03/21/09 The Raw Overnight Greenwich News Feed (Updated)

Conn. forces AIG bonus recipients to testify
Stamford Advocate


....Besides Liddy, these AIG staffers are to be visited with subpoenas by state marshals: James Haas, Douglas Poling and Joseph Rooney of Fairfield; Leonid Shekhtman of Redding; Robert Powell and Diane Cenci of Westport; Christian Toft and William Kolbert of Weston; Steven Wagar of Norwalk; Gregory Ruffa of Darien; Jonathan Liebergall and Christopher Pohle of New Canaan; and Steven Pike of Stamford...

With the exception of Cenci and Haas, each donated $2,100 to U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd's presidential campaign in December 2006. Haas donated a total of $2,000 to previous Dodd campaigns. Dodd has been under fire for his role in creating legislation that allowed AIG to pay the bonuses.....

....Blumenthal said the state has been unable to compel AIG to provide names and addresses, so his office used media reports to determined whom to subpoena.....

PLEASE SEE:

03/20/09 Fat Cats In The Backcoutry Of Greenwich Watch In Horror As Fellow Town Resident Richard Blumenthal Sends Out Subpoena To AIG Bonus Bums

03/20/09 READER SUBMITTED COMMENTS: Hatred palooza 2009 on Sat AM for AIG FPG execs.

03/20/09 NYPost's Jackpot Jimmy Cries Like A Baby As He Gives Back His AIG Muti Million Pirate Booty Back To The Taxpayers

03/18/09 The Jack Pot Jimmys Of The Greenwich Backcountry Are Shaking In Terror As The New York Post Shows Up In New Canaan And Fairfield

If The Hunter And Zebora Don't Get Off Their Rear Ends, Then The New York Newspapers Are Going To Start Scooping The Greenwich Time In It's Own Backyard.

Everyone Town Knows That The Greenwich Time Has A Long History Of Not Name Names In The Backcountry. But These Greedy Backcountry Sleazeballs Should Face The Judgement Of Every Working Greenwich Resident They Encounter As They Spend Their Dirty Bonus Bucks.

Incompetent Managing Editor Bruce Hunter Has No Nose For News And Doesn't Realize That This Is Not Going To Just Blow Over.

Here Is A News Flash For The Clueless Bruce Hunter:

An AIG Sourse Tells Greenwich Roundup That The AIG Employee Retention Plan That Is Causing Working Folks Sharpening Their Pitchforks, Has Two Componets.

There Are Two Sets Of Bonus Payments.

This Is The First Bonus And Covers December 01, 2007 To November 30, 2008 That Was To Be Paid No Later Than March 15th of 2009.

Most People Including Bruce Hunter Don't Realize That The Clock Is Already Ticking On A Second Round Of Bonus Payments.

The Is Second Bonus Payments Cover December 01, 2008 To November 30, 2009 That Was To Be Paid No Later Than March 15th of 2010.

Next Years Bonus Payments Are A Done Deal

Good weather, more bands on tap for St. Patrick's parade
Greenwich Time
By Meredith Blake

With more bands, bagpipers, and Irish dance groups than previous years, the Greenwich Hibernian Association kicks off its 34th annual St. ...

Here Is The Latest on The Greenwich Ponzie scheme
The GreenwichTime Managing Editor Bruce Hunter
Has Failed To Cover On Line.....

Testimony of Elisse B. Walter Commission of SEC Before the US ...
Lawfuel (Securities and Exchange Commission press release)
... an unregistered investment vehicle; WG Trading Company, a registered broker-dealer located in Greenwich, Conn.; and Westridge Capital Management, ...

Business calendar
Norwalk Advocate
Greenwich Chamber of Commerce will meet from 5:30 to 7 pm at Frederic Fekkai. Cost is $25 for members and $35 for nonmembers. ...

Geriatrics ; Home Health ; Hospice ; Long Term Care ; Management ...
ADVANCE
An exciting opportunity for an exp., energetic and entrepreneurial nurse with a home care company based in Greenwich, CT and serving surrounding Fairfield ...

Stew to Pen Midsummer Score for Shakespeare on the Sound...
Playbill.com
Now in its 14th season, Shakespeare on the Sound presents free summer theatre along the Long Island Sound in Rowayton and Greenwich, CT parks. ...

