Immigration officials seize Phoenix-based oil company, oil wells

Jan 25, 2005

MIAMI (AP) -- Federal agents seized a Phoenix-based oil company and more than three dozen Pennsylvania oil wells, along with trusts and bank accounts, as part of a wide-ranging money laundering investigation, authorities announced Tuesday in Miami.

U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents seized Shaboom Oil Inc., based in Phoenix, on Friday. The company, owned by a Panama-based company called Shaboom Investments, forfeited 43 operating oil wells and mineral rights to 1,100 acres in the Allegheny National Forest in northwest Pennsylvania, authorities said.

Authorities said they seized $6.5 million in assets from several trusts and bank accounts in Monaco, part of more than $70 million forfeited in the investigation dating back to the early 1990s.

Larry Hammond, an attorney for George Basch, who until Friday was Shaboom Oil's chief executive, declined comment.

ICE said it would work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to manage the seized company.

Federal officials said the impetus for the investigation was Paul Hindelang, a California man who operated one of the nation's largest marijuana smuggling operations in the late 1970s.


http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FL_OIL_COMPANY_SEIZED_FLOL-?SITE=FLPET&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=state.shtml

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around here somewhere.

then, WHO CARES, right...

peace

http://www.democrats.org/news/200208230002.html

Aug 23, 2002
Bill Simon: Exempt from Bush's "Zero Tolerance"?

Bush Fundraises for CA candidate riddled by corporate scandals — the same scandals affecting Bush

"The lousy part for the White House is having the president stand next to someone in the middle of a corporate fraud case two weeks after Bush signed a zero-tolerance corporate responsibility bill." — Anonymous GOP operative, as quoted in the Modesto Bee.

"If you lead a corporation, you have a responsibility to serve your shareholders, to be honest with your employees. You have a responsibility to obey the law and to tell the truth."
Simon-Led Firm Convicted Of Fraud

Simon's Firm Convicted of Defrauding Former Partner; Ordered to Pay $78 Million. In August 2002, California GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon, Jr.'s company was found guilty of defrauding an estranged business partner in a civil lawsuit and was ordered to pay $78 million in damages. A jury ruled that Simon's company, William E. Simon & Sons, defrauded Paul Hindelang, Jr., a convicted drug trafficker, in a deal to take over Hindelang's pay phone company, Pacific Coin. The jury found that Simon's company hid its plans to expand and take Hindelang's company public against his wishes. Pacific Coin collapsed under the weight of the debt that Simon's company piled on it in its attempts to expand the pay phone service. Simon, co-chair of Simon & Sons, was not named as a defendant in the case and has said that he was not involved in the daily management of the firm.

http://www.democrats.org/news/200208230002.html


I get the feeling with a little more digging we can find all sorts of Bush connections.



edit: Bill Simon ran again Grey Davis in CA in 2002.

there a little slower on the uptake and still don't know how to use google ;->

:hi: thanks for sharing :toast:

peace

even Tom Clancy would be more subtle than that.

Remember that lawyer Bush hired a while back to handle the Valerie Plame case? A fellow named Jim Sharp?



The cult of secrecy surrounding President Bush’s newly retained lawyer in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case is so strong that the White House refuses even to confirm who the president’s lawyer is.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters June 3 that the lawyer’s name was Jim Sharp, but refused even to confirm whether he is James E. Sharp, a Washington attorney.

<snip>

Sharp’s highest profile client was Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord, a major figure in the Iran-Contra scandal who helped Lt. Col. Oliver North accumulate untaxed wealth in overseas accounts.


http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/byrne/jim_sharp_bush_lawyer_secrecy.htm


Turns out that Jim Sharp also represented his self-avowed “good friend” Joe Harry Pegg.


"Far lesser known, however, is a 1994 finding by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, where he engaged in “unethical and criminal activity” for pressuring a witness to commit perjury. The charge was leveled by one of Sharp’s witnesses when he represented his self-avowed “good friend” Joe Harry Pegg against a charge of conspiring to import marijuana in 1988 and 1989."


Joe Harry Pegg was Paul Hindelang's partner in the pot smuggling business. Small world.

The federal government has seized control of 43 oil wells in northwestern Pennsylvania that it says were financed with drug money laundered by a Florida marijuana smuggler in the 1970's, officials said Tuesday.

The federal government has never before taken control of oil wells as part of a money laundering investigation, said officials with the Department of Homeland Security, which ran the investigation.

Drug cartels and financiers of terrorism have been known to hide their assets in a wide variety of ways, including commercial real estate, insurance policies, gold and diamonds, but the officials said this case was the first in which they had found evidence of oil wells being used to launder money. The federal government now becomes the temporary owner of the wells, which are in the Allegheny National Forest in a region that in the 1860's became the country's first major oil producer.

The investigation stems from the 1981 drug smuggling conviction of Paul E. Hindelang, who ran one of the country's biggest marijuana smuggling operations from Florida in the 1970's. After serving time in prison, Mr. Hindelang went on to a successful business career in California and built Pacific Coin into one of the country's biggest pay-phone operators. Many of his business associates were unaware of his criminal past until it resurfaced in 1998, when he agreed to forfeit $50 million in drug assets that the authorities said he had stashed away in overseas accounts years earlier.

http://nytimes.com/2005/01/26/national/26seizure.html?pagewanted=print&position=

No wonder it's hard for them to coordinate security efforts. They're busy!