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Wednesday, December 17, 2008

12/17/08 Death By Asprin In Greenwich



Hartford Courant

Associated Press

GREENWICH, Conn. - A medical examiner in New York has ruled that a 14-year-old Greenwich girl who died in June committed suicide by overdosing on aspirin.

A lawyer for Daisy Pacheco's family says the ruling was not unexpected.

But attorney Lindy Urso says the family still has concerns about how the teen was cared for, saying she sat untreated at Greenwich Hospital for several hours on June 25 before being transferred to Westchester Medical Center, where she died the next morning.

Urso says relatives believed she may have taken too many aspirin.

Urso says the family is considering a lawsuit against Greenwich Hospital.

A spokesman for Greenwich Hospital says it's inappropriate for hospital officials to comment on the care of a patient.

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12/17/08 Photographer Shoves Bernie Madoff Again and Again




For Your Video Pleasure

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12/17/08 SPECIAL DELIVERY TO GREENWICH TIME CUB REPORTER COLIN G. ---- Rau Letter re: Hamilton Avenue School Modular Leaks

(Click To Enlarge)

Hamilton Avenue School Should Not Worry That Principal Rau And Superintendent Betty Sternberg Would Ever Minimize Or Coverup Water Or Mold Problems At The Modular Clasrooms

03/09/08 - Town Employees: Sternberg's Crew Knew - Mold Covered Tiles Replaced Over One Year Ago.

Rau Says Parent, Teacher, Student, Staff and PTA Member

Modular Maintenance Reports Are Wrong

Dear Greenwich Time Reporter Cub Reporter Colin Gustafson ,

Just wanted to help you out.

I don't think the Greenwich Board Of Education sent you a press release about the leaks in the modulars classrooms that are unfit for Glenville students.

Please take a look at Hamilton Avenue Principal Rau's much belated letter regarding the leaks that Hearst Newspapers has been ignoring.

Colin, I Know that you like BOE press releases, because the story is already written for you, but for once why don't you try to be a real reporter and write an education story that was not first prepared by BOE communications director Kim Eves.

Shame, shame, shame on HAS Principal Rau for not sending cub reporter Colin a press release about all the problems at the modulars.

PLEASE SEE:

12/16/08 100 Days After Remediation HAS Modulars Are Unfit For Glenville Students To Habituate

10/10/08 Hamilton Avenue School Update: The Modulars Are Once Again Leaking And Causing Electrical Problems. Has Mold Returned To The HAS Modulars ?

12/11/08 THE FIX IS IN: "Officially", HAS PTA just received word that the district is going forward with moving us in over Christmas break

09/14/08 You Wont Read This At The Greenwich Time, But You Will Read It On The Ham Ave PTA Website, HEY, TONY BYRNE, THE MODULARS ARE LEAKING .....

PLEASE ALSO SEE:


10/10/08 You Wont Read This In The Greenwich Time: GREENWICH PTA"S HAD UP TO $75,000.00 STOLEN FROM THEM !!!!!


10/10/08 Air Flow Problems Persist In The New 30 Million Dollar Hamilton Avenue School. No Wonder Mold Was Discovered In The Basement Two Months Ago.



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12/17/08 Greenwich Time News Links For Wednesday


St. Roch preserves church history, beauty
The Rev. Nicholas Calabro loves to watch people as they visit his church for the first time and notice 10 large beautifully stained glass windows through which light permeates St. Roch Church.

"It is a striking thing to see all the colors and the hues," said Calabro. "It's quite an art."
However, more than six decades of wear and tear have left the once pristine windows worn, faded and in need of extensive repair, Calabro said.

Now the church at 10 St. Roch Ave. is investing in much-needed restoration, hoping to protect the beauty and history of the stained glass windows that have been watching over the church since 1942.

William Murray is the man in charge of the painstaking process of removing the stained glass from the windows and making it look like new again. He began in September 2007 and has completed four of the 10 windows thus far. He is hoping to finish by early 2010.