Lightning strikes Big Green as Boldt named captain
Greenwich Post
It’s only March and already Greenwich resident Peter Boldt can’t wait to drop the puck on another season with the Dartmouth men’s ice hockey team. ...

Stamford Plus Magazine, The New York Guard, And Rev. Everett J. Wabst Get Suckered By Medicade Fraudster Michael Lonski......

Life Matters of Old Greenwich receives recognition for work at World Trade Center
Stamford Plus Magazine (Press Release)

Life Matters, Inc., is headquartered in Old Greenwich, Conn., and Dr. Lonski is the only TRICARE psychologist in Greenwich, specializing in psychological ...

In Fact, Old Greenwich Medicade Fraudster Michael Lonski

Is Pulling The Wool Over Evryones Eyes....

Fraudster Lonski's Press Release Continues.....

In addition to the World Trade Center Commemorative Plaque and Photo awarded to Life Matters, Inc., the organization has received numerous other recognitions and was recently nominated for the Defense of Liberty Medal in relation to its work at the World Trade Center. Dr. Mike Lonski also testified before the U.S. Congressional Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations in 2004, as well as the Connecticut Federal Defender’s Office on matters regarding Post Traumatic Stress Disorders.

PLEASE SEE:

09/07/08 You wont Read These News Stories In The Greenwich Citizen Or The Greenwich Post, Because They Have Not Updated Their Websites For A While

The Raw Greenwich News Feed....

A Charity Fails Families Of Fallen Firefighters After 9/11

Hartford Courant

On a mild day in late November 2001, Stephen Careaga stood under the brick facade of a storied New York fire station, an unlikely benefactor from the Pacific Northwest who traveled to Manhattan with a cashier's check for nearly $4 million.

Three miles downtown, workers were still recovering the bodies of firefighters entombed in the twisted wreckage of the World Trade Center, and the New York Fire Department's hastily assembled funeral desk was scheduling the last few dozen memorials for the 343 firefighters killed on 9/11.

Careaga, a one-time volunteer firefighter and reserve police officer, had been trying to make money selling computer software to rural fire departments in Washington state. To get a foot in the door, he created a tiny nonprofit called FireDonations, with a website that would-be customers could use to collect online donations for fallen firefighters.

That was in August 2001.

A month later, when jumbo jets plowed into the World Trade Center towers and hundreds of firefighters trudged up the stairs to their deaths, Fire-Donations was the only fire-services charity on the Internet equipped to take online contributions for the cause.

Boosted by links on Yahoo and other national websites, money poured in from around the globe, peaking at a rate of $250,000 an hour. The nonprofit, hastily registered with the IRS and renamed Firefighters National Trust, collected $4 million in a week's time, and $6 million by the end of September.

In all, donors contributed $11 million to Firefighters National Trust, which promised that the money would go "directly to the spouses and children of the New York Firefighters and Rescue workers who lost their lives in the World Trade Center tragedy."

... show. In the charity's final act, Careaga transferred the $2 million still in the bank to a psychologist in Greenwich who had set up a nonprofit counseling service after a federal fraud case cut off his access to lucrative Medicare reimbursements.

Soon afterward, tax records show, that Greenwich nonprofit paid $150,000 to a consulting company Careaga had set up out of his house. Careaga acknowledges being paid by the charity, but says he can't recall specifically what he did or for how long he worked....

...Careaga took a $125,000 salary, while his No. 2 official received $100,000 a year. The charity also ran up large legal bills -- nearly all of which went to the Otto Law Group, led by the charity's secretary, David M. Otto, who was also the lawyer for Civil Communications.

Overall, Firefighters National Trust paid Otto's firm $400,000.There were laptops and BlackBerrys and airport lounge memberships for the charity's officers. In time, there were $10,000-a-month marketing deals ....

...There also were allegations of misspending, including airline tickets, expensive meals and other perks for the spouses of charity officials. Eighteen days after the terrorist attacks, according to a lawsuit filed by a former employee, charity funds were used to pay a $695 bill at Le Salon Paul Morey Spa in Seattle for Careaga's wife and the wives of two associates...

ONE LAST DONATION

...the beginning of 2005, the fundraising was over and Careaga made plans to shut down the charity and transfer all remaining funds -- more than $1.9 million -- to Life Matters, a Greenwich charity run by husband-and-wife psychologists Michael Lonski and Evelyn Llewellyn that provided psychological counseling to firefighters.But the money flowed both ways.

