Developer Faces Fraud Charges

A Marengo developer pleaded not guilty Friday to all charges in a 23-count federal indictment that alleges that he defrauded customers and investors of more than $1 million.

The indictment claims that builder John M. Volpentesta, 50, defrauded at least four families using his company, Volpentesta Construction Inc., by charging the families for supplies that he then would use on a strip mall he owned. He also is alleged to have charged them for work that his company did not do.

The indictment charges Volpentesta with mail, wire and tax fraud. It alleges that between mid-2003 and the end of 2005, Volpentesta withheld $164,999 in federal income tax, Medicare and Social Security taxes from his employees’ paychecks, but never turned that money over to the Internal Revenue Service.

He faces three charges of failing to file Federal Unemployment Tax returns for his company from 2003 to 2005 and three more for failing to file personal income-tax returns for himself and his wife. |Read more|

December 9th. Is Anti-Corruption Day

A resolution was signed on October 31, 2003, by the General Assembly, that declared December 9 as International Anti-Corruption Day. This decision was taken in order to raise awareness of corruption and of the role of the United Nations Convention against Corruption in combating and preventing it.

The Assembly urged all States and competent regional economic integration organizations to sign and ratify the United Nations Convention against Corruption as soon as possible in order to ensure its rapid entry into force.

Lets stand united, on this day, and hold corrupt individuals responsible for their actions.

New Levee Inspection Documentation

According to the Times-Picayune, special levee inspection training courses for district employees will begin this year. From animal burrows in the levees to sinking scour protection along the floodwalls, regulations now require that all deviations be put in writing, photographed, signed by levee district leaders and distributed to state and federal authorities.

First Question: What were the previous requirements for inspecting the levees?

Today the districts are using standardized forms and the inspections are being done, at least within the hurricane protection system, by personnel who have successfully completed the state training course, which included passing four written tests.

Second Question: How is the hurricane protection system determined?

"It won't make the system fail in and of itself," Ardoin said of the deficiencies, "but we want everything documented.

"You may have 20 to 30 to 40 pages in every report, depending on the number of miles," he said. And all those reports, along with any "remedial action" reports documenting repairs, must be signed by the district's chief executive and board president before being submitted to the Army Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Transportation and Development, or DOTD.

The DOTD was reorganized after Katrina to invest its Water Resources Division with a much greater role in levee safety and hurricane flood protection.

Ardiron said his department is working toward developing an online interactive map that will allow the public to see recent inspection reports for every mile of levees and floodwalls.

Third Question: Will this online interactive map be developed prior to the hurricane system?

Former Fruit of the Loom Exec Receives His Fate

It seems that Stan "Pampy" Barre's act of money laundering, mail fraud and obstruction of justice has been taken on the road like a well known script from a bad play. Fruit of the Loom has its own bandit in treachery. According to a news report, a former Fruit of the Loom executive and two other south-central Kentucky residents have been sentenced in a scheme to defraud Kentucky-based Fruit of the Loom, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Kalen Wade Watkins, 45, of Alvaton, a former executive with the company, was sentenced to 10 years and one month for conspiracy to commit mail fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice, U.S. Attorney David L. Huber's office said in a statement.

Laura Leigh Wells, 33, of Bowling Green, was sentenced to one year and one day, and Tyrone Nathaniel Tackett, 36, of Bowling Green, was sentenced to one year and three months for conspiring to defraud the underwear manufacturer.

Watkins previously pleaded guilty to a scheme in which, as Fruit of the Loom's environmental director, he hired companies owned by several co-conspirators to perform services for the company and approved inflated invoices from the companies, according to Huber's office.

Wells, of Environmental Technology Associates, and Tackett, of Cyclone Inc., paid Watkins hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks.

U.S. District Judge Thomas B. Russell also ordered the three to pay restitution totaling nearly $1.7 million and were given three years of supervised released when their sentences end.

Let's hope Mr. Barre gets a similar sentence as Mr. Watkins.

Jena 6 Teen Accepts Plea Deal

Mychal Bell, the teen at the center of the "Jena Six" case, pleaded guilty Monday to hitting a white classmate in an agreement that will allow him to go free by June.

In the agreement, Walters dropped conspiracy charges against Bell and reduced an aggravated battery charge to second-degree battery. Bell was sentenced to serve 18 months, which includes the year he already spent in jail.

