OPPT (One Person's Public Trial) - Tucci-Jarraf

[wserra]

So now I am blocked from posting to the Lame and the Halt Blog. I have tried to post the below a couple of times, and nothing happens. Normally, you would get the message "your post is awaiting moderation".

> Why have people accessed these accounts previously, many have paid off debt.

Name one.

and

> [alien6] You still never answered the question; (nor do I expect that you ever will) what was deposited in Beanes Account that allowed him to obtain the motor home?

I've actually answered it repeatedly.

[wserra] With stolen money. With money that he got from USAA Bank by linking a fake funding account and taking advantage of ACH delay combined with USAA Bank’s goodwill towards veterans (now ended, thanks to Beane) and a hole in their verification procedures (now fixed).

[wserra] On the first day of testimony – January 23, 2018 – one Monica Alcala, a representative of USAA Bank, answered this very question. She testified (pp 128-130) that on July 3, 2017, Beane added a funding account to his USAA account. The routing number for the account he attempted to add was to the Federal Reserve, followed by his own Social Security number as the account number. He then proceeded to rack up the charges. She testified that, since USAA Bank deals with veterans, they will credit immediately, not waiting for the funding bank to actually transfer the money. If you look into the nature of ACH (Automated Clearing House) transfers, typically they do not clear immediately in any event, and most banks will not allow immediate withdrawals. USAA is different because, as Ms. Alcala testified, “It goes back to we try to take care of our members who are active military, so we try to take care of them as fast as possible.” Unfortunately for USAA Bank, some of their members are more trustworthy than others. Beane fell on the wrong side of that line.

[wserra] So: electrons were deposited in that account. USAA Bank allowed them to be withdrawn as dollars because they trusted someone who turned out to be a thief.

So in fact I've answered that question in considerable detail. You just don't like the answer. Have you ever known anyone who bounced a check but still got to take home the item that the bad check was supposed to pay for? Did the fact that s/he took the item mean that there was really money in the account to pay for it? Just as with Beane, did there come a time of reckoning when the person either had to return the item or pay for it? And, failing that, did there come a time when law enforcement came calling? Are you starting to see the parallels?

Moreover, after I first submitted these, people continue to challenge me, with no one honest enough to recognize (let alone say) that I can't respond. I'd still like to ask a question there: if they all are so sure they're right, why don't they try to buy a $500K RV by "accessing their value"?

[Siegfried Shrink]

It is rather like going to a church and standing up and asking "Is there any evidence for any of this?"

Reason and explanations are wasted on the faithful, because the belief is far more important than the facts if the facts conflict with the belief.

It is a good thing that someone tries to present the facts because someone may be influenced away from delusion, it's just an uphill row to hoe.

[wserra]

It is a good thing that someone tries to present the facts because someone may be influenced away from delusion

That's the only reason why I do it. I don't enjoy beating my head against a wall any more than the next person.

What I really want to do when I post at a place like that is use the below as my sig:

Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
- Schiller

Except they'd probably think it means "Free Randy and Heather".

[Siegfried Shrink]

"Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain"

Might be more understandable. You are not trying to communicate with reasonably well educated people.

[Burnaby49]

"Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain"

Might be more understandable. You are not trying to communicate with reasonably well educated people.

On the contrary it's been my belief that many of Heather's followers, at least the ones who followed her to Morocco, were relatively well educated. New age spacey types that believed in spaceships circling the earth and lion-headed godesses being channeled through gurus, but educated, if you accept vague touchy-feely liberal arts as education.

[Siegfried Shrink]

Probably not in German literature, though. Heinrich Himmler and Heinrich Heine are all one to them.

[Burnaby49]

Probably not in German literature, though. Heinrich Himmler and Heinrich Heine are all one to them.

Pretty much me too.

[Siegfried Shrink]

Permit me to doubt that.

[notorial dissent]

"Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain"

Might be more understandable. You are not trying to communicate with reasonably well educated people.

Most of them wouldn't understand the big words.

I'm not sure but what "educated" is not a very fluid term in this context then, since they obviously WEREN'T educated in critical thinking, research, or rational approach, or well thought or anything having to do with reality.

[ArthurWankspittle]

Probably not in German literature, though. Heinrich Himmler and Heinrich Heine are all one to them.

Himmler was the marketing guy wasn't he?

[JohnPCapitalist]

On the contrary it's been my belief that many of Heather's followers, at least the ones who followed her to Morocco, were relatively well educated. New age spacey types that believed in spaceships circling the earth and lion-headed godesses being channeled through gurus, but educated, if you accept vague touchy-feely liberal arts as education.

Ahem. I have a touchy-feely liberal arts degree from a school world-reknowned as a major hotbed of touchy-feely postmodern tought. I even sat quite literally at the feet of Michel Foucault in one seminar because all the chairs were taken.

But I think that the finely honed bullshit detectors that carried me through a decades-long Wall Street career were forged and impeccably sharpened by that experience. A number of money managers far more successful than me are also liberal arts types. Not all liberal arts types fall prey to woo of the OPPT sort, though shamefully many do.

[Burnaby49]

On the contrary it's been my belief that many of Heather's followers, at least the ones who followed her to Morocco, were relatively well educated. New age spacey types that believed in spaceships circling the earth and lion-headed godesses being channeled through gurus, but educated, if you accept vague touchy-feely liberal arts as education.

Ahem. I have a touchy-feely liberal arts degree from a school world-reknowned as a major hotbed of touchy-feely postmodern tought. I even sat quite literally at the feet of Michel Foucault in one seminar because all the chairs were taken.