Murray has been working with stained glass for more than 20 years, initially starting as an apprentice and now running his own studio in Alford, Mass.

"These are beautiful objects that I love to restore and preserve for the future," said Murray. "I love that they change all the time. It has a character all its own that depends on the day and the conditions." ....

Town girl's death deemed suicide

The death last summer of a 14-year-old Chickahominy girl was due to suicide caused by acute salicylate intoxication, the Office of the Medical Examiner in Westchester has ruled.

Funnies taught as art
When coming up with good comic-strip ideas, Greenwich cartoonist Phil Lohmeyer says the best place to start is at the end.
"That's the most important part, because it's where you deliver your punch line," he told North Mianus School students in one of the final classes this past week. "You might have a funny premise, but it won't matter if you don't bring it home at the end."

That's one of the many lessons Lohmeyer, 28, left his students with last week, as he taught the last classes of the fall semester in his after-school cartooning course, offered at Cos Cob, North Mianus and North Street schools and International School at Dundee.

To cap those fall courses, the Greenwich native has published "Greenwich Cartooning Chronicles," the program's first-ever compilation of the more than 30 students' artwork of classic characters like Garfield, Scooby-Doo, Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

Copies of the "Chronicle" circulated through the town's elementary schools last week, part of Lohmeyer's effort to drum up interest in the program and give his students' work wider exposure, he said.

A former public school student, Lohmeyer worked as an art teacher at Eastern Middle School before leaving in 2005 to found a Cos Cob event-planning company, Golden Ticket Events, where he now works as a graphic designer.

The idea to teach a cartooning class, he said, came to him a couple years ago while doing ink work for the syndicated comic strip Beetle Bailey....

Towns hoping new year brings funds
Cities and towns are spending the days before Christmas compiling lists of infrastructure projects and checking them twice in the hopes that Congress will increase aid in the New Year.

Residents of Connecticut and other states in our region can breathe a healthy sigh of relief - at least healthier than it might have been. The reason is that time has run out on a Bush administration effort to change Clean Air Act rules and make them more permissive.

Under proposed rules that were pushed for years by the administration - and fought from the outset by our state - older coal-fired power plants would have been able to make substantial improvements and upgrades without installing the pollution-control equipment now required.

But fortunately, officials at the federal Department of Environmental Protection reported they could not have the rules finalized before President Bush leaves office in January, a task that was complicated by a federal court decision rejecting a related measure.

Why stopping that change was so important requires some history.

When the Clean Air Act was being refined in the 1970s, old plants were granted exceptions because it was assumed they would be phased out in a relatively short time and replaced with more-efficient and cleaner facilities. But generating companies found it profitable to continue operating them, and did so, continuing to produce substantial pollution.

Some of the companies also wanted to improve or expand them, but didn't want to incur the expense of limiting pollution output. The act specified that only routine maintenance could be performed without triggering the requirement for anti-pollution measures. ..... BLAH .... BLAH ..... BLAH ..... BLAH ..... BLAH ...... BLAH ...... BLAH ...... BLAH ......


To the editor:
I publicly ask the members of the Board of Education considering budget cuts to keep the magnet program at Hamilton Avenue School intact. implore the members to keep the activities - skating, swimming, Spanish and Suzuki - for all grades - not just older kids.

To those who might say the kids can learn this stuff after school and on weekends, that they don't need it during the school day, I say that is incorrect
Many of the kids at Hamilton Avenue can't go ice-skating and swimming after school. Their parents work and the kids are in child care.

Many Ham Ave. kids can't study Suzuki violin with a private tutor or at the Greenwich Suzuki School on Saturdays. Their parents can't afford it.
Hamilton Avenue was made a magnet school to attract a diverse population and help balance the student body. If the magnet school options are taken away, many of us who were attracted to the Renaissance programs will leave. If that student body is no longer balanced, Ham Ave. will no longer qualify for special treatment or the status it receives as a magnet school.
Children's learning experience is undoubtedly enhanced by the Renaissance offerings. Anyone who says proficiency, skills or standardized test scores have decreased should know that this is certainly due to the upheaval and deflated morale of life in the cramped modulars, not because of the extra opportunities offered.

