Lets talk about questionable things and relationships

Tonight I plan on giving some real nice detail about the impending Pensiongate. What happened in the City of Bell is nothing, the governments failure to pay their share for the pensions is nothing, nothing compared to the skulduggery.

Lets get down the cast of characters first.

First and foremost we have Elliot Broidy. He was not the biggest player; but, he got caught and decided to testify rather than go to jail. Things to remember, he sat on a public pension board, he has ties to Israel and was a co-founder of Markstone Capital. I want you to read the members of the management team at Markstone Capital and their background, mostly people who had Israeli ties.

Markstone's management team includes Mr. Dan Gillerman. Mr. Gillerman was an ambassador for Israel to the United Nations.
Then we have CIM Group. The link is to their website, I want you to read up about the three co-founders. We have Richard Ressler, Shaul Kuba (sorry that link was to the article where infamous gangster Eddie Nash said he sold his property to CIM Group because they wore him out) and Avi Shemesh.

Next we have Alfred Villalobos. Mr. Villalobos sat on the CalPers Board and was a Deputy Mayor in Los Angeles, he also lost quite a lot of money gambling in Las Vegas according to the Attorney General. Now if you read the article, you will notice that Mr. Villalobos' top client was Apollo Global Management.

The founder of Apollo was Leon Black. Mr. Black is one of the wealthiest men in the world and the son of Eli Black. You need to read the link to the Mr. Blacks. In 1975 the Securities and Exchange Commission for that Mr. Eli Black's United Brands Company had paid a $2.5 million dollar bribe to the Honduran president and Mr. Black, he jumped out a window and died.

I forgot something, I am getting old and feeble. I have, as the ex told me, lost my once formidable intellectual abilities. Please excuse this infirm old man. Richard Ressler, the guy from CIM Group. He is the brother in law of Mr. Leon Black.

Oh year, and we have Ares Management, which was co-founded by Anthony Ressler. I do hope you are finding this all sort of incestuous and sordid. Now lets talk about Sin City.

Apollo Management bought Harrah's the largest casino operation in the world. I used to be Diamond and usually stay at Harrah's properties. I may have to stay somewhere else. CIM bought the Lady Luck hotel and casino. CIM is working with the City of Las Vegas to rebuild the Lady Luck and assist in building a Mob Museum. I want to remind you that CIM is funded by public pensions. Why is my pension fund buying property from notorious murderers and building a Mob Museum?

Two things I forgot. Ressler used to work for Junk Bond King, Michael Milken. And this, the California State Retirement System CalSTRS and CalPers invested in Apollo Management's takeover of Harrahs. This occurred after Harrahs posted a $1.6 Billion loss. And remember, CIM Group is also funded by CalPers and CalStrs.

Now I want to tell you about a Law Firm. It is Fragner, Seifert, Pace and Winograd. It is a firm with some pretty impressive clients. Their founder is Matthew Fragner. He is the attorney for the CIM Group. Another attorney at the firm, Risa Winograd, has represented the California State Teacher's Retirement System, according to their website.

Wait a second, one attorney represented the retirement board that funded a company that is represented by the same office. That does not sound right, that could be seen as a conflict of interest. Perhaps someone in the State Bar that understands these things might look into that.

CIM Group, I just find them fascinating. Their Senior Vice President is a fellow named John Given. Mr. Given used to be on the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency and the Metropolitan Transit Authority. He must have heard quite a lot about planned developments. Perhaps that is why CIM always knew when a market was going to hit before it occurred. Just a thought. He is also a speaker at the Milken Institute.

Hey wait a second. I think that was founded by Junk Bond King Michael Milken, yes, it was. Eventually Mr. Milken was indicted and plead guilty to numerous crimes.

You may get glimmers of what lies behind all of this; but, I have not organized it well. I am just reading about where my pension fund money and the pension funds of other government employees has gone. By the way, deep within the Stimulus bill was something specifically written in for Harrah's. Your president signed the bill and then bad mouthed Las Vegas, how odd.

Our public pension funds have made billions for crooks. The politicians put questionable investors on our boards. They became "friends" with the employee board members, left the boards, created companies to advice the boards and made billions. Many of the investments were in Israel and failed. The investment advisers would sell the boards on investing in companies that their friends controlled and were paid finders fees.

The investments were often in Redevelopment projects which were government supported. They would get money from the Redevelopment Agencies. Hope you enjoyed seeing the people behind the public pension investments. How come Jerry Brown hasn't included this information?