January 2023 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

I’m shocked PONZI scam bitconnect used ’ The cryptocurrency revolution " in scamming people.
by professor rat 14 Jan '23

14 Jan '23

SHOCKED! https://decrypt.co/119110/victims-old-school-ponzi-bitconnect-receive-17-mi… Reposts not fake revolutionary verbiage used to fool morons

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The Narrative Is that Two Women Under 30 Committed Fraud without Detection by Sophisticated Wall Street Law Firms
by Gunnar Larson 14 Jan '23

14 Jan '23

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/01/the-narrative-is-that-two-women-unde… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 13, 2023 ~ Women have been demanding equal opportunity on Wall Street for the past 60 years. We’re pretty sure that equal opportunity to commit crimes on a par with the big boys on Wall Street is not what they had in mind. Confronting women on Wall Street today are two especially disheartening cases. In the photo on the left above is Caroline Ellison, who looks more like the wholesome star of a Disney children’s flick than a woman who has pled guilty to seven criminal counts for frauds she committed as CEO of Sam Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research. On the right in the photo above is Charlie Javice, founder and former CEO of Frank, a company that was hyped in a JPMorgan Chase press release when it acquired it in September of 2021 for $175 million as “the fastest growing college financial planning platform, to help millions of students and their families navigate their financial journey to college and beyond.” Javice joined JPMorgan Chase when it acquired her company and became a Managing Director. The website for the Frank platform has now been shut down and JPMorgan Chase is alleging in a lawsuit against Javice that she created a list of millions of fake users to entice the Wall Street megabank to buy her company. While Javice is innocent until proven guilty, the lawsuit does include smoking-gun emails between Javice and a professor discussing how best to fake customer information so that it is believable. In both the Caroline Ellison case and the Charlie Javice case, there are details that bring anguish to the veteran women of Wall Street. First, both women had their whole careers ahead of them. Ellison is 28 years old. Javice is 30. (Her alleged fraud occurred when she was under 30 in 2021.) Both women have prestigious education credentials. Ellison graduated from Stanford University in 2016 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mathematics. Javice indicates on her LinkedIn profile that she attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. The suggestion is that both women were somehow able to outwit two of the most sophisticated Wall Street law firms. Big Law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, was outside legal counsel to FTX and Alameda. Two of Sullivan & Cromwell’s former law partners worked in key legal positions at FTX businesses but failed to notice that Alameda was looting $8 billion from FTX exchange customers, according to regulators. JPMorgan Chase, which acquired Javice’s company, is the largest commercial bank in the United States with more than 5,000 branches across America and is one of the largest global trading houses in the world. It operates in more than 60 countries. It is represented by many of the oldest and largest law firms in the world that are paid extremely well to prevent JPMorgan Chase from being ripped off to the tune of $175 million by a 20-something woman. (Conversely, these law firms are also extremely well paid to defend JPMorgan Chase against its own rap sheet that reads like that of an organized crime syndicate.) On the day that JPMorgan Chase acquired Javice’s company in 2021, she posted a statement on her LinkedIn page which thanked Sidley Austin law partner Idan Netser “and his team at Sidley” for being “amazing advisors in this process.” According to the National Law Journal’s 2022 ranking of law firms, Sidley Austin employees 1,893 attorneys. Javice adds this in her 2021 statement at LinkedIn: “In just around four years, Frank has become the leading and fastest growing college financial planning platform serving over 5 million students at over 6,000 colleges. >From day one, our approach has been clear: students always come first.” It took 30 seconds on Google to learn that 6,000 colleges might be a tad of an exaggeration. According to CurrentSchoolNews.com, there are only 5,300 colleges and universities in the United States — and that includes beauty schools. So both the legions of in-house lawyers at JPMorgan Chase and the lawyers at Sidley Austin missed the smoking gun that Javice was claiming to have captured 113 percent of her targeted institutions. Netser is still a partner at Sidley Austin. His bio at the firm states that he “focuses his practice on international emerging technology companies, venture capital, and corporate and partnership taxation issues, including cross-border international investments, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, transfer pricing, tax planning and restructurings, international IP [Intellectual Property] planning and exploitation, and tax controversy.” (The word “exploitation” is probably not a good word for any law firm practice.) As of yesterday afternoon, Netser still lists among his representative clients, “Frank (acquired by JPMorgan Chase).” Perhaps he has yet to learn that JPMorgan Chase is calling it a big fraud.