If the students ever get into the new building, there will be a gym. But there is no ice-skating rink, no swimming pool. Those skating and swimming options must continue.
In the new building, there will be beautiful rooms where the kids can learn violin, cello and viola and can receive Spanish instruction - beginning in kindergarten.
These students have waited for years for the total positive experience of Hamilton Avenue School. I ask the board to please keep all the important programs they were promised, beginning with pre-school and kindergarten, so the students will have the same opportunities and potential for greatness as children in other schools.

Allison Radzin
Greenwich
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12/16/08 100 Days After Remediation HAS Modulars Are Unfit For Glenville Students To Habituate




By Greenwich Time Cub Reporter Colin Gustafson

School officials are scrapping plans to move Glenville School students into the district's modular facilities over the holiday break, citing uncertainty about when Hamilton Avenue School students now using them will be able to leave.....


....It had been hoped that Glenville students, who attended classes at four different schools this fall while awaiting renovations at their own school, would then be able to move into the modulars by the time classes resumed next month.

School officials abandoned this plan Tuesday, saying it only would have been feasible if the Chickahominy facility appear likely to receive final approval from safety inspectors by Wednesday.

"It became apparent this morning that we will not have a (temporary certificate of occupancy)" by Wednesday, said Schools Superintendent Betty Sternberg.....


....she wrote in a letter to Glenville parents Tuesday. "Please know that our primary consideration is the safety and security of our students and staff and that decisions will be made with that concern as our main focus." .....


....The Hamilton Avenue School's building committee was scheduled to meet Wednesday morning at the Havemeyer Building to discuss its progress toward attaining a temporary occupancy certificate for the school.


PLEASE SEE THE HAMILTON AVENUE NEWS STORY THAT THE HEARST NEWSPAPERS HAS FAILED TO COVER:


FOR THE RECORD:

Greenwich Roundup was the only news organization that reported about the water once again leaking at Hamilton Avenue School. Clueless Hearst Newspaper Editors (Don Harrison) And Jim Zorba (Greenwich Time), as well as, the Greenwich Post editor have ignored HAS parents complaints that the modular are once again leaking.
PLEASE SEE:

THE MODULARS ARE HAVING WATER AND ELECTRICAL PROBLEMSFIRE ALARM HAS BEEN SET OFF DURING THE SCHOOL DAY!!!!

....The Hamilton Avenue School Principal is so self absorbed and concerned with her image and her career as an administrator, she has lost perspective. God help the children of Hamilton Avenue School as they are shoved in a school that is not up to code.

Where is Ken West the building maintenance supervisor?

How is this trailer park permitted to stay open?

If this were a private home it would be condemned.

Go Back To Your Wet And Unsafe Modular Classrooms!!!!
.....Principal Damaris Rau sounds like an idiot. She should not be in charge of one child, never mind a school full of kids....

PLEASE NOTE:

Obviously The Greenwich Board Of Education Took Notice That Over 1,000 Greenwich Roundup Readers Were Aware That The Modulars Are Leaking, Because For The First Time The Sent Home A Letter Admitting To The Poor Maintenance And Leaks.
These Leaks Should Have Been Fixed Four Months Ago:

PLEASE ALSO SEE:

WHERE IS THE GREENWICH BUILDING DEPARTMENT?

It Looks Like We Have To Pull Out The Digital Cameras Again:


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12/17/08 To Read About LOCAL Greenwich News Stories About Big Loser Walter Noel You Have To Buy The New York Times - Where Is The Greenwich Time ?????


Monica and Walter M. Noel, whose firm lost $7.5 billion.





If the Times is here, can The Daily News and The Inquirer be far behind?

Why Is It That The New York Times Company Can Get A Reporter Up To Greenwich To File An In Depth Story On Madoff Middleman Walter Noel, But Hearst Newspapers Can't Get A Greenwich Citizen Or Greenwich Time Reporter To Cover The Story?

