Brilliant?, strategist/serial entrepreneur, visionary gets caught

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/02/BAJP1COTC7.DTL

It’s the overall effect of this — good Lord, he knows that forming banks, consulting, promising services that aren’t delivered, getting cash to come to him, computer savvy, and in general a leadership mentality — in criminal activity, unfortunately — jail didn’t seem to phase him too much, and while promising altruism, was apparently unhampered with a conscience (that can lead to some successful business ventures) —

Well, look at this:

In 1999, Michael Anthony Nelson created a fake bank in Florida and stole more than $700,000 in loans. Let out five years later on federal probation, he headed north to Chicago, where he created a consulting firm, convinced people that he had friends in high places and allegedly conned hundreds of thousands of dollars out of small businesses and churches.

He went back behind bars, but only for a few months – and when he got out, federal authorities say, he stole the identity of a New York lawyer, hired employees for a bogus law firm and ripped off victims in the Bay Area for about $35,000 for legal services he didn’t actually provide.

This is starting to sound like some organizations I’ve dealt with. 

Did this guy miss a fine career in government, particularly the Executive Branch?  He didn’t seem too interested in climbing the corporate ladder, or that the auto plants wouldn’t close before retirement, or any hopeful employee relationship with a business.  That indicates some savvy.  Wonder why…

The attorney whose identity he allegedly stole, Michael Scot Nelson, was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1995 and works as an attorney for the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.

Michael Anthony Nelson, 38, of Orlando, on the other hand, has never been an attorney anywhere in the United States. What he’s been, prosecutors say, is a con man from coast to coast.

On Thursday, a federal grand jury in San Francisco indicted Nelson on charges of mail fraud, wire fraud, computer fraud and aggravated identity theft for allegedly hijacking the New York attorney’s good name.

. . .
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/02/BAJP1COTC7.DTL#ixzz0k4STgZBD

What they arrested them on should speak loudly to people hoping to reform the courts:  Mail Fraud, Wire fraud, and in effect fraud.  I think this line about “they just don’t underSTAND!!!….,” whether “they” is a judge, a social worker, a custody evaluator, an attorney, a therapist, a guardian ad litem, a parenting coordinator, . . . . . .      Let’s work HARD at making them underSTAND!!! . . . that line just doesn’t cut it. 

Let’s look at the books!  Then this may raise some governmental outrage, and action.    I mean, think about it.

Compare that with the writing in this fine exhibit I blogged on earlier.  I actually waded through the verbiage, full of passives and situations that “just happen” or “arise” or “have become” and there is practically not a single, direct descriptor noun actually DOING something in the entire piece.  Programs happen.  It’s kind of like the weather.  No one is seeding the clouds, we are just the reporters. . . .

Ten Key Findings from Responsible Fatherhood Initiatives

February 2008

Prepared for:
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

(Intro paragraphs:)

The role of noncustodial fathers in the lives of low-income families has received increased attention in the past decade. As welfare reform has placed time limits on cash benefits, policymakers and program administrators have become interested in increasing financial support from noncustodial parents as a way to reduce poverty among low-income children. Although child support enforcement efforts have increased dramatically in recent years, there is evidence that many low-income fathers cannot afford to meet their child support obligations without impoverishing themselves or their families. Instead, many fathers accumulate child support debts that may lead them to evade the child support system and see less of their children.

To address these complex issues, {{that rained down from the sky, and that we don’t want to directly attribute responsibility for….}} states and localities have put programs in place that focus on developing services and options to help low-income fathers find more stable and better-paying jobs, pay child support consistently, and become more involved parents. In part because of the availability of new funding sources and a growing interest in family-focused programs,

Could it BE any more evasive???  Interest in family-focused programs is, just, well, like crops, just so happening to coming up through the fertile ground of mega-farms (no one bought seed, plowed, planted seed, watered, or even conceived of the idea of farming.  This interest does NOT, we repeat, does NOT have anything to do with any of the founders of the National Fatherhood Initiative, or any other visionaries who foresaw a real crop of grants with a constant stream of clients, and is not, we repeat, NOT, a backlash to feminism.  It just kinda sorta, you knew, “GREW.”  We here, are just dispassionately reporting on what happened.  (Give me a break…. )

this area is experiencing dramatic growth, with hundreds of “fatherhood” programs developing across the country.