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Voluntaryism: Haiti Now Hiring All Hands For Reboot Into NAP Compliant Society
by grarpamp 13 Jan '23

13 Jan '23

https://twitter.com/jeffsky_poincy/status/1612554595154395137 As of today, Haiti does not have a single elected official. The 3 branches of power are dysfunctional. The International community (BINUH and The Core Group) is the main decision-maker. We are perhaps further away from democracy than we were in the early 90s

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Russian government, not Ukraine, is antisemitic
by professor rat 13 Jan '23

13 Jan '23

Russia's exiled chief rabbi is urging Jewish people to flee the country Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt has served as Moscow’s chief rabbi for nearly three decades. He has also served as the head of the Conference of European Rabbis since 2011. interview by Nil Köksal, CBC Radio "As It Happens", (apparently early Sept. 2022) rebroadcast by Jason Vermes, CBC Radio "As It Happens", January 4, 2023 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/russian-rabbi-antisemitism-1.6703546 Moscow's exiled chief rabbi is urging Jewish people in Russia to leave the country while they can, as the war in Ukraine continues. Pinchas Goldschmidt says antisemitism, fueled in part by the government, is rising in Russia

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Thousands in Israel March Against 'Fascism and Apartheid' at Anti-Garofalo Protests
by professor rat 13 Jan '23

13 Jan '23

"We can see right now many laws being advocated for against LGBTQ, against Palestinians, against larger minorities in Israel," said one organizer. https://www.commondreams.org/news/anti-netanyahu-protests Reposts spotless in eternal sunshine of Assmange-error-correction

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grancrap's bosses are anti-human jews! So unexpected.
by punk 13 Jan '23

13 Jan '23

So, looks like one the 'masterminds' (LMAO!!!) behind the US jewnazi war against russia is a cunt called victoria nuland. Victoria, such am aryan' name. in reality the cunt "was born in 1961 to Sherwin B. Nuland, a surgeon born to Eastern European Jewish immigrants, and a Christian British native mother" ha - hard to think of a most toxic, anti-human mix : jewnazi-english-christian-jew. But wait, it gets better. The cunt is married to another anti-human jew called kagan. "In 1997, Kagan co-founded the neoconservative 'think tank' Project for the New American Century with William Kristol" Yeah it's THEM. The things who planned the 9/11 'new pearl harbour' in jew york city. Jakobo kagan and accomplices came up with this : "a section of Rebuilding America's Defenses entitled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force" became the subject of considerable controversy: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.""

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Natual rights anarchs call on Garofalo to resign after lying about Jews
by professor rat 13 Jan '23

13 Jan '23

And in related news, NY Republicans call on Santos to resign after lying about Jewish heritage https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ny-republicans-call-on-santos-… Reposts not antisemitic anarchists on an anarchists list

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JOHN " Cryptome " Young represents Alex Jones
by professor rat 13 Jan '23

13 Jan '23

Happy to clear that up emptywheel · 3h One of the nutty things that came out of the various DQ discussions is that Hull and Pettis claimed they're BOTH also representing Alex Jones. Seems like ANOTHER conflict we haven't even gotten into yet. Quote Tweet Brandi Buchman @Brandi_Buchman · 3h McCullough shows jurors what I believe is a recruitment video that PBs put together after the rally in November. It shows brawling, set to up-tempo rap, features "angry face" meme with text that says "KILL THEM, KILL THEM ALL" and Alex Jones screaming in rage with fists clenched Show this thread

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FTX Bankruptcy Proceedings Thus Far Show a Shocking Miscarriage of Justice
by Gunnar Larson 13 Jan '23

