Reply #223: More on LaRouche and fraud

[Jose Diablo]

Start quote from Wikipedia:

"The size of the LaRouche empire led to investigations of the source of its apparently extensive financial resources. Like most cults, the LaRouche organisation devotes much of its energy to the sale of literature and the soliciting of small donations at airports and on university campuses. It also operates more sophisticated telemarketing groups, soliciting donations by phone, usually under the guise of various patriotic front organisations to conceal the real source of the phone calls. More seriously, however, LaRouche was accused of fraudently soliciting "loans" from vulnerable elderly people, sometimes giving completely misleading explanations for the loan ("funding the Strategic Defense Initiative" or "finding a cure for AIDS"). The funds thus raised were then directed into a maze of dummy companies so as to avoid both taxation and attempts to recover the "loans."

In October 1986 the FBI and Virginia state authorities raided the LaRouche headquarters in Leesburg in search of evidence to support the persistent accusations of fraud and extortion made against LaRouche. He and six associates were charged with conspiracy and mail fraud, and LaRouche was also charged with conspiring to hide his personal income since 1979, the last year he had filed a federal tax return. In December 1988 a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia convicted LaRouche and his associates, and LaRouche was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, of which he served five.

The prosecution alleged that LaRouche and his staff solicited loans with false assurances to potential lenders and showed "reckless disregard" of the facts. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kent Robinson presented evidence that LaRouche's organisation had solicited US$34 million in loans since 1983. The most important evidence was the testimony of lenders, many of them elderly retirees, who had lost thousands of dollars in loans to LaRouche that were never repaid. Several witnesses were LaRouche followers who testified under immunity from prosecution.

In addition to LaRouche, his chief fund-raiser, William Wertz, was convicted on ten mail fraud counts. LaRouche's legal adviser, Edward Spannaus, and several other fundraising operatives were convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. LaRouche denied all the charges, calling them "an all-out frame-up by a state and federal task force," and said that the federal government was trying to kill him. "The purpose of this frame-up is not is not to send me to prison. It's to kill me," LaRouche said. "In prison it's fairly easy to kill me... If this sentence goes through, I'm dead." This proved to be another false prediction: LaRouche was released unharmed in 1993."

End quote of background on how he gets money.

Does anybody really think this guy belongs in our camp? I don't.