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'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

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81–90 of 177 posts

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#81

Maybe a bit off topic, but my first thought was wondering whether the OSINT community would get any further with figuring out who it was, but I then realised, the OSINT community often look successful because they publish, but we don't know if "closed source" intelligence knows the same things or is even more successful, but just doesn't publish. Does anyone have any evidence one way or another? Are OSINT thinking ou…

By "closed source," you mean government clandestine intelligence services? I used to work on ground processing software for the NRO and NSA, and yes, they know a lot more than the Internet, a lot more than law enforcement, and a lot more than they ever admit to knowing. Not revealing what you know is an intrinsic part of the spy game to prevent opponents from inferring your collection capabilities and current scope of assets. If your opponent knows what you can surveil, they just won't do that.

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#83
post #29

https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_ca/201905210181 says a guy named Thomas Mather was a director. https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/centralvalley/board_decisions... is some government application by Flannery that also has his name on it. Looks like this was covered in 2019: https://www.thereporter.com/2019/07/05/large-rural-land-purc... If Mather is not the true owner, it would take the government five seconds to f…

Lawyers aren't allowed to identify their clients if the identities of their clients are unknown. It's part of attorney-client privilege. Skadden has made use of in the past to hide their work for Putin affiliates. It's the reason that Skadden is the largest firm by revenue despite the lackluster quality of their work. (For an example of how bad Skadden is at the practice of law, see the clusterfuck that is the Twitte…

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Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#84
post #11

This is an incredibly silly story. Everything about this ownership is in public records. Flannery Assoc. has been openly buying land in this are for over 5 years and have spent over a billion dollars and sued dozens of parties. Everyone knows what they are doing. They want to lease the land for energy infrastructure.

They've apparently made many claims as to the use of the land from energy to building a city, to a deep port to farming.

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#85
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandma used to own a house near a naval air station in Virginia Beach. Eventually, the Navy bought the house and surrounding farmland just as what I understand to be a jet bailing area (somebody who lives closer to there can probably correct me on this). They actually offered a fair amount of cash and my grandparents were able to negotiate a little above and nothing had to be seized, thankfully. I'm sad to hear t…

> I'm sad to hear that the house was never torn down afterwards though and likely has squatters in it. I wish they would have done that for my grandparents. You’re sad that the government would not allow your grandparents to continue living in an area which is designated for plane crashes? I lived in VB for over 20 years, family in the military and such. I’m very interested in where your grandparents house was. The h…

North landing road. They had a blue vegetable stand outside, if you were familiar with the neighborhood.

I too remember covering my ears every time a jet flew overhead when I was a kid. They were loud!!

I'm more sad the navy didn't destroy the home after purchasing it because it's fallen into disrepair and there's nothing really keeping squatters out. The house and surrounding farm was designated for plane crashes many years after they purchased it.

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#86

I doubt very much that it’s actually a mystery to the US government.

I've probably just watched too much X-Files, but I had the thought that maybe it's actually military/defense/intelligence buying the land in the first place.

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true only if both parties have perfect information, which is of course why Disney went to great lengths to prevent that. There would be no such thing as fraud if “accepted transaction == definitionally fair.”

Perfect information has nothing to do with fair There's a difference between false information and no information.

It has everything to do with price, however — and, therefore, "fair price".

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#88
It kind of amazes me that our government can’t figure out who is behind this. Because it’s extremely hard to hide these kinds of things. When I last moved, there were a few toxic people in my life at the time and I didn’t want them to be able to find my new home. What I found is that it’s exceptionally difficult and expensive to keep this private. I looked at forming an LLC etc… The problem is that it eventually leaks out somehow.

I have a lawyer friend who confirmed this from their own experience. They told us about a sibling who is a high profile senior exec at well known public company. This person tried to hide their home purchase for privacy and safety reasons. They had the resources to do this, spent a ton of money, and ultimately failed. You can easily Google their address.

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#89
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

flannery assoc is a shell company. who's providing the money for purchasing farmland at 5-10x its worth? can you name a single officer of flannery assoc?

They will gladly name themselves when you ask them on which grounds they want to stop your heavy equipment messing around their properties. They will bring all necessary papers to you. I guess you won't leave until they'll make it absolutely clear that they have the right to demand you to leave.

Are you speaking from first-hand experience?

Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns

#90
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price gouged? Don't you mean, fair market value? Price is always contingent based on the information shared between the buyer and seller. No one would call selling a rare misprint 1978 US Quarter to a collector for $45,000 instead of 25 cents price gouging. (Maybe you would, I don't know what the going rate is. But this is literally an eBay auction price from a google search just now, so let's just say that it's not…

> Price gouged? Don't you mean, fair market value? Price is always contingent based on the information shared between the buyer and seller. Since when? Buying and selling anything is always a game of imperfect information. There’s nothing special about the buyer being a large corporation or the item being land.

Why are you encouraging imperfect information? Aren't you a fan of efficient market based solutions?
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