- I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I loves me a good Ponzi scheme. In fact, the only thing I like more than a good Ponzi scheme is the business partner of the person behind the scheme getting trying to work over the duped investors for a second time. Anthony Vassallo of Folsom, Calif. would be the brilliant business mind behind the Ponzi scheme. He has been booked into the Sacramento County jail after being arrested for allegedly operating a $40 million dollar Ponzi scheme. Meanwhile, Vassallo’s business partner, Michael David Sanders was also arrested and charged with trying to extort money from investors by posing as an FBI agent looking to recover the cash they lost to Vassallo. Federal prosecutors claim that Vassallo perpetrated a massive fraud that claimed more than 150 victims. He’s been touched up with charges of conspiracy, mail fraud and wire fraud. Perhaps investors should have been suspicious when Vassallo promised them annual returns of up to 36 percent through his Folsom-based company Equity Investment Management and Trading, Inc (EIMT), but as we all know, the world is full of stupid, stupid people. Vassallo’s connection to Sanders isn’t clear, so perhaps calling the two business partners isn’t entirely accurate. They may actually have been working together, but at this point police aren’t sure if Vassallo did in fact recruit Sanders to shake down investors who had pulled money out of EIMT. Regardless, Sanders’ role in this bizarre story is flat-out awesome. Dude actually burst into the Folsom office of a private hedge fund March 8 wearing a gun, badge and bulletproof vest. He was accompanied by four men, all of whom identified themselves as federal agents to two businessmen who had previously invested in EIMT. They then ordered the businessmen to wire $378,300 to Sanders' credit union checking account within 24 hours or face prosecution. Right, because that’s exactly how the feds operate. They storm your office wearing bulletproof vests and demand that you wire them more than a quarter of a million bucks within the day or face prosecution. Nice try losers, hard to figure out why you plan didn’t work. Instead of a $378,000 payday, you get charged with impersonating a federal agent and a likely jail term. The one innocent bystander in all of this (outside of the investors, who I would argue are guilty of stupidity at the very least) is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The Securities and Exchange Commission claims that Vassallo and EIMT company vice president Ken Kenitzer used their connections within the church to attract investors. Nothing like dragging the name of your church through the mud with a Ponzi scheme, well done fellas. Vassallo also allegedly laundered proceeds from the Ponzi scheme through his personal checking account, including a $24,149 payment to the Mormon church last New Year's Eve. All in all, just an awesome tale of fraud and scamming, the kind of tale that always brings a smile to my face…….
- Tonight’s Heroes was almost good enough to make you forget that the show continues to be plagued by the same problem it’s been saddled with the past two seasons: finding enough screen time for all of its main characters. The major exclusions this week were Claire, Sylar and Nathan Petrelli, with Peter Petrelli a near exclusion with only two very, very brief scene at the end of the episode. As for what was on the screen….things kicked off with an anonymous source dropping a gift off at the apartment of Emile Danko, a.k.a. the Hunter. The gift was Eric Doyle, the Puppet Man, sedated and wrapped in a bow. Doyle goes into sedated custody just like the other PWP (people with powers) captured by Nathan Petrelli’s government operation to remove them from society. Of course, Nathan is AWOL after having Danko expose his power to fly last week, so apparently his move to go to the president and have Danko fired no longer applies. Danko seems to be right back running the show like he was prior to last week, with H.R.G. his loyal underling - or so it seems. H.R.G. sneaks off to meet with Angela Petrelli inside a limo on a rainy New York City street. The two of them strategize about how to get H.R.G. back in Danko’s good graces, with Angela suggesting that leading Danko to the mysterious Rebel would do the trick. H.R.G. agrees and formulates a plan to have Tracy Strauss “escape” and lead them right to Rebel. Because Rebel has been hacking into the computer system at Building 26, where the organization is headquartered, to break Tracy out, the plan seems like a good idea. Danko agrees to it, but what he doesn’t count on is that on her way out, Tracy stumbles across the lab where all of the sedated PWP are being kept and frees Matt Parkman and Mohinder Suresh, whom Danko tricked into the lab and ambushed. Matt also frees his lady friend Daphne despite Tracy’s insistence that in her wounded, weakened state, Daphne will slow them down. The quartet is nearly stopped from escaping in spite or Rebel overriding the building’s security system and opening locked doors because a security team gets in their way. Parkman uses his power to control people’s mind to make the guards see what he wants them to see - nothing - so that they walk right by where the group of escapees stand. They make it out of the building, but while Matt and Mohinder take Daphne to the hospital, Tracy heads for the mall to get some new clothes. H.R.G. follows his plan to follow her and ambushes her in the dressing room, where he offers her a deal: lead him to Rebel and she can go free. Tracy agrees and heads out onto the street, where an ATM machine actually speaks her name and calls her over to its location. There, a stack of $20 bills spits out and a receipt prints from the machine with an address on it: a locker at Union Station. As Tracy hails a cab, we finally find out who Rebel is as he appears in the street behind Tracy. It’s none other than Micah, son of the late Nikki Sanders and her late husband D.L., both of whom have met their end in previous seasons of the show. Micah as Rebel makes sense, what with Micah’s power to talk to all things machine and Rebel’s technological