.’ From my own experience, a free offer of some sort always cinched the sale for many of the otherwise undecided. Nobody, but nobody, ever considered this fraudulent advertising.

 Because of my experience with low-income housing, low-interest rate loans, and free grants, I was aware of how some government loans and grants could be obtained. I made it my business to find out about other government loan and grant programs. To understand them better, I applied for some of the business development and other grants for myself. They worked. I made good money with those grants and low-interest loans.

 

Then I gave a few live seminars on the subject, pointed my students in the right direction, and worked with those first men and women until they did, in fact, get substantial loans or grants. Then, we made a very interesting video documentary of interviews with these ex-students, government officials, employees, and others. The documentary showed how ordinary people were able to work with the government and get very substantial funds out of the public teat by simply filling in a few forms.

 Sure, we poked a little fun at the government's programs. We said that these programs were like a giveaway lottery – with one important difference! The chances of ‘winning’ a grant were perhaps 90% (i.e., 9 out of 10 applicants were winners) – instead of 1 in a million. The entry costs were nil.

All in all, it was an interesting and informative program. I got a local TV station to play my documentary in a late-night spot. They needed filler material that didn’t cost the station anything. A local station was happy to give me sixty seconds to promote my $50 How to Get Government Loans and Grants kit at the end of a thirty-minute educational show. It never occurred to me that my low budget documentary would be the ‘perfect crime’ the government was waiting to pin on me.

PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE

My documentary did, however, get me in deep trouble. As it turned out, I had made the world’s first "infomercial." TV stations all over the USA were soon running my programs on the same basis (free educational material in exchange for a free commercial at the end). It was a miracle. Like a hit record or box office breaking movie, orders for my kit poured in. I grossed over $40 Million on them in just seven months. This was more money than I had ever dreamed of. Then a dozen imitators came out with similar material and TV presentations. The party was over. Sales fell to a trickle.

 

READY TO RETIRE WHEN THE FTC STRUCK

The party was already over, and I was ready to quit and go on to something new when an ‘injunction to protect the public from my fraudulent advertising’ from the Federal Trade Commission was served on me. It was a bolt out of the blue, without any warning. In this court paper, I was accused of deceptive advertising and mail fraud and ordered to have a printed message on any future videos to show that the entire half-hour was a paid commercial message. In my opinion, it was a pretty good inspirational program.

 

Only thirty seconds was a commercial.

 

Worst of all, the FTC said they were going to send all my customers a letter at my expense, telling them that they had been defrauded. The fraud was that I offered the first hundred people who ordered my book a free gift book, but as the government correctly pointed out, ‘in reality the defendant Nevada White, fraudulently gave away the free book to everyone.’ A letter with this statement in it was sent to all my past customers. It contained an invitation to request a full refund. Regardless of how long ago they had taken my seminars or what their personal results had been. Under the terms of the FTC ‘offer’ to give away my money, customers did not have to return the merchandise or show any evidence that they had paid for it. Just file a claim, and good old Nevada White would pay you. Without any trial, hearing, or anything resembling due process, I was ordered to pay for the entire (refund offer) mailing – a several hundred thousand dollar projects – and to stand by, ready to pay out on whatever requests for refunds came in.

 Officials at the San Francisco FTC office were particularly harsh and dictatorial. I had always offered a thirty-day ‘no questions asked, iron-clad’ refund, but an unlimited, open-ended refund offer without even any need to return the material was going to bankrupt me, I thought. The experience was very upsetting. The FTC people threatened me with millions in fines if I didn’t go along with their offer. Off the record to my attorney, he was asked to pass on the threat of a long jail term if I didn’t play ball according to their rules. The FTC officials who made these threats perjured themselves in later testimony denying this.

 In the newspapers, I read that Levi-Strauss of Blue-Jean fame had to make a similar refund offer because of a promotion they did years earlier. During the period, they sold about 2 million pairs of Jeans at $80 per pair. But the number of refund requests that came in, and which they were forced to pay, amounted to 8 million – four times the amount of pants they had sold.

 I knew I’d be reduced to poverty. So I spirited away a few million bucks in an account abroad. Then it turned out I didn’t have to squirrel away my little nest egg. After many months and (no kidding!) a couple of million dollars in legal fees, the conflict ended as unexpectedly as it started. My lawyers worked out a compromise. They settled this civil case with no admission of guilt. I agreed to pay a no crippling fine and to insert a notice in any future TV Show that the entire program was "a paid commercial" for the product I was selling. This was not true in my view, but I simply couldn’t afford to spend another two million in attorney fees fighting with government guys who had an unlimited budget and formidable enforcement powers.