Coincidentally, and surely not causally, related to the fine funds that are available here, and the replicatable business model that is being taught, or their close associations with — child support agencies, attorney general’s offices, welfare offices, and so forth.  Those fatherhood programs just plain out developed, like a young girl entering puberty.  Entirely unpredictable.  It just happened.

Under the expanded purposes of Title IVA, authorized in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-193, also known as PRWORA), states have been able to use some of their Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds to provide services to nonresident fathers, including employment-related services. PRWORA also authorized grants to states to assist noncustodial parents with access and visitation issues, and it required states, as part of their Child Support Enforcement Program, to have procedures requiring fathers who are not paying child support to participate in work activities, which may include employment and training programs. The Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) of 2005 (P.L. 109-171), which contains a reauthorization of the TANF program, also authorized funding to states and public and nonprofit entities for responsible fatherhood programs.

Funny how the anti-violence nonprofit group I went into didn’t tell me this ahead of time.  You might get your restraining order, but you also might (later) lose all contact with your children, through no fault of your own.

These recent policies encourage the development of more programs for low-income fathers. This brief focuses on several important early fatherhood initiatives that were developed and implemented during the 1990s and early 2000s that provide valuable lessons to policymakers and program staff now in this field.

(Note — not necessary to tell the actual litigants, or both sides of any litigating parties, of these programs, even though funds for them come, at least in California, I believe, come straight to /through the Judicial Council of California)

Formal evaluations of these earlier fatherhood efforts have been completed, some quite recently, making this an opportune time to step back and assess what has been learned and how to build on the early programs’ successes and challenges.

Diagram some of these “social policy” sentences — subject, object, verb, and see if there is a real human being or a specific action in place that relates to real-time, real people’s lives..  Good luck.

Contrast this oblique speech (and by the way, those interested in family court matters would do well to read it, and to notice that the writers are quoting — by and large — themselves.  Or related organizations under contract to report on who is studying what.  Study, study, study.

Michael Anthony Nelson, by contrast, moved at the speed of light, and before you know it, a lot of people were out of a lot of money.  The article describes specific, aggressive action in simple declarative prose: 

He (allegedly):

• In FL, created a fake bank and stole $700,000 in loans.
• In Chicago, he created a consulting firm (that’s the BUSINESS these court folks are in, practically!)
• In NY, he stole the identity of a lawyer, hired employees for a bogus law firm and ripped off victims in the Bay Area for about $35,000 for legal services he didn’t actually provide,….
• rented office space in Los Angeles and Atlanta, applying for credit cards in the name of a real law firm in Seattle….

Again, this appears to be what a Los Angeles County judges slush fund did, in the county courthouse, according to (Marv Bryer) “Johnnypumphandle”, and California NOW 2002 report, tracking the EIN# of the founding organization behind AFCC (Association of Family & Conciliation Courts).  Their employees are often (not exclusively) civil servants, but the origin of the thing began, I at least believe, with tax fraud.  And its going to HELP us?

The guy’s  a real go-getter.  No, I do NOT respect him.  But I do notice that he’s not like some standing in line for welfare (LONG lines), or at the courts to file some paperwork, or trying to get through (if one is female) to the local county child support agency and get a straight answer about what happened?      

(If this was ever in the background, it’s clear) he quickly assessed that this was a lose/lose proposition.

These systems doesn’t reward good behavior and moral mindsets.  It wasn’t designed to do this.  These systems reward those who profit from them.  Consulting firms, nonprofits, government contracted policymakers, and so forth.  They employ LOTS of people to study unemployment, and the voices of the unemployed are, generally speaking, not reported directly, any more than the structures of the organizations are.

Then there are people who start reporting on corruption, and end up like Nancy Schaefer and her husband, which is an unfinished story with significant “SPIN” on it, and a lesson in the high stakes of exposing corruption regarding agencies that deal with children. 

And these are flourishing, in fact replicating faster probably than our population, around the court system.  Sooner or later there may not be babies enough to report on.

The report above, by the way, actually holds the term “multiple-partner fertility,” as if we were rabbits.  Which we aren’t.  Yet.

Finally, it seems, he made a mistake (or was reported, and caught).  But the business he’s in doesn’t seem TOO different than many operating in the government spheres.

MY POINT:

To think that some people with educationese and social reform on their minds can behaviorally re-condition men (or women) that think like this, and move this fast, particularly when it comes to systems analysis — is simply ridiculous.

OR, itself a con game.

Just putting out a few ideas, and connecting them that may be related.  At least it beats waiting in line somewhere else, with an idiotic hope in my brain.