wizardry. At the train station, Micah reveals himself to Tracy, who immediately is overcome with guilt when she realizes just who she’s led H.R.G to. She is, of course, a dead ringer to Micah’s mom and was “created” by the same Company doctor, so she’s basically one-third of triplets (Nikki’s evil alter-ego incarnation of her sister Jessica being the other), so she knows a little about him. Micah is equally horrified when he learns of Tracy’s duplicity, but of course he planned for her being followed and uses his power to hack the station’s security system and create an evacuation alarm that allows he and Tracy to escape down a back stairway and into an adjacent parking garage. There, they are cornered by Danko’s men and must quickly formulate a plan to get out. Tracy instructs Micah to put his power to use and turn on the sprinklers, after which she allows the agents to surround her while he escapes and then freezes everything in sight after it’s soaked by the sprinklers. Micah gets out, but he must listen as not far behind him, Danko arrives on the scene and put a bullet through Tracy, who has literally frozen everything in sight - including her own body, which has turned into a giant chunk of ice. Danko’s bullet shatters her to pieces and after H.R.G. informs him that Rebel hasn’t been caught in the setup, Danko walks away in disgust. As for Matt Parkman….he remains at the hospital with Daphne, which turns out to be very confusing to follow. At first, we see Daphne wake up and learn that Matt has mind tricked the hospital staff into believing she’s Gwen Stefani, which earns her a prime room and the best care. Once she’s back on her feet, however, Daphne tells Matt that despite his dream of them being married and his vision of that reality on his spirit walk in Africa, they don’t really have a connection at all. She wants to go off and live her own life, accomplishing that goal by super-speeding out of the room. A few hours later, Matt catches up with her on a rooftop in Paris and when Daphne asks how he got there, Matt says he flew: literally. He confesses that he has the power to fly, demonstrating that power by flying Daphne high above Paris. Near the end of the flight comes the true stunner: Daphne realizes that she’s not really in Paris, but rather back in her hospital bed where Matt is using his power to make her believe that they’re in Paris. When the mental vacation ends, we see that this is true and that Daphne has flat-lined, seemingly dead…..but on Heroes, we all know that dead often doesn’t really mean dead. Some of the better comedic moments of the episode come from Hiro and Ando, who last week found themselves charged with caring for Matt Parkman - the infant version. After showing up at an address faxed to them in India by Rebel, they show up in L.A. and are handed baby Matt Parkman. As they argue over how to care for the baby and what saving him means, they discover that the baby has a power: he can turn on any electronic item whether it has a power source or not. Once they realize this, Hiro and Ando decide that saving Matt Parkman means going on the run with him, something that becomes impossible when the baby’s mother shows up: Matt Parkman’s (adult version) ex-wife Janice. She is about to kick the bumbling duo out when they break the ice by revealing that they know about the baby’s power. Janice lets them back inside but bristles when they insist that her ex-husband is a hero. She believes he’s a terrorist based on the news broadcast showing him at the Mall in Washington with a bomb strapped to his chest. Hiro and Ando correctly argue that it was a setup to make PWP look like terrorists, but Janice doesn’t believe them until Danko’s agents show up at her door with a warrant to bring both she and her son in for questioning, ostensibly about her ex-husband. Janice lies and says baby Matt is at the babysitter’s house, a lie the agents don’t buy. They storm the house and corner Hiro, Ando and the baby in a bedroom. Ando seems to save the day by corralling his power and using it to shoot a laser beam at the agents, but a second agent comes crashing into the room and knocks him down. All appears lost until Hiro closes his eyes and finds that his power - at least part of it - has returned. While he still can’t teleport or time-travel (apparently the show’s writers have sworn off time travel), he can stop time. That allows him to freeze all of the agents, find a wheelbarrow to transport Ando (also frozen) and run 12 miles to the bus station. There, Hiro has a hilarious conversation with baby Matt about it being okay for him to cry, after which Hiro un-freezes time and tells Ando that they must now go find adult Matt Parkman. The last bit of business for this episode hinges on Angela Petrelli. He her limo meeting with H.R.G., she has a vision of an attack on her car set to happen just a moment into the future. As her driver is ripped from the car by agents, Angela sneaks out the back and disappears onto the sidewalk. Soon, she’s sitting down with an old friend, played by Swoosie Kurz, in a posh restaurant. Angela asks for help in getting out of town - cash, a car and a change of clothes - but receives judgment and tough love instead. She’s told that turning herself in is the right move, but as she gets up to leave, she’s given cash to help her disappear. Disappearing turns tougher when agents surround her on the sidewalk and chase her into an office building. Angela rushes into an elevator and heads upward, but dozens of agents swarm the lobby of the building, hack into the elevator controls and bring her back to the ground floor. The doors open, but when they do Angela isn’t alone. Peter is with her and he takes flight, zipping up the elevator shaft and away from the agents. In the final scene of the episode, Peter and Angela are shown looking out the windows atop the Statue of Liberty, overlooking the harbor and New York City. “What do you want to do now?” Peter asks Angela. Not that he’s asking me, but I’d like to find out where Sylar, Claire and Nathan were this episode, but next week will feature plenty of Sylar screen time, including a run-in with Danko. Until then…….