While Careaga was working to send the leftover cash to Life Matters, he was also negotiating to have the charity hire a company he had recently created out of his home, called CDF Consulting. Within the year, Life Matters sent $150,000 to CDF Consulting.Careaga defended the payment.

"There was a significant amount of knowledge that needed to be transferred, and Life Matters felt it was in their best interest to get that knowledge and to have some assistance setting up some programs, so that's what I did," he said in a recent interview.

Careaga initially said he helped develop a counseling program, a post-traumatic stress program and scholarship programs, though he later acknowledged that LifeMatters has no scholarship program.

"You might want to talk to them specifically about the programs," he said, "because it's been quite a few years and I don't really recall off the top of my head what the programs were."

Peter Chavkin, a lawyer speaking for Life Matters and Lonski, said Careaga was not hired to help the charity develop counseling programs, but rather to help find new sources of funding, as well as identify additional firehouses and other sites that might benefit from Life Matters' services.

He said Life Matters retained Careaga's company for two years, but terminated the arrangement after a year because it was dissatisfied with Careaga's work......

...... suggest exploring the possibility that any individuals currently associated with the Firefighters National Trust may personally benefit from a transfer to Life Matters," Jeffrey T. Even, an assistant attorney general, wrote in a January 2005 letter to Tracy Shier, one of the lawyers in Otto's law firm.

Shier, who was later disbarred in an unrelated matter, assured regulators that the transfer was clean, and Even sent another letter approving the plan "based on your representations that the distribution of assets is not conditioned upon any agreement to provide employment or any other financial arrangements to benefit any officer or director" of Firefighters National Trust....

...Chavkin, the lawyer for Life Matters, said the paperwork committing the $1.9 million from Firefighters National Trust was completed before Life Matters had finalized its consulting deal with Careaga."

My clear impression from Mike [Lonski] and from the lawyer that handled this is that on Mike and Life Matters' side of things, there was no link between the distribution of moneys and the ultimate retention for one year of CDF," Chavkin said. "And Mike had been told that the attorney general's concern was only that the two not be linked as a quid pro quo."

Lonski and Llewellyn created Life Matters in April 2002, at the same time federal investigators were probing millions in questionable Medicare claims made by Lonski and his private practice, L & L Psychological Services. In October 2002, Lonski and L&L agreed to pay $4 million to settle allegations that they had bilked the federal government by filing false claims in the 1990s.

According to a civil complaint filed by the Justice Department, Lonski submitted bills to Medicare for as many as 106 diagnostic exams for the same patient, and for performing as many as 67 diagnostic exams in a single day. The complaint also alleged that Lonski charged Medicare for services provided to relatives, claimed movie screenings as "group therapy" and then billed the government for as many as 75 clients who watched the movies, and charged for specialized psychological services that were never delivered.

...Careaga said he was introduced to Lonski by New York firefighters who had high regard for the Greenwich couple's programs. In late 2003, Firefighters National Trust began sending money to Life Matters to pay for grief counseling and training, and grants to the Greenwich charity topped $700,000 by the end of 2004 -- accounting for nearly half of Life Matters' income.

Bolstered by the funding, Lonski and Llewellyn paid themselves more than $480,000 in 2004, and an average of about $360,000 in the following two years. Lonski is still paying off his debt to the federal government -- and still counseling those affected by 9/11; on Friday, Chavkin said, Lonski was working at the World Trade Center site....

Dodd fights for his political life amid AIG mess
NECN
Greenwich businessman and millionaire Tom Foley and State Senator Sam Caliguri are both considering taking on Dodd. And former congressman Rob Simmons has ...

Westerly Land Trust broadens mission, undertakes downtown ...
TheDay
Approached by philanthropist Charles Royce of the Greenwich-based Royce Family Fund four years ago, the nonprofit trust has purchased an assortment of ...

Free breast cancer symposium features leading experts
Greenwich Post
The symposium will feature experts from Greenwich Hospital, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine ...

NCC student Donata Arden to receive award at State Capitol
Norwalk Plus Magazine
... Tanzania village, Ms. Arden moved to the United States three years ago after marrying Jim Arden, a retired educator from Greenwich Country Day School. ...

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