He had been scheduled to go to trial Thursday. If convicted, he could have been sent to a juvenile facility until he was 21.

The deal allows Bell to be released to a group home and return to public school as early as Monday. He agreed to testify against the other five if their cases go to trial. Bell was also ordered to pay $935 toward court costs and Justin Barker's medical bills.

Bell had been held in an adult jail since last December. He was released in September after his conviction was overturned by an appeals court. He was sent to a juvenile facility in October for violating his probation on unrelated previous convictions for simple battery and criminal destruction of property.

The 'Who You Know' Doctrine

After I read this article, I could not help be reminded of the political scale in New Orleans.

Corruption in Hungary - It's WHO you know - paper
Budapest, December 3 (MTI) - A Hungarian wanting to manage an administrative matter had best know someone in the office handling it, reported Monday's national daily Nepszabadsag, analyzing corruption reports from private citizens and businesses.

While comparatively few people reported having to pay bribe money, nearly half the survey said their business was handled faster if they had friends in the administrative offices.

Fully 46.9 percent of the sample said their personal contacts speeded things up, although only 8.1 percent supplied a gift to support the contact. Even fewer, 3.2 percent said they had been asked for money to speed up their business, while only 1.8 percent said officials had asked them for money to approve a request.

The sample also found family services to operate best among the various offices of public administration, while they qualified employment centres as the worst. The least popular bureau - and apparently the one where one-third of people have had to contend with corruption - is the land title office, Nepszabadsag wrote.

New Orleans own brand is the 'Who You Know' Doctrine. 'What You Know' gets you nowhere in The Big Easy where political corruption continues to run rampant.

Incompetence In Criminal Sheriff's Office

There was an editorial in the Times Picayune yesterday that I found very interesting. The title of the editorial was Bookkeeping Blunders. I myself would have labeled it more harshly. Well, here goes:

The Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff's Office has made a muddle of its books, overcharging the city and state for prisoner housing, and that doesn't inspire confidence in an agency that operates with little independent oversight.

One of the errors resulted in overcharges to the city of almost $2 million. And while the Sheriff's Office has paid the money back, the problem didn't come to light for nearly two years and only because a state audit prompted Sheriff Marlin Gusman to take a harder look at billing.

The state audit found that the Sheriff's Office had been charging both the city and the state for inmates who were the state's financial responsibility. That double billing amounted to a $142,288 overcharge to the city in 2006. A private accounting firm is determining how much the city was erroneously charged in 2007.

But the state also paid too much for prisoners because the Sheriff's Office didn't notify the state when it released inmates. That resulted in a $244,371 overpayment from January 2006 through February 2007.

After those revelations, Sheriff Gusman said that he directed his staff to look into possible problems with billing for federal prisoners. That was the right move, and it uncovered yet another problem: the Sheriff's Office had billed the city for prisoners who were already being paid for by the U.S. Marshal's Service or Immigration and Custom Enforcement. As a result, the city was charged nearly $2 million that it did not owe.

Sheriff Marlin Gusman blames the blunders on a switch in billing systems required by the state, which went into effect in November 2005. That change meant that the Sheriff's Office was no longer printing separate invoices for the city and state, which had prevented double-billing.

But when the state required the change, it provided Department of Corrections trainers to local agencies, and those trainers stressed the need for departments to reconcile their books, a state official said.

The Sheriff's Office should have managed the transition better and should have made sure that it was billing accurately for prisoners and catching any errors. Going forward, Sheriff Gusman needs to make sure that all the problems have been spotted and corrected.

But the sheriff also needs to run a more open operation, something he's resisting even in the face of these embarrassing bookkeeping blunders. He submitted a one-page budget proposal to the City Council, seeking $27 million in city funds without providing any details on how his office plans to spend the money.

When City Councilwoman Shelley Midura said she thought his proposal wasn't as transparent as it should be, Sheriff Gusman bristled. He said that he's only required to submit a single budget figure to the city.

But Ms. Midura isn't the first to make that complaint. When Sheriff Gusman was Mayor Marc Morial's chief administrative office, he had the same issue with Sheriff Charles Foti's budget requests.

He was right then. Public agencies that spend public money should operate as openly as possible. Even if the Sheriff's Office were infallible -- and it clearly isn't -- that wouldn't be an argument for being so cagey.