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! This is a domestic edition and it’s fairly small-scale, but you know me, I salute any act of social dissidence anywhere in the world. Plus, who can’t get with people gathering to protest the biggest abortion of a war in our nation’s history? The war in Iraq may be more than six years old (sorry I missed the birthday party for that…..oh wait, no I’m not), but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still warrant your outrage. The protestors who gathered for an anti-war demonstration in San Francisco over the weekend understand what I’m talking about. These people gathered for an hour-long rally at Justin Herman Plaza, wearing anti-war T-shirts and memorabilia, chanting along with speakers, carrying signs and placards and oh yeah, clashing with police. Well, not everyone was bold enough to thrown down with The Man, but ten brave soles did and were arrested for their efforts. Five of the arrestees - three men and two women - were apprehended at about 2:30 p.m. at the Civic Center Plaza for allegedly assaulting a police officer. At least three of those arrested were trying to free a teenage boy who was taken into custody after he was allegedly throwing rocks from a backpack, one of which hit an officer. But perhaps my favorite part of the entire protest/riot was when a police officer was bitten by a protestor. That narrowly edges out the cop who suffered a groin injury while trying to quell the unrest. Overall, solid marks for the hundreds of demonstrators who showed up to take part in a nationwide "Day of Action" marking the sixth anniversary of the Iraq War. "Money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation!" the crowd chanted as they marched along Market Street. Hmm….the whole rhyming chant ploy is gimmicky and cheesy, but I’ll overlook it this one time. I do want to shout out all of the groups who took part in the rallies around the country, including the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, U.S. Labor Against the War, Veterans for Peace, and Progressive Democrats of America. These groups were a part of one or more rallies at locations that included San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, and other major cities across the country. Big ups to all of you, doing your country proud……
- This isn’t the comeback that American cyclist Lance Armstrong had in mind, I’m sure. On the comeback trail to the world of cycling and possibly building toward a return to the Tour de France, the race he won a record seven times before retiring, Armstrong broke his right collarbone after falling on the first stage of a five-day race in northern Spain today. My man Lance left the hospital with his arm in a sling and will now return to the United States, where doctors will determine whether he needs surgery. “I'm miserable," said the record seven-time Tour de France champion. “I just need to relax a couple of days and then make a plan.” No freaking kidding, of course he’s miserable. An uber-competitive dude like Lance Armstrong hates to lose, can’t stand falling short of his goals and that’s what makes him the great athlete he is. Part of me wants to enjoy this because he was so easily able to pick up and excel at running marathons and do so at a much higher level than I can, having done 10 of them, but I’ll pass up that chance. The crash took place about 10 miles from the end of the 168-km stage as riders picked up speed and jockeyed for position with the finish line nearing. A group of 15 to 20 riders fell, but Armstrong appeared to be the only one injured. "It's pretty painful. Just wait and see how it heals,” Armstrong said. "That's cycling," he said. "It's nobody's fault. Crashes happen all the time.” According to Armstrong, this is the first such injury he’s suffered in 17 years as a professional, which is amazing given the amount of crashes that happen in cycling. Now he must deal with the challenge of preparing for the Tour de France from July 4-26 and possibly not being able to ride for a while. Definitely not what he had to be imagining when he came out of a three-year retirement to return to competitive cycling in January. This is one crash that can’t be blamed on the weather, as it took place a on a beautiful sunny day. Other riders did cite bumpy, uneven roads as a problem during the stage, but it’s unclear if that’s what caused the crash. If nothing else, the broken collarbone should create some good drama, something that’s really been lacking since Lance launched his comeback in January when he raced in the Tour Down Under in Australia, finishing 29th. Will he be back for the Tour in July? All I know is that I’m not going to be the one to bet against Lance Freaking Armstrong…….
- Want to be among the first to purchase what is being billed as the world's "cheapest car" when it becomes available in July? Get in line now, because India's Tata Motors seems pretty confident that there will be high demand for the four-door Nano, which is currently being built in "limited numbers" at a company plant in the north Indian hill state of Uttrakhand and will cost a measly $2,000. The company announced that delivery of the Nano will begin in July, with the Nano initially available through bookings or reservations filed on a request form priced around $6. Tata will accept the bookings from April 9 to April 25, with the company processing and announcing allotment of 100,000 cars in the first phase of deliveries within 60 days. Assuming that there are more than 100,000 applicants, buyers will be chosen through a computerized random selection procedure. “It is to the credit of the team at Tata Motors that a car once thought impossible by the world is now a reality. I hope it will provide safe, affordable, four-wheel transportation to families who till now have not been able to own a car. We are delighted in presenting the Tata Nano to India and the world," company chief Ratan Tata stated. He added that Tata Motors intends to make 350,000 Nanos a year from 2010 at another unit elsewhere in the country, so if you’re looking for a dirt-cheap car that you’ll probably spend ore money repairing than you did purchasing it and you are shut out of the initial offering of 100,000, don’t fret. You can still buy the new leading contender to be this generation’s Ford Pinto if you’ll just show a little patience…….
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