As Usual, Greenwich Bloggers And Out Of Town Newspapers Are The Only Ones Adequately Cover Major Greenwich News Stories With National Implications.

Greenwich Time Editor Jim Zorba Is Once Again A Sleep At The Switch As Bloggers And Out Of Town Newspapers Beat Out The Greenwich Time Once Again.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE:

As a go-between who shepherded clients and their money to Bernard L. Madoff, Walter M. Noel became so prosperous that he was only too happy to show off his good fortune to the world.

In 2002, Vanity Fair dispatched the photographer Bruce Weber to shoot a lavish spread of Mr. Noel’s wife and their five grown daughters at his home in Connecticut (“Golden in Greenwich,” read the headline). That was followed, in 2005, by a Town and Country story on the Noel family’s tropical retreat in Mustique.

These houses — joining Mr. Noel’s addresses in Palm Beach and Southampton and on Park Avenue — were visible evidence of his investment empire, the Fairfield Greenwich Group, which had $14.1 billion in February.

Mr. Noel’s firm, including four sons-in-law as partners, now has the distinction of being the biggest known loser in the Madoff scandal, to the tune of $7.5 billion.....

.....The Fairfield Greenwich Group charged clients an annual fee of 1 percent of assets invested for providing access to exclusive hedge funds and performing due diligence on them, in addition to a fee of 20 percent on investment gains each year, according to people close to the fund’s operations. At that rate, an investment of $7 billion paid Mr. Noel’s company $70 million annually, and then $140 million more in a year in which Mr. Madoff reported a 10 percent gain (he steadily reported returns of 10 to 12 percent)......

....Mr. Noel’s largest fund, the $7.3 billion Fairfield Sentry fund, invested exclusively with Mr. Madoff. Mr. Noel has not disclosed how much of that was his own or belonged to family members and how much was his investors’. One of his daughters said, through a spokeswoman at Rubenstein Public Relations, that “a very substantial part of each family member’s personal assets was invested with Bernard Madoff alongside those of our investors.”.....

Fairfield Greenwich is based on East 52nd Street, though Mr. Noel worked frequently from Fairfield with his partners, Jeffrey Tucker, formerly of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Andres Piedrahita. The 78-year-old Mr. Noel had a master’s degree in economics and a law degree — both from Harvard — and had worked for decades in banking before he founded Fairfield Greenwich, which established itself primarily as a marketing entity.

“As it grew beyond, you know, an informal, personal concern where Walter and a couple of people were investing money for his friends, they developed as a marketing force to put Madoff and investors together,” said George L. Ball, a former executive at E. F. Hutton and Prudential-Bache Securities who became friends with the Noels decades ago when both lived in Greenwich.

Mr. Noel met Mr. Madoff in the early 1980s and the businesses of both men grew symbiotically. Mr. Noel was as good a salesman as Mr. Madoff could have wished for. Mr. Noel is routinely described as affable, assured, graceful and nonaggressive. ....
EVERYONE LOVED THE HOT NOEL BABES SPREAD OUT ON
FAMILY X-MAS CARDS

......They built a modestly prosperous life in Greenwich, and were perhaps best known among associates for their Christmas cards— “the people with five stunning girls,” in the words of a family friend.

“As we know, Walter’s success came after several thin years,” wrote John J. McCloy, a banker from Greenwich who described himself and his wife, Laura, as the Noels’ “best friends for more than 30 years,” in May in a letter recommending the Noels to membership in a private club.

In an interview, Mr. McCloy declined to name the club and said that he and his family had not invested with Mr. Madof......
THE HOT NOEL BABES HELP SPREAD THE FAMILY BUSINESS AROUND THE WORLD

.....The Noel sisters went to prestigious colleges in the United States — Harvard, Yale, Brown, and two at Georgetown — but their spouses are largely from abroad, which helped the company extend its global reach.