13 Jan '23

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/01/ftx-bankruptcy-proceedings-thus-far-… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 12, 2023 ~ To grasp the severity of the miscarriage of justice that occurred yesterday at the hands of Judge John Dorsey in the bankruptcy hearing for collapsed crypto exchange, FTX, one first needs a brief bit of background. The FTX companies that the bankruptcy lawyers are attempting to resuscitate or sell off to other crypto outfits (while the law firms collect millions of dollars in billable hours for their work) are peddling a product – crypto – that is created out of thin air and has no legitimate productive purpose. (See Over 1,600 of the Brightest Scientific Minds in Technology Have Signed a Letter Calling Both Crypto and Blockchain a Sham.) The hundreds of billions of dollars that American investors have been dumped into crypto exchanges, crypto lenders, crypto miners, and crypto banks are not only threatening the safety and soundness of the U.S. financial system, they are threatening the global competitiveness of U.S. innovation. These failing enterprises raise capital in public markets, crowding out real companies with real innovations. In July 2019, NYU Professor and economist Nouriel Roubini said this in a Bloomberg News interview: “Crypto currencies are not even currencies. They’re a joke…The price of Bitcoin has fallen in a week by how much – 30 percent. It goes up 20 percent one day, collapses the next. It is not a means of payment, nobody, not even this blockchain conference, accepts Bitcoin for paying for conference fees cause you can do only five transactions per second with Bitcoin. With the Visa system you can do 25,000 transactions per second…Crypto’s nonsense. It’s a failure. Nobody’s using it for any transactions. It’s trading one sh*tcoin for another sh*tcoin. That’s the entire trading or currency in the space where’s there’s price manipulation, spoofing, wash trading, pump and dumping, frontrunning. It’s just a big criminal scam and nothing else.” The law firm that Judge Dorsey is allowing to pull a coup d’etat in his courtroom is Sullivan & Cromwell – the go-to law firm for Wall Street for more than a century — which has bestowed on itself the role of lead law firm in the FTX bankruptcy. For reasons that appear to rest firmly on just two words – “billable hours” – Sullivan & Cromwell has immersed itself in all things crypto. In a recent FTX bankruptcy court filing, Sullivan & Cromwell acknowledged that not only has it collected legal fees and expenses of $8,564,487.50 from FTX and its related companies over the prior 16 months, plus a $12 million retainer for bankruptcy work, but it is simultaneously outside counsel to four of FTX’s major competitors: BlockFi, Coinbase, Gemini, and Kracken. The quick take on the status of those five clients of Sullivan & Cromwell is as follows: the FTX group of companies has been described by federal prosecutor Damian Williams as “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history” with three of its top executives now indicted on a combined 19 criminal counts; BlockFi is also in bankruptcy; Coinbase, a publicly-traded crypto exchange, has lost more than 80 percent of its market value over the past 12 months; Gemini has had more than $900 million of client funds frozen at another crypto firm, Genesis; and Kracken has fired 30 percent of its staff. But instead of bringing some sunshine to this murky mess that exists between Sullivan & Cromwell and the crypto cabal, Judge Dorsey has opted for more darkness. FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on November 11 – two months ago. The U.S. Trustee, which represents the Department of Justice in bankruptcy cases, together with major media outlets (Bloomberg News, Dow Jones, New York Times and Financial Times), had filed motions asking the court to release the names of the customers and creditors so that the public and the press could have transparency in the matter. There have been multiple academic studies showing that the vast majority of trading on unregulated crypto exchanges is fake with an unsavory agenda of attempting to legitimize an otherwise illegitimate enterprise. Just last month, a paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that “wash trading volume, on average, is as high as 77.5% of the total trading volume on unregulated exchanges, with a median of 79.1%….” The researchers define wash trading as “investors simultaneously selling and buying the same financial assets to create artificial activity in the marketplace….” Judge Dorsey releasing the names of the customers would allow the academic community and the press to conduct an analysis into the nature of traders that used FTX as well as its interrelationships with the megabanks and hedge funds on Wall Street. A document filed with the bankruptcy court by Sullivan & Cromwell has indicated that megabanks JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo had existing relationships with FTX and/or its affiliated companies. Details of these relationships have yet to find their way into the sunshine. Attorneys for FTX argue that the customer lists have resale value and that the customers might be poached by crypto competitors if their names are released. The reality is that any real FTX customers (outside of the potential bots, algorithms and fake traders that might be doing the trading) are very angry customers. Their accounts at FTX have been frozen for more than two months with no ability to access their cash or securities. New FTX management has testified that $8 billion of customers’ money is missing. And as each day of financial distress grows among FTX customers, there is a new breaking story about the opulent life that the alleged fraudsters were living with the looted funds from customer accounts. In short, it is highly unlikely that these defrauded customers are going to beat a path to the door of another crypto exchange or remain at that crypto firm if their account is sold and moved to another crypto firm. These are now very hostile, out-for-revenge customers and for good reason. So, who in their right-mind would want to pay good money for pitchfork-yielding clients who have had a life-altering taste of crypto investing? Where