 

Since the refund requests from the FTC mailing were minimal, less than 1%, I paid off on them and thought it was back to business as usual. All I had to do was think up a new product to recoup my losses. Oh, one little thing, as part of the settlement, my lawyers submitted a signed affidavit by me that my personal net worth was (then) well under a million dollars. Keep this in mind because it becomes important later in this tale.

WHY I WENT 'OFFSHORE'

In view of possible future problems with the government and my being told that the Feds had new programs to seize your money first and take you to court later, my lawyer suggested (after the injunction had been filed) that I protect my family by moving my money out of the country. We did this 100% legally. I established a Liechtenstein Family Foundation run by a bank in Switzerland.

The deal was that I ‘gave’ most of my money to some trustees who were to manage it at their discretion, and payout income to my family as long as we lived. Any balance when the family died off was to be used for medical research. I was told that this arrangement meant I could sign an affidavit for my own US lawyer’s use – to the effect that I had divested myself of most of my worldly goods. Both my US and Swiss lawyers assured me that this arrangement would keep my assets protected against any creditors who materialized after the Foundation was established.

UNFORTUNATELY, IT DID NOT WORK OUT AS PLANNED.

I did not know that after my FTC settlement, I was targeted as an enemy of the state. Until I read the leaked government report, I was unaware that they had kept me under surveillance for nearly five years, looking to create crimes that I could be prosecuted for. From the government report you have just read in the previous chapter. I first discovered how a sexy female government agent had wormed her way into my staff as my personal secretary. She had seduced me at a weak moment during the FTC proceedings, by giving me tea and sympathy, as well as some skillfully administered oral sex.

 My wife was more interested in her boob lifts, fanny fillers, and other cosmetic surgery at the time of my serious problems. She couldn’t be bothered to give me any understanding or affection. Laura (the undercover government agent sent out to seduce me) pretended to sympathize with my problems. With her connivance, the government had secretly filmed movies of our trysts in her apartment.

 This porn flicks starring taxpayer-funded Laura and myself (both naked as a Jay Bird) were shown by federal agents to my wife in an effort to turn her against me. They were successful. After betraying me by giving them my Liechtenstein Foundation’s bank statements, my wife Iris lied to me that she had refused their request to tell them where our money was. She still tells me that she was not the source of this information. Maybe she believes it. I guess she is still in denial.

 She certainly spilled the beans, to her government-sponsored lover, Mr. Rooster Wooster,’ giving him and the agents who showed her the film of Laura giving me a blow job in my office. In return for their exhibiting this porn flick to a one-person audience (my wife), the Feds got from her all the details of our Liechtenstein Foundation arrangements.

 It was incredibly stupid of my wife Iris to give them this information. The $20 Million of Foundation money in Switzerland was half hers already, and all for her and the kids when I passed on. But to paraphrase William Shakespeare, “Hell hath no fury like a woman who sees a movie of her husband in flagrante, bonking a lady IRS agent.” I just made that up, but a Shakespeare character said something like that, much more elegantly, I’m sure.

 During the course of her employment with me, the undercover agent, Laura B.J., actually stole $450,000 to $500,000 from me, not just the $350,000 admitted by the Feds in the previous document. I guess she needed the extra $150,000 cash she stole in order to pay her income tax bill on the money they authorized her to steal from me. Naturally, I sued her and tried to have her arrested, but all to no avail. She was protected as a government witness (against me) by the government.

 Was this unusual? Not at all, I discovered. There are literally thousands of criminals on the loose, with phony references provided by the government, preying upon innocent victims. After their crimes are discovered, they are given immunity from arrest or lawsuits by the Government Witness Protection Program.

 My wife began acting very hysterical and irrational early on, soon after my troubles with the government began. Instead of us sticking together as a family, she dumped me and ran off, our two kids in tow, to live with ‘Rooster,’ a strange guy she met on an internet forum. I just now learned from the secret Butkiss Report, that in addition to my government-sponsored lover Laura, my wife was also seduced by a government agent. Maybe everyone I knew or worked with was also an undercover government agent. That sort of thing can drive you nuts! A lot of people in my employ turned against me, stole, and ran off with whatever they could. It was incomprehensible that my wife gave away trust money that was to support us both in our old age – divorced or not. She gave away the nest egg that was to put the kids through college and give them a good start in life. The Liechtenstein Foundation was half hers. Why give it to the government?

