A Tel Aviv-based banker with United Mizrahi Bank pleaded guilty to setting up secret bank accounts in Israel that, prosecutors say, helped charitable contributors to an orthodox Jewish group evade US taxes.
Joseph Roth, 66, pleaded guilty over the weekend to one count of conspiracy, US Attorney Thomas O’Brien in Los Angeles said in an official statement. A second defendant, Rabbi Moshe E. Zigelman, 60, of Brooklyn, New York, has agreed to plead guilty to his part in the scheme that defrauded the US out of millions of dollars in tax revenue, according to the statement.
Ross and Zigelman were among eight people indicted in December for tax fraud and money laundering. The group was accused of soliciting millions of dollars for the "Spinka” charities and secretly refunding 95 percent of the donations.
The money was funneled back to the contributors through a network of businesses in the Los Angeles jewelry district and through Israeli bank accounts, prosecutors said. Eric Dobberteen, a lawyer representing Roth, and David Willingham, a lawyer for Zigelman, didn’t immediately return calls to their office. The case is US v. Naftali Tzi Weisz et al, 06-775, US District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles.)
Representative Henry Waxman recently asked a question for which we would also like an answer: “How did a company run by a 21-year-old president and a 25-year-old former masseur get a sensitive $300 million contract to supply ammunition to Afghan forces?” Mr. Waxman raised the issue after executives of a Miami Beach arms dealer, AEY, were indicted on fraud charges this month, accused of pawning off tens of millions of banned and decrepit Chinese cartridges on the United States Army to supply Afghan security forces.
The Pentagon’s folly with the fly-by-night trafficker is just the latest example of the Bush administration’s cynically cozy contracting practices and shockingly weak oversight that have wasted billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.
Congressional investigators took testimony from a United States military attaché who accused the American ambassador in Albania of helping to cover up the Chinese ammunition’s origins. The ambassador, John Withers, denies wrongdoing. But Rep. Waxman is wisely working to map the dimensions of fraud and waste.
The AEY fraud case followed a detailed investigation by The Times, which found the company scored the Afghan contract despite a record of failure and risky corner-cutting in a half-dozen other plum contracts. (Along the way, Efraim Diveroli, the company president who is now indicted, had the gall to fight off a court case accusing him of abusing his girlfriend by claiming national security privilege “in the fight against terrorism.”)
AEY’s record, including a failed $5.6 million contract for 10,000 pistols needed by Iraqi security forces, should have been obvious to anyone consulting a State Department watch list of 80,000 — count them, 80,000 — suspect traffickers in illegal arms. American contractors must avoid such crooked middlemen. The Pentagon is exempted by law from having to consult the list.
What should you do when someone you don’t like or don’t know sends you a friend request?
Most of you will hold your nose and accept the request. But why? This is like allowing a corsair-wielding pirate to board your vessel without a fight. Once you’ve accepted too many faux friends, Facebook becomes a real slog. One of the site’s great strengths is that it allows you to manage privacy settings: Do you want everyone you went to college with to see your photos, or only actual friends? That ability to customize is great, but once you’ve accepted someone as a friend, policing these subtle gradations can be a drag.
There’s also an information overload problem. When your friends update their profiles, the new info filters out to you via the News Feed, a constantly updated digest of seemingly mundane facts that can, over time, give you a neat, evolving portrait of your friends’ outer lives. (And, of course, your updates also filter out, so anyone who cares will eventually discover, say, your affinity for Grandma’s Boy.) The further your online social graph veers from your real social life, the less useful your News Feed becomes. Soon you’ll find that most of the headlines are about people you barely know. And who wants that?
So, back to that unwanted friend request. Assuming there will be no social fallout, just ignore it. They probably won’t notice, particularly if we’re dealing with a promiscuous friender. (You know, the kind of person who thinks, "I need to break 700 friends so I can rid myself of my crippling sense of shame." Trust me, it won’t work.) And if you fear a backlash, just say,
Um, hey, this is really awkward, but I actually only accept friend requests from other Muslims. Allah commands it. Sorry, man.
I find this works pretty well. If you are very fetching, it’s possible that your would-be friend is—let’s be frank—cyber-stalking you. This behavior is so pervasive as to be almost unremarkable, but that doesn’t make it right. Ignore the request or, if you must, apply a privacy setting that will keep prying eyes at bay.
Somebody told me months ago that I had two Facebook accounts. Today I logged in to the neglected one (with the [email protected] email address) for the first time and found 32 friend requests, mainly from real friends, and an email from a hot chick back on January 13 wanting to be my first friend.
So now I have two active Facebook accounts and it seems a bit overwhelming.
(OK, I just deleted the neglected one.)
This morning, I went through my friends on Facebook and MySpace and got rid of everybody I didn’t know (about half) including some hot chicks. There was one woman on there with whom I enjoyed a torrid weekend in Vegas in January 2006. I almost deleted her today (she’s now married) but kept her on for sentimental reasons.
I’m a romantic.
Still, I can’t believe I did those intimate things with a shiksa with "very liberal" political views and an avowed atheist.
Terry Jones says in The Pythons: Autobiography by the Pythons: "…I was talking to a friend who was a teacher in an inner city comprehensive in the ’70s, and they said since Python they’d noticed a change in the adolescent boys. Whereas in the old days the boys would tend to go around bullying, they were actually now going round being silly. He thought that was the effect of Python doing that. For a brief moment of time, it became fashionable to be silly rather than to be threatening and I think that’s probably all Python ever achieved…"
If you were forced to name the high-water mark of television, the 1981 Granada production of Brideshead Revisited would be a fine choice. Starring Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, Claire Bloom, John Gielgud, and Laurence Olivier, Brideshead ran a luxurious 659 minutes, gliding smoothly along the rails laid by writer John Mortimer, who preserved the gorgeous textures of Evelyn Waugh’s dialogue and his intricate story of love and faith. Mortimer’s adaptation of Waugh’s novel is one of the towering achievements of modern screenwriting. Twenty-seven years on, the series still inspires a cultish devotion.
Not content to leave well enough alone, Miramax will release a new theatrical version of Brideshead this August. The trailer for the film surfaced a few weeks ago (www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/bridesheadrevisited/) and it promises a new and improved Brideshead.
The Miramax logo is followed by the type of itchy violins that mark the Jason Bourne movies. The audience is shown an aerial shot of Castle Howard–the same residence in which the first Brideshead was filmed–and then brief scenes of Charles and Sebastian frolicking. Emma Thompson is revealed in the role of Lady Marchmain and then a series of title cards are shown as the music darkens to convey the mood of a thriller. "She welcomed him into her home," one card says. "Into a world of privilege." "Into a life he never imagined."
What follows is a series of vignettes featuring the characters of Waugh’s Brideshead but in situations that are utterly unrecognizable. Charles Ryder seems to be a striving scholarship-boy…
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