Mr. Piedrahita, who is married to Corina Noel, grew up in Bogotá, Colombia, went to Boston University, and made a career in the marketing of hedge fund products before becoming a partner in the firm in 1997. Lisina Noel’s husband, Yanko Della Schiava, worked for two textile firms in Italy and “markets F.G.G.’s offshore funds throughout Southern Europe from his base in F.G.G.’s Lugano representative office,” according to the company’s Web site. Alix Noel’s husband, Philip Jamchid Toub, is from Lausanne, Switzerland, and is also involved in marketing the firm’s offshore funds in New York. Marisa Noel’s husband, Matthew Brown, went to St. Mary’s College in San Francisco and also has a marketing position at the firm.

A fifth Noel daughter, Ariane, lives in London and is married to Marco Sodi, an Italian financier.

David Patrick Columbia, the editor of NewYorkSocialDiary .com, said they had burst on the New York-Southampton social scene in the last few years. “They bought a Stanford White house near Lake Agawam a couple of years back,” he said. The house has been valued at $9.4 million.
WALTER NOEL'S FUND RESULTS WERE "STATISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO REPLICATE" AND REMINDED ONE OF THAT OTHER PONZI SCHEME KNOWN AS THE BAYOU FUND

People in the industry continue to question Fairfield’s due diligence. Michael Markov, a hedge fund consultant, said that he was hired by a fund two years ago to look into Fairfield Sentry’s returns and found that it was “statistically impossible to replicate them,” he said.

Mr. Markov said that he found only one hedge fund whose returns correlated to Mr. Madoff’s. That was the Bayou fund, which was prosecuted by the government for fraud in 2006.

You Might Remember The Bayou Fund Was.....

The Bayou Hedge Fund Group was a group of companies and hedge funds founded by Samuel Israel III in 1996. Approximately $450m was raised by the group from investors. Its investors were defrauded from the start with funds being misappropriated for personal use. After poor returns in 1998 the investors were lied to about the fund's returns and a fake accounting firm was set up to provide misleading audited results.

In 2005, Israel and CFO Daniel Marino pleaded guilty to multiple charges including conspiracy and fraud. Marino was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Israel was sentenced to 20 years prison and ordered to forfeit $300 million. At his sentencing Israel said "I lied to you and I cheated you and I cannot put into words how sorry I am

In 1996, investors gave the fund US$300 million. Investors were promised that the fund would grow to about US$7.1 billion in ten years. In 1998-9 trading losses accumulated quickly. The company started a dummy corporation and hired it to audit themselves.

According to federal prosecutors, Bayou had lied about its operations since the beginning, by “overstated gains, understated losses, and reported gains where there were losses.” Court documents show that Bayou never made any money. In mid-2004, Bayou sent a letter to investors claiming that its assets valued in excess of US$450 million.

In 2004, Samuel Israel III and Daniel Marino, the CEO and CFO, respectively, stopped trading fully and spent all resources on covering losses. Over the course of six days in July 2004, Bayou withdrew about $161 million from five bank accounts. They were eventually caught wiring US$100 million overseas.

On 14 April 2008, Israel was sentenced to 20 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $300 million after pleading guilty to defrauding investors in his now-bankrupt firm. On 10 June 2008, it was reported by the press that Israel may have committed suicide after a car registered to Israel was found abandoned on a bridge that spans one of the deepest stretches of the Hudson River in New York. It was the same day that Israel was supposed to begin serving his 20-year prison sentence.

His vehicle was found abandoned on the Bear Mountain Bridge over the Hudson River in New York with the words "Suicide is Painless" written in the dust on his hood. Israel turned himself into Southwick, Mass., police on Wednesday July 2, 2008.
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12/17/08 In Massive Madoff Fraud Case, Greenwich Middleman Walter Noel Is Now In The Spotlight


Where's Waldo And What Did Waldo Know?????

Will Madoff Middleman And Greenwich Resident

Walter Noel End Up Behind Bars?


News Times

The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 12/17/2008 07:45:18 AM EST

One of the biggest losers in Bernard Madoff's alleged ponzi scheme is a Connecticut-based investment firm started in the early 1980s by a well-connected Greenwich banker.