 She had so much hatred and resentment against me getting a few BJs from Laura that her own future and the kids' security was a distant second to her need for revenge. Irrationally, she cut off her nose to spite her face.

BETRAYED BY MY BANKERS

It was another big surprise that my Swiss bankers sold me out by turning my money over without any legal resistance. I couldn’t understand why. Now it has been revealed. The bankers stand to gain a third of any client’s account by giving up one third to Big Brother and one third to their own government!

 Surely, the cruelest blow of all was Iris – my beloved wife of twenty years -- betraying me, taking the confidential information on our Foundation to give to the government, and filing for divorce and child custody. A fine how-do-you-do after twenty years of marriage! I thought it was karma when ‘Rooster,’ her new boyfriend, threw her and my kids out on the street after an argument. Little did I know it was all part of the government’s cunning plan to have a second go at me.

 

WHY IRIS AND MY KIDS CAME BACK AFTER THE DIVORCE

I did not want my children to be out on the street or to think badly of their Mom or me. This was after the divorce. I was granted full custody because she ranted and raved incoherently in court about castrating me and sending my penis aloft with a helium inflated balloon. The lady judge wasn’t impressed with Iris' ability to be an ideal mother under the circumstances. But remember, I still loved her, and all women get a little crazy from time to time!  Even though we were divorced, as soon as possible, I set Iris up in a new (separate) house so she could live across the street from me and still help raise our kids. I didn’t suspect she had already sold me out!

 In effect, she had given the government all the information they would use to seize all our assets. The money in our Foundation was half hers and would have ultimately gone to our two kids. The government guy who seduced her and got her to give up the family fortune must be very pleased with himself. No doubt, he will get a medal and a promotion besides his finder’s fee. Soon after Iris came back, my house, books and records, computers, furniture, and all my petty cash money were seized in a raid by federal agents. I didn’t know how or why it happened or the story behind all this until the previous article was given to me by friends. I never dreamed in my wildest dreams that a former drummer, turned entrepreneur, could warrant the government investigating me for five long years. What was the social imperative that made it so important to sink a guy whose main crime was giving away books to everyone who called instead of just the first hundred?

ALL OF THIS BRINGS US TO THE PRESENT TIME

Now I am flat broke, stuck in a rotten hot, and humid place because I was given a house to care to take by an old friend. I’m unable to afford the lawyers needed to get that day in court I am said to be entitled to. Contingent fee lawyers don’t seem to be interested in taking my case even if I offer them 99% of any collection. They are immediately intimidated by threats (from the other side) of having their own finances and tax situation investigated if they touch my case. They are told that my money is ‘tainted,’ and if they get any of it, they can’t keep it in any event. My nutty ex-wife doesn't speak to me. She seems to be living on a different planet – oblivious to reality and convinced that I am plotting against her. The kids are having problems. The government doesn’t care what they do to families. They would probably like to see my kids homeless and on the street without supervision. Hopefully, it will not come to that. But my two little children don’t know where their father is. Obviously, their quality of life has changed drastically.

 I can’t reveal my whereabouts to my children nor anyone from my past life – especially now that I know the government wants to ‘put me away for at least 40 years.’ Often, I’m not in such a clear-thinking mental state myself anymore due to so many trusted people in my life betraying me. Losing your family, twenty years of savings, and having your entire life flushed down the toilet isn’t so easy to accept with calm resignation. And now, from the Internet, I learn that if I show my face, I’ll be indicted and clapped in jail.

 I don’t know whether there are any warrants out for my arrest, but they're probably are. I wonder if giving away free books on TV qualifies me for the “Ten Most Wanted” list? The American cops probably consider me a fugitive. Am I paranoid? Just because I think they’re out to get, I don’t mean they’re not if you see what I mean. I am in hiding and expected to stay in that mode until the situation clarifies. Maybe the government will tell me what else they want from me at this point to settle the case. Suicide is probably the answer they will give.