these defrauded and abused customers would likely want to run is into the arms of a traditional, federally-insured bank. But what federally-insured bank would want to get within 10 miles of this mess – given the recent warning from federal regulators to consider rubbing elbows with crypto a threat to a bank’s safety and soundness. The attorney for the U.S. Trustee, Juliet Sarkessian, has already agreed to accept making public just the customers’ names, without addresses or other identifying information. But despite that concession, yesterday Judge Dorsey yielded yet again to Sullivan & Cromwell and extended the blackout on the names of customers and creditors for another 3 months. Then there is the issue of such brazen conflicts of interest with Sullivan & Cromwell that four U.S. Senators had to resort to sticking the glaring conflicts under the nose of Judge Dorsey by releasing a public letter to him on Monday. (The letter struck us as symbolic of an open cry for help from fellow Americans to save a failing democracy, its court system and its financial system.) The bi-partisan group of Senators (Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) got to the core of the conflicts in this paragraph: “To name just one challenge: will the firm’s lawyers be able to effectively investigate their current and former partners who were central in FTX’s conduct? Additionally, given their longstanding legal work for FTX, they may well bear a measure of responsibility for the damage wrecked on the company’s victims. Put bluntly, the firm is simply not in a position to uncover the information needed to ensure confidence in any investigation or findings.” An FTX customer, Warren Winter, was even more blunt in the objection his attorneys filed with the Court. His assessment was as follows: “Sullivan & Cromwell was one of the FTX Group’s ‘primary external law firms’ before the FTX Group collapsed. To date, the FTX Group has paid the firm more than $20.5 million in fees and retainers. Now, in the most flagrant attempt by a fox to guard a henhouse in recent memory, Sullivan & Cromwell has applied to be appointed the FTX Group’s bankruptcy counsel with duties that would include ‘investigating all potential estate causes of action.’ But it has revealed almost nothing about its prepetition work for Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraudulent enterprise — and failed to disclose or elided glaring conflicts of interest.” Winter goes on to reveal the following to Judge Dorsey: “Two former Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers are General Counsel to FTX Group entities. Sullivan & Cromwell did not disclose these connections in its Application and therefore violated Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 2014, which requires a statement ‘all of [the firm’s] connections with the debtor … [and the debtor’s] attorneys.’ What’s more, disclosed or not, these connections create a conflict of interest and are disqualifying. FTX US General Counsel Ryne Miller is a former partner at Sullivan & Cromwell…Miller is alleged to have played a key role— perhaps the key role—in wresting control of the FTX Group from Sam BankmanFried and directing this extremely valuable bankruptcy matter to his former firm. According to Bankman-Fried, and supported by what appears to be genuine evidence, Miller proclaimed to have usurped control of the FTX Group by November 8th. He immediately secured a $12 million retainer for his former firm and allegedly mounted an ‘extreme pressure’ campaign to put the FTX Group into bankruptcy with Sullivan & Cromwell and its hand-picked CEO at the helm. “FTX Ventures General Counsel Tim Wilson is another former Sullivan & Cromwell lawyer. The Securities and Exchange Commission has alleged that FTX Ventures made at least $200 million in venture-capital investments using customer funds that had been misappropriated through Alameda Research….” Despite all of these startling conflicts of interest, Judge Dorsey has been allowing Sullivan & Cromwell to run the show since the FTX bankruptcy petition was filed on November 11. Sullivan & Cromwell has overseen the hiring of a multitude of advisors, including investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners, which is engaged in seeking buyers for some of the FTX businesses. In addition, Judge Dorsey has stalled on hearing a motion filed more than 40 days ago by the U.S. Trustee for an independent examiner to be appointed in the case. The U.S. Trustee wrote in the motion: “An examiner could—and should—investigate the substantial and serious allegations of fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, and mismanagement by the Debtors, the circumstances surrounding the Debtors’ collapse, the apparent conversion of exchange customers’ property, and whether colorable claims and causes of action exist to remedy losses. The appointment of an examiner is mandatory under 11 U.S.C. § 1104(c)(2) because the Debtors’ fixed, liquidated, unsecured debts to its customers alone far exceed section 1104(c)(2)’s $5 million threshold. “An examination is preferable to an internal investigation under the facts of these cases because the findings and conclusions of the examination will be public and transparent, which is especially important because of the wider implications that FTX’s collapse may have for the crypto industry….” Yesterday, Judge Dorsey cancelled the hearing on that motion that had been scheduled for January 20 and pushed the hearing forward to February 6 at 9:30 a.m. (We would anticipate that the objection to Sullivan & Cromwell filed by customer Warren Winter would be heard on the same date.) This raises the obvious question as to whether all of the myriad actions and hirings and expenditures of money that Sullivan & Cromwell has already engaged in will have to be unraveled if the court determines that the law firm was too conflicted to have functioned as the lead law firm on the FTX bankruptcy.

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New York's George Santos fabricated resume touts '3.89 GPA', doubling revenue at Goldman Sachs
by Gunnar Larson 12 Jan '23

12 Jan '23

https://nypost.com/2023/01/12/new-yorks-george-santos-fabricated-resume-tou…

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