Fairfield Greenwich Group says it invested $7.5 billion with Madoff, who prosecutors say concocted a $50 billion scheme to defraud investors, including the world's big banks and the rich and the famous. Madoff worked with Walter Noel Jr., who heads Fairfield Greenwich and invested his own money with Madoff.

"He believed he was a very bright, very talented investor," said George L. Ball, a family friend of Noel. "He may very well have been almost the original victim."

Fairfield Greenwich Group was founded in 1983 and now has more than 140 employees and offices around the world. But Noel's connection with Madoff has immersed him in a global financial scandal.....

.....Critics say Fairfield Greenwich and other so-called feeder funds who invested their clients' money in Madoff's firm failed to make sure the investments were proper. ......

.....Suzanne Murphy, managing director of hedge fund consultant Tri-Artisan, said her firm looked into Madoff's operation six years ago and concluded it was fraud. She said Madoff was so well-regarded many did not want to hear her findings.

"It was such a cult thing," Murphy said. "People would literally yell at me at the dinner table."

Madoff would often tell investors his fund was closed, but feeder funds like Fairfield Greenwich would provide access to the fund, Murphy said.

The real victims are the clients of the feeder funds, Murphy said. She said investigators should look at the feeder funds, which made lucrative fees for funneling money to Madoff.

"Whether or not they knew what was going on, they certainly never asked the right questions," Murphy said......

.....Ball, chairman of an investment banking firm in Houston, called Noel "very professional, very thorough," and saw the firm do due diligence on one hedge fund. He said that despite Noel's wealth and prominence, he and his wife are dedicated parents.

"They were less concerned about where people were on the social ladder than were they good company and good people," Ball said.


PLEASE SEE:

THE WIFE of Bernard Madoff, the man at the centre of the $50billion Ponzi investment fraud, is coming under scrutiny from investigators as to how much she knew about his business and whether she helped him to raise money from their social network of wealthy individuals.

Ruth Madoff was regularly seen with her husband, entertaining at their three multi-million-dollar homes and the six golf clubs of which they were members.

She accompanied him to charity dinners, often among the elite Jewish fraternity in New York, and is a co-trustee of the $19million Madoff Family Foundation.

She has not been charged and her lawyer Ike Sorkin said: "We are in no position to tell the investigators what to look at.".......
......Compounding matters was the fact Madoff's chief compliance officer was his son, which isn't inherently a problem but can be dicey. "Normally a chief compliance officer would look very closely at the returns and where they were coming from," says Heim. The ponzi scheme alleged here is a fairly basic fraud and would have been detected."Whether or not the Madoff sons who worked in the firm had any knowledge of the ponzi scheme, some experts speculate that they turned their father in when the jig was clearly up in a family bid for them to save themselves.......

AND:



The recently uncovered Ponzi scheme by prominent Wall Street investor Bernard Madoff will not affect municipal investments in Stamford, Norwalk and Greenwich, officials said, but a hedge fund in Greenwich may become its worst victim.

COMMENT:

ONCE AGAIN THE GREENWICH TIME
IS BEHIND THE TIMES:

For The Record This Is The "First And Only" Madoff Ponzi Scheme Story That The Greenwich Time Has Put On The Web.

Meanwhile, All Last Week Greenwich Roundup And Other Local Bloggers Were Bring Town Residents The Local Angle To The National Story.

Let's Take A Look At The Score Card:

4 Greenwich Citizen Jounalists And Bloggers:
33 Madoff News Links From 12/12 - 12/16/08

The Greenwich Time Editors And Reporters:
1 Madoff News Link From 12/12 - 12/16/08

The Ex-Greenwich Time Editor Joe Pisani And His Gal Pal Reporters
Who Are Going To Destroy The Greenwich Time Over At "Our Greenwich":
0 Madoff News Links From 12/12 -12/16/08

Hearst Newspapers Greenwich Citizen And Hersam Acorn's Greenwich Post:
0 Madoff News Links From 12/12 -12/16/08
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