 From the previous document, my situation and that of my family doesn’t look very promising. Having escaped from the land of the free and home of the brave, I regret that I didn’t follow my offshore guru’s advice. I could have compartmentalized my assets offshore in several places so that they didn’t get everything in one swoop. It would have been impossible for Big Brother to get everything If I had followed my advisors' good wisdom. I could have divided my money in several accounts into several different countries. If different entities or names were involved, and if the deposits were spread out among several banks and brokers, they couldn’t have seized all my assets. I’d have had some warning and could have done some damage control.

 

I WAS GREEDY

The bank in Zurich I chose to manage the Foundation’s money was making me over 20% a year. Also, I wanted to keep things simple and not have too many account numbers to worry about. Trouble is if your mother lode is all in one place, and if your enemies discover it, you can be wiped out in one fell swoop – just as I was.

 I always thought that a top-secret Liechtenstein Anstalt or Foundation was the most secure way assets could be held. Wrong! If your enemies (in this case, my ex-wife and personal secretary) know the exact account numbers and have copies of all the papers setting up a trust, foundation, or otherwise, your goose is cooked. Your assets are going to be lost! If there are copies of these papers anywhere in your home country, you are at risk!

 

MY BIGGEST MISTAKE

What was it? Trusting my wife with financial secrets. Who could have thought that she would essentially give away what was half hers (and all hers, if I died)? I regret that my wife knew too much. My lawyer and another advisor warned me that wives, lovers, and disgruntled employees were the cause of more legal distress than any other factor. She had access to all the information: Foundation agreement, balances, account numbers, the works. She was so angry or out of her head that a skillful undercover agent also gained control of her quivering lower lips and her head. The money is gone!

 

WAS I A BAD GUY? A CRIMINAL?

I don’t regret anything I did in business. Why? Because I don’t think of myself as some kind of villain:

 

I never hurt anyone. I never defrauded nor conned anyone. Sure, I was entrapped into cheating on my wife. When they hit forty or so and realize their good looks are going, some women begin to go crazy and do irrational things. In my case, my wife simply cut me off sexually, and then, running off with a government agent, she tossed the family treasure down the toilet. She gave no thought to the impact that throwing away twenty million dollars would have on her children, or herself. I should never have put her in the position to be able to destroy our family as she did.

HERE COME THE VIOLINS

Is giving away free books such a crime that I should have the punishment I got? I was a good husband and a good father. As far as I know, I never broke any laws. Although, nowadays, there are so many laws. I guess everyone has enough theoretical violations, so the government can select a few criminal offenses and pin them on anyone they choose. You may never have heard of the law they use against you, but if they make you a target, they will find a crime to fit. Giving away free books was my initial ‘crime.’ The affidavit (that they claim false) about my net worth being under a million was another crime. The offshore trust was something I was pushed into by circumstances, and my expert lawyer’s advice. There is no reason it wouldn’t have stayed quietly in place and been an excellent retirement fund – if my wife hadn’t blabbed.

 

It seems to me that my statement was truthful because I did give my money to a Foundation. But I would not take my chances in front of a jury on that one. The exposure by my wife? It was made possible by my bad judgment in telling her where I hid the money. I knew she was mentally unstable when I told her about the offshore trust money in the foundation. The lawyers and my offshore guru said, ‘don't tell her.’ Keep your mouth shut. But I guess I wanted her to know that she and the kids were taken care of, no matter what. As a result, she knew enough to cook my goose.

 Regarding my seminars and tapes, I was one of the very few who actually had successfully done what I was teaching. I personally used many government loan and grant programs, and thousands of my students did too. My program was not a fraud. It worked. Perhaps it worked too well. To stain me even more, the Feds have accused me of being a hop headed dope fiend. The truth? Like our former President Slick Willy, I smoked but never inhaled. And that was thirty years ago when I was doing a show in Morocco where puffing on a hubble-bubble between the acts was legal.

 I’m trying to make light of it – but the dope accusation and much of the government’s case against you will be that sort of smear that has nothing to do with reality. It is just to turn a judge or jury against you, and unfortunately, it works. In a private lawsuit, you can dig up dirt against the other party, but most people selected for jury duty believe (wrongly, of course) that the Department of Justice is Lilly White, blameless, and is there only to protect them. Each juror sees himself as Horatio at The Gate. They are conned into believing they are doing a public service by putting defendants away. But at trial, they can’t be told that long (and often undeserved) terms in prison at taxpayer expense are what they are passing out.

THE END?

