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FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

nytimes.com

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Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#351

Post by peebee67 »

Aurornis wrote: post #307
fc417fc802 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would see you driving out into the sticks to go camping for a few days. That's entirely normal isn't it? We haven't (yet) made it to the level of flock cameras on gravel logging roads.

> They would see you driving out into the sticks to go camping for a few days. That's entirely normal isn't it? If someone has a history of taking a lot of solo camping trips it might not raise suspicions. A common way criminals get caught is by suddenly doing something out of the ordinary. If the 50 year old guy who sits behind a desk and spends weekends at home with his family suddenly takes up a hobby of camping a…

All of the comments in this thread assume he was being investigated for his acquisition of comically large amounts of cash and commodities that he presumably left the building with in big bags with a dollar sign on them. They ignore the open secret that the CIA is cartoonishly out of control has been little more than a massive organised crime syndicate that happens to be on the government payroll for 20 years.

In all likelihood, his taking more than forty million dollars wasn't the suspicious behaviour that set him to being investigated. It's right there in the charge sheet. He was being investigated because payroll noticed he was fraudulently claiming leave that he wasn't entitled to. There's no routine oversight on who they're bribing with actual gold. There's still routine oversight on their payroll and HR practices. That led to them actually checking his resume properly, and when that was shown to be bullshit, only then did they actually look at what this guy was doing.

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#352

Post by Schmerika »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #285
bitmasher9 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we often underestimate the intelligence of the criminal population for two main reasons. 1. The dumbest ones are most likely to be caught and have their stories told. 2. Law Enforcement often gets frustrated at chasing the smarter ones and use illegal methods catching them and the real story doesn’t come out in court.

> the real story doesn’t come out in court. I'm not saying this hasn't happened, but any competent criminal defense attorney (like a SMART criminal would have) would go to town on illegally obtained evidence. I'm not saying cops don't do warrantless searches/taps/etc., to gather unofficial clues, but if they can't get real evidence that stands up under scrutiny, the criminal walks. I'm not sure if prosecution would m…

> any competent criminal defense attorney

I don't think 'going to town on illegally obtained evidence' works as often as you believe it does [0, 1].

And think back - how many people went to jail for national and/or international scale warrantless wiretapping? How did we, as a nation, respond to Snowden's revelations?

> I'm not sure if prosecution would move forward on such shaky ground in hard to prove cases.

There are people on death row in the US even after being proven innocent and ordered to go free. Dignity in Ink [2] present similar cases every day - they're never going to run out of material.

0 - A major DOJ/GAO-era federal study found that illegal search/seizure issues accounted for about 0.4% of declined federal prosecutions and roughly 0.7% of dismissed cases after prosecution began. - https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/84544NCJRS.pdf

1 - Another study across seven jurisdictions found motions to suppress succeeded in under 1% of warrant cases, and only 1.5% of defendants went free because of successful suppression motions. - https://nij.ojp.gov/library/publications/search-warrants-mot...

2 - https://www.instagram.com/dignityinink

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#353

Post by m463 »

542354234235 wrote: post #338
rbanffy wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Vision is tiny. It doesn’t even have a bedroom. Not even a single bathroom.

That is an "its technically a jet" jet, not a jet that anyone would picture in their mind if you told them "I own a private jet".

I think if you take a selfie with your phone at just the right angle and don't show your forked tail, you might pull it off. It's a tried and true internet technique.

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#355

Post by peebee67 »

vostrocity wrote: post #16

How porous is the CIA's interview process that they couldn't validate the guy's military discharge status?

If he's truly a "senior" CIA official, he probably actually was a reservist for much of his career, and continued to claim leave for reserve duties after he was discharged. And payroll eventually did pick up on this, which sparked an HR investigation of his credentials, which turned out to be inflated, and only then did they start to look at what this guy was doing with all the money he was taking home. Payroll is probably the only entity in this story that was actually doing their damn job.

I'm curious why he was discharged now.

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#356

Post by aj_hackman »

alphawhisky wrote: post #318
randusername wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like that would have any effect on their lives Prayer is more than begging favors from imaginary friends, even if that is the stereotype and there is some truth in it. Like meditation, journaling, and other contemplative practices, it is a mechanism for putting the day-to-day in proper context of some larger narrative. In a theological framework, then, it's about a narrative in which you aren't alone in your joys a…

I think most people would argue that's just being a moral person. Jesus was a humanist, after all. I find that these days, the folks looking for community won't really build for others, and the folks looking to build for others are extremely hesitant to join a community. You tell me why and which group are better Christians.

As outlined in John 1:1, Jesus is in fact God himself, and God is something far greater and more magnificent than a humanist. The message of the Bible is a total inversion of humanism, teaching us to believe in God alone rather than ourselves for deliverance from the necessary and ultimately temporary problems of evil and suffering. It's full of stories of human beings attempting to fix things on their own and failing spectacularly (which is ironic given the history of the church).

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#357

Post by pseingatl »

m4ck_ wrote: post #260
rbanffy wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even a decent jet.

You can definitely get a decent jet in that budget, there's a popular tech youtuber who recently bought one for considerably less. I'm pretty sure you could get like 6 houses in mountain view and still have money left over for a jet.

It's not just the acquisition costs, it's the employee payroll--two pilots, one flight attendant, engine overhauls every six months, other maintenance. See the Amalfi Jets video on costs.

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#358

Post by pseingatl »

You don't take possession of 600 pounds of gold without a plan. Putting it in a hole isn't putting it to work. Sell it to a country where jewelry is manufactured, that at least gets it into the banking system. Lebanon loves gold. So does India. If this guy is under investigation, everything linked to him will be discovered. He can't really spend it. Aldrich Ames bought a Jaguar and was caught.

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#360

Post by 93po »

Aurornis wrote: post #312
derefr wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody would be that stupid to store the valuables at home within the first six months after the „acquisition“. But where else would you keep it? A safe-deposit box at a bank? I think, if I received illegitimate gold bars and figured the FBI might look into that, I would choose to keep them somewhere where a judge would think twice before issuing a search warrant for. Judges don't generally just issue search warran…

Everyone is a criminal mastermind after reading about someone else getting caught: You only have to say you wouldn’t do the thing that they did and you can smugly imagine yourself getting away with it. He didn’t acquire 300 gold bars and the other currency at once. He was getting these over a long period. He works for an intelligence agency, so he knew that his actions were going to be investigated. If he was doing a…

> he knew that his actions were going to be investigated

I disagree - my take when I first read this was that this was likely a pervasive thing that senior people all did, and they all knew about it. This guy pissed off the wrong person and so they took him down. Same for the lying about credentials - I am sure everyone is like "hey Jim, did you want to apply for that promotion?" with the response of "I can't because I didn't serve long enough", and the final reply of "oh just make up the numbers, everyone does and they don't check".

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