"Three-day sweep nets 150 charged as pimps; FBI action targets child prostitution" by Pete Yost | Associated Press, July 30, 2013
WASHINGTON — Declaring child prostitution a ‘‘persistent threat’’ in America, the FBI said Monday that authorities had recovered 105 young people and arrested 150 alleged pimps in a three-day sweep in 76 cities....
The largest numbers of children recovered in the weekend initiative were in San Francisco, Detroit, Milwaukee, Denver, and New Orleans. In New England, authorities said three girls from Maine were among those recovered.
The operation was conducted under the FBI’s decade-long Innocence Lost National Initiative. The latest recoveries and arrests were the largest such enforcement action to date....
Yeah, the FBI is doing a great job.
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Related: It’s Now OK for the Government to Operate Child Porn Websites | Just Thought You’d Like to Know
How the FBI Uses Rapists and Child Molesters to Entrap Gullible People in Terror Stings
Maybe we can pimp you something else:
"Ex-head of Boston FBI office faces ethics charge" by Milton J. Valencia | Globe Staff, September 12, 2013
A retired assistant director of the FBI who once headed the bureau’s Boston office was charged in federal court Thursday with a criminal ethics violation in having professional, work-related contacts with his former colleagues within a year of leaving his public job.
Kenneth Kaiser, 57, of Hopkinton, a 27-year veteran of the FBI who left to work as a consultant, faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine on a charge of making prohibited postemployment contacts, a misdemeanor. He has not yet appeared in court.
Federal prosecutors say that Kaiser began working as a consultant for the Beverly-based company LocatePlus, which sells investigative databases, on July 3, 2009, the same day that he retired from the FBI. A former supervisor of white-collar crime investigations, he was asked to conduct an internal investigation into wrongdoing by two of LocatePlus’s former executives. He was also hired to help the company increase sales.
Beginning 17 days later, according to court records filed in his case and a related trial, Kaiser began communicating and meeting with FBI agents in Boston, as well as a federal prosecutor, pushing for charges to be filed against the two former executives and to have LocatePlus listed as a victim, which would help the company’s public image.
Within a year of his retirement, Kaiser also had prohibited contacts with FBI employees to gauge the bureau’s interest in LocatePlus’s products and services, in an attempt to generate sales, prosecutors said.
According to prosecutors, Kaiser had “additional improper contacts” with the FBI’s Boston office in August 2009 on behalf of a client, a corporate executive from Gloucester who had received a threatening letter.
In March 2010, Kaiser became a full-time employee of LocatePlus, holding the title director of government sales.
Kaiser’s attorney, Anthony Fuller of Collora LLP, would only say in a statement that his client “has been charged with a misdemeanor violation of the ethics restrictions.”
“It should be noted that the government does not allege any criminal intent on his part,” he said.
Kaiser was a special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office from 2003 to 2006. He said at the time of his leaving that he had worked to better the bureau’s image and rebuild partnerships with other law enforcement agencies following the James “Whitey” Bulger scandal.
See: Slow Saturday Special: Bulger's Sta$h
The bureau launched a number of high-profile cases during his tenure, including a probe into corruption on the Big Dig project, an operation that led to the indictment of three Boston police officers on drug-trafficking charges, and the indictment of Abdullah Khadr, a Canadian national and alleged Al Qaeda operative.
Kaiser left to become assistant director at FBI headquarters in Washington, overseeing the Inspection Division and, later, the Criminal Investigative Division, until his retirement in 2009.
A great cop's career -- ruined.
According to prosecutors, Kaiser attended yearly ethics classes and knew he was a senior executive branch employee who was prohibited from making professional contact with his former agency for a year after leaving the post.
The allegations against Kaiser were raised in a federal criminal case involving the two former executives of LocatePlus he helped investigate. Jon Latorella, the company’s former chief executive, was sentenced in 2012 to five years in prison, and James Fields, former chief financial officer, was sentenced earlier this year to five years in prison. They were both indicted in November 2010.
As part of the case, a lawyer for Fields sought to have evidence in the case excluded from trial, based on Kaiser’s relationship with the FBI while working on behalf of LocatePlus.
The lawyer, Barry Pollack of Boston, also alleged that one of the original prosecutors in the case had a conflict of interest.
The prosecutor, Victor Wild, had met with Kaiser when the agent was working on behalf of LocatePlus. Also, Pollack alleged, Wild had a business relationship with outside lawyers who had also at one point worked on behalf of LocatePlus.
Pollack questioned whether Wild properly disclosed his work on behalf of others.
Wild was never charged.
Christina Diorio-Sterling, spokeswoman for the US attorney’s office in Boston, said in a statement that “Mr. Pollack raised these allegations about Wild with the Department of Justice in Washington, which investigated them and determined that the allegations lacked factual support and were without merit.”
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Also see: Former head of Boston FBI pleads guilty to illegal contacts
"Congressmen may testify in R.I. Navy kickbacks case" by Michelle R. Smith | Associated Press, May 09, 2013
PROVIDENCE — Lawyers for a woman charged in a $10 million kickback scheme targeting the US Navy are raising the possibility that unspecified members of Congress could be called to testify for the defense in next month’s federal trial, though members of the staffs of the state’s congressional delegation say they have not been contacted about the case.
Mary O’Rourke is one of several people charged in the case. She is set to go to trial June 4, along with her boyfriend, Ralph M. Mariano, a former Navy employee from South Arlington, Va., accused of being the ringleader, and his father, Ralph Mariano Jr. of North Providence.
The younger Mariano and O’Rourke are charged with conspiracy, theft of government property, and wire fraud, among other charges. Mariano Jr., who is in his 80s, is accused of tax evasion.
See: Naval Backwa$h
Prosecutors said one aspect of the wide-ranging scheme was that O’Rourke was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing little to no work for Navy contractor Advanced Solutions for Tomorrow, or ASFT, which had offices in Georgia and Rhode Island and has since gone out of business. O’Rourke is a lawyer and served as a senior vice president at ASFT, where she was hired in 1998.
But in a memorandum filed Monday in preparation for the trial, O’Rourke’s lawyers said she introduced the contractor to members of Congress and became its face in government circles.
‘‘She was the one who congressional staffers often called with questions about the defense industry,’’ O’Rourke’s lawyers wrote.
They list unnamed members of Congress from Rhode Island and their staff members as people who could be called as witnesses to attest to her work. The filings also say that O’Rourke was active in local politics from a young age, and that she had previously worked on campaigns for US Senator Jack Reed and US Representative Jim Langevin.
Representatives for both said they and their staffs had not been contacted about the case.
‘‘This is a serious case, but it does not involve the delegation, because the allegations are about private contractors, not Congress,’’ Reed spokesman Chip Unruh said in a written statement.
Spokesmen for US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and US Representative David Cicilline also said their offices had not been contacted. Cicilline did not take office until just a few weeks before the first charges were filed in the case.
O’Rourke’s lawyer, William Devereaux, did not return messages seeking comment.
Ralph M. Mariano worked for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. Prosecutors said he had the power to authorize or refuse payments to contractors and used that power to orchestrate a scheme in which he would approve payments to ASFT, which would then funnel back some of the money to him, O’Rourke, his father, and others.
Three men have pleaded guilty in the case, including ASFT’s founder, Anjan Dutta-Gupta, former ASFT executive Patrick Nagle, and Russell Spencer, who has said he acted as a middleman by funneling kickbacks to Mariano through a company he owned.
War i$ hell!
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Related: Prosecutors want 10 years for Navy kickback scheme
Also see: Boston Globe Codyene