 

This whole experience has been nothing less than a nightmare. It was as bad as any fiction dreamed up by Kafka or Stephen King. What will happen next? Don’t ask me. Right now, I’m depressed. If you have any suggestions to cheer me up, pass them on to my publisher. He doesn’t know where I am, but I’ll visit a cyber-café and send for any messages now and then. I hope you’ve learned something from my story! Learn from my mistakes. Not only do you have to get your money out of the country, but you also have to keep its location and the name it’s stashed away in, a secret from your wife and other potential turncoats. And based on my experience, if you still think of Switzerland as the best banking haven there is, you’d better go back and re-read the last two chapters!

 

Blessings,

 

Nevada White (Not my real name)

Somewhere hot and humid.

 

Nevada White's Response:

DON'T MAKE MY MISTAKES!

 

Readers who think they are immune from unexpected, arbitrary prosecution by the state can certainly benefit from my experience. Though spilled milk can never be made sweet again, you don’t have to make the same mistakes.

 My mistakes involved what I thought were minor decisions at the time, but they cost me big bucks – twenty million dollars to be exact. In a few short months, I lost my family and suffered more anguish than I hope you’ll ever experience in a lifetime.

 More important, after reading the government report, you may think, “He got what he deserved.” You believe it could never happen to you. You are ‘good’ or ‘smarter.’

 Are you really? Have another think! Re-read my whole story carefully. I used to think I was smart. Now I’ve had a good dose of humble pie. Twenty million in the bank (that you’ve made all by yourself) makes you think you are a lot smarter than the next guy. You’re not. As my old mentor used to say, “Intelligence varies inversely with the amount of money most people have. The richer they are, the dumber they are.” That was his little joke to put both himself and me down.

 But the element of truth in his aphorism is that successful people too often think they are infallible and expert in all subjects. They disregard good advice and common sense. Don't you do it! I knew all the ‘PT’ rules, but I made a few fatal misjudgments in my asset protection plan. You’ll see what I did, why I did it, and the sad results. But first:

 

MY VERSION OF THE TRUTH

The government has painted me like a con-man, philanderer, money launderer, and all-around dangerous criminal. You know from the ‘Butkiss Report’ on catching guys like me how they have broken up my family, traumatized my two young children, driven me into hiding, and caused my wife to become a raving lunatic. Let’s not forget the money either. Without any justification that I can fathom, they destroyed my business, put dozens of people – my employees, associates, and those who depended upon them – out of work, and redistributed my money to the ‘needy’: Lawyers, government investigators, and their cronies. Until I obtained and read the previous government document, I did not fully understand what was behind everything that happened to me.

 All my assets, both domestic and offshore, were confiscated – without any hearing or trial. If they did it to me, they could do it to you. That’s why you need as your advisor, a rational, informed person to keep you from making obvious mistakes. I had such an advisor. To my great regret, I disregarded much of his good advice.

 

More about that later.

 

Now, back to my ‘crime.’ Remember: I have never been arrested nor indicted in my life. [Sorry, I might have had a couple of speeding tickets, but that is the extent of it.] I have no criminal record. Even at this moment, there are no warrants out for my arrest, and no criminal charges of any sort have ever been filed against me.

 

WHAT WAS MY CRIME? GIVING AWAY FREE BOOKS!

As a loyal, patriotic, and law-abiding American, a few years ago, I would have thought that what was done to me (and what you read about in the leaked government report in the previous chapter) was unconstitutional and illegal – in a word, impossible. Yet now I understand that what happened to me is an every-day routine matter. More than that, my fate is the destiny of almost anyone who has a high profile in the United States. Anyone who makes good financially will probably be a target at some time in his life – more likely, several times.

 The latest fad in American bureaucracy today is confiscating assets on one pretext or another. If you have substantial assets – let’s say over a million dollars – some local or national agency will try to steal from you. Getting your assets offshore (as I did) is a good move, but it may not be enough to save your ass, I mean assets. You have to do it right!

 Since my own troubles began, I have discovered that there is hardly one successful author, media celebrity, mail order merchant, pop musician, or political activist who has not a similar story to tell. Someone should put all these stories together between two covers to warn of government excesses. The closest thing to it at this moment is the Bye Bye Big Brother books, but they were never designed for a mass audience. I believe that everyone should know how the government targets, taints, and tears successful people to shreds. That, in fact, is one of my motivations in writing and releasing this story.

“The Millionaire’s Favorite Read”

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