But I think that the finely honed bullshit detectors that carried me through a decades-long Wall Street career were forged and impeccably sharpened by that experience. A number of money managers far more successful than me are also liberal arts types. Not all liberal arts types fall prey to woo of the OPPT sort, though shamefully many do.

I'm not implying that liberal arts somehow transforms otherwise reasonable people into gullible new-agers. My belief is somewhat different. I think that a lot of people who go into liberal arts are already pre-disposed towards believing in gurus and mystic nonsense. This belief set directs them in their educational choices. I think people are essentially set in their ways well before going to university and, if of a gullible (I'd call it seekers mindset) nature, aren't going to go into engineering or business where their views will be mocked. So Heather's followers, while possibly for the large part well educated, won't be accountants and biochemists. They will come, as I said, from touchy-feely liberal arts.

[AndyK]

IMHO, it's almost the opposite.

People with highly specialized educations -- doctors, dentist, attorneys, scientists -- are convinced that their knowledge surpasses all challenges.

They know everything.

Thus, they are extremely vulnerable to scams based anywhere outside their main expertise.

All it takes is a little salesmanship and they come to believe that the scam was their own idea and, therefore, unimpeachable.

[notorial dissent]

If you want to look for prime scam/sovcit candidates chiropractors, doctors, and dentists are right at the top of the list, not sure where airline pilots sit, but they are right up there. I'm not sure where lawyers fit in the list.

[JohnPCapitalist]

IMHO, it's almost the opposite.

People with highly specialized educations -- doctors, dentist, attorneys, scientists -- are convinced that their knowledge surpasses all challenges.

They know everything.

Thus, they are extremely vulnerable to scams based anywhere outside their main expertise.

All it takes is a little salesmanship and they come to believe that the scam was their own idea and, therefore, unimpeachable.

You raise an interesting point. It appears that within the membership ranks of Scientology, dentists, chiropractors and veterinarians are surprisingly overrepresented. Several years ago, I did a count of these professions in the membership directory of WISE, a Scientology group trying to push Scientology into members' businesses and it came out that they were overrepresented relative to the economy as a whole. (I was trying to use average income levels of proprietors of these businesses to estimate Scientology's revenue, an ocean-boiling exercise that didn't turn out as well as I had hoped).

Within financial services, for decades, sleazy brokers have ripped off high-paid professionals like doctors (especially surgeons), dentists and the like with high-risk or outright fraudulent investments, knowing full well that these people's hubris would prevent them from seeing the flaws in the deals. Fortunately, that's not my job -- I advise fund managers on specific types of stocks, not individuals, so my conscience is pristine.

[SteveUK]

So - what sort of sentence is she looking at ?

[Siegfried Shrink]

I think all types do better with an early inoculation of 'show me the evidence'.
Possibly because science was taught by means of experiments that allowed us to derive and understand basic principles, I tended to extend the same approach to all subjects.
This may be less common that I thought at the time. The idea of learning more and more about less and less did not appeal, and as far as I knew there was no university course that taught a bit of everything and whatever you found interesting.

So you can get sceptical historians or sceptical chemists, you just have to start young with the pupils.

[Burnaby49]

Based on my experience I'd have to agree with the comment that doctors and lawyers are very gullible but that's not my point. I was talking worldview, not specific gullibility. I doubt Heather has any doctors or dentists amongst her followers because they don't have a new-agey mindset. However I agree entirely with your comment;

They know everything.

Thus, they are extremely vulnerable to scams based anywhere outside their main expertise.

All it takes is a little salesmanship and they come to believe that the scam was their own idea and, therefore, unimpeachable.

I spent 35 years as a Canada Revenue Agency auditor specializing in tax avoidance schemes towards the end of my career. The really big money taxpayers generally went into small private schemes devised by the large accounting firms for their clients. Private non-disclosure schemes that often had a good chance of succeeding. The ones I generally got involved in were very high-risk mass-marketed untried schemes based on very dubious interpretations of the Income Tax Act. These were certain to be attacked by the CRA and almost all failed. Doctors and lawyers participated in droves, in numbers very disproportionate to their percentage of the general population. I can only assume because, as experts in difficult fields, they fell for the purported expertise of others.

I've given numerous examples here in Quatloos in my writeups of the Paradigm tax evasion scam headed by Russell Porisky. Balogh, Sydel, Lee, and numerous others I wrote about were dentists who probably had no idea that the schemes were so flagerantly wrong that they'd all end up convicted of tax evasion. Our own poster fussygus was a professional engineer who fell for the Paradigm bullshit as was his partner Curle. None of these were stupid individuals or, probably, generally gullible. But they all thought they understood Porisky's brillioant plan.

[Jeffrey]

I have to dispute Burnabys claims here. The only ones with higher education in OPPT are Heather and Katie. Alex, the guy that was at both arrests is an unemployed mechanic. The profile for followers based on the letters sent into court are all uneducated lower class. The mortgages they’re trying to pay off are for homes that cost $120,000 US, well below the median price for the areas they live in.

[Burnaby49]

I'm guessing about the background of that bunch if dingbats that went to Morocco, the original followers, not the pathetic remnants still desperately clinging to her. The people I'm referring to are posting away on I UV and blogs like this;

https://stillnessinthestorm.com/2014/11 ... -veil-fro/

Here's a shot of them in Morocco;



and watching their perpetual motion machine fail;



Although, who knows? I could be entirely wrong.