A View From The Brink ... the beach is backwards

SF cops: Crooks targeted superstitious Asian women

 

Vivian Ho of the San Francisco Chronicle reported that what began as a scam targeting elderly Asian women in San Francisco who believed themselves cursed by bad luck has unfolded into a possible nationwide organized crime ring.

Police said San Francisco officers arrested five women last week who they believe targeted elderly Asian women and took advantage of their superstitions to bilk them out of a total of $850,000 in cash and valuables. The investigation led authorities to suspects who were involved in similar setups in New York, Boston and possibly Chicago, police said.

Police arrested the five women May 10 as they tried to board a plane for Hong Kong at San Francisco International Airport. In their luggage, authorities found about $50,000 in cash and jewelry, cell phones and foreign currency of unknown value.

"We believe these arrests have tremendously impacted this organized crime ring and are hopeful that more victims will come forward," said Police Chief Greg Suhr.

Twenty-five women - 13 of whom were over age 65 - reported being swindled over the past few months in San Francisco by three middle-aged, Cantonese-speaking Asian women who claimed they could help them get rid of a curse or bad luck.

The suspects would approach women who were alone on the street and tell them they had ghosts or a curse attached to them. The only way to remedy the situation, the women were told, was to collect their money and jewelry and give it to the thieves, according to police.

Huifei Lin, 42, Caiqiong Chen, 43, and Lirong Lin, 57, will be arraigned June 14 on charges of grand theft, extortion, robbery and defrauding an elder, the district attorney's office said.

Two other women - Feiyan Wu, 45, and Qinying Ke, 47 - are being held on out-of-state warrants, police said. Investigators believe 15 to 20 people were fooled by similar scams in Boston and New York.

 

Go here for the full story on SFGate.com   --->>>

 

Retired CHP gumshoe's Zodiac suspect is dead

 

Lyndon Lafferty (foreground) and the other former law enforcement officials he says have cracked the Zodiac case. In the background are Bob Jernigan (left), Jerry Johnson (center) and James Dean. Lyndon Lafferty, an ex-CHP officer, and several others believe they have solved the Zodiac case, fingering a 91 year old man in Fairfield, Calif. (Photograph by Brant Ward/Chronicle)

 

Kevin Fagan of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper reported that the man fingered as the Zodiac serial killer by a retired California Highway Patrol officer in a new book has died - leaving the mystery as alive as ever, and adding yet another figure to the long list of deceased men associated with the case.

The man was a 92-year-old former real estate salesman who died in Fairfield in February. The Chronicle is not naming him because law enforcement agencies do not consider him a suspect, even if former CHP Officer Lyndon Lafferty does.

The Zodiac shot or stabbed five people to death in Solano, Napa and San Francisco counties in 1968 and 1969, slayings that have never been solved. The killer taunted police and newspapers, including The Chronicle, with letters bragging about his lust for murder and challenging investigators to crack ciphers he said would reveal his name.

Lafferty, 79, wrote in his new book, "The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: AKA the Silenced Badge," that he first encountered the man in 1970 while on patrol in Vallejo. He gave the man the pseudonym George Russell Tucker in his book, and went to check up on him at his home four months ago - spotting him in the driveway - before sending his book to press.

Lafferty wrote that he focused on "Tucker" while working with the late Solano County sheriff's Sgt. Leslie Lundblad. He wrote that the man's wife had been having an affair with a judge and that the affair had led officials to halt investigations of the man in the Zodiac killings.

The judge and the wife are long dead, Lafferty said.

Lafferty learned this week that "Tucker" is also dead - as of Feb. 2. A Solano County sheriff's investigator said he died of a heart attack.

 

Go here for the full article on SFGate.com   --->>>

Police log excerpts from SFPD stations on the west side of town

 

Here are some choice items culled from police log reports of the San Francisco Police Department’s Taraval and Richmond stations on the city’s west side, for the last week of April and the first two weeks of May, 2012.

Please note that sub-headings in bold type are commentary from the reporter and not part of the original police log item.

 

A hammer to the ribs needs no translation

April 29, 2012

Assault with a deadly weapon and robbery

10:45 p.m., Geary Boulevard and 17th Avenue.

A man got onto an outbound 38 Geary Boulevard MUNI bus in the downtown area. He noticed two other men get on the bus at Powell Street, and one of them sat directly behind him. When he got off the bus at around 17th Avenue and Geary Blvd., so did the other two men. They stood next to him and one of them tried to talk to him.  Since he speaks very limited English, he told them that he didn’t understand. When he began to cross the street they followed him and he noticed that one had a hammer in his hand. They demanded that he give them his phone, so he got scared and began to run but one suspect used the hammer to hit him in the arm and rib cage.  He continued to run and but was tackled to the ground.  One began kicking him, while the other took the victims phone from his pocket and rosary bead bracelet from his wrist.  They then fled east on Geary Blvd.  The suspects were described as either Hispanic or white males, 18-20 years of age, one wearing a black beanie and white t-shirt, another with a black hooded sweatshirt and dark pants. The victim refused medical treatment.

 

Go here for the rest of this police log on Examiner.com   --->>>

 

Republican Party suckles at the breast of Big Business

 

 

David Horsey of the Los Angeles Times newspaper opines that if money is the mother’s milk of politics, then America’s big corporations are Big Mama and Big Baby is the Republican Party suckling at the enormous bosom of business. Democrats, meanwhile, are abandoned brats scrounging for nourishment wherever they can find it.

During the long decades the Democrats held a solid majority in Congress, campaign donations from the corporate world were spread around among incumbents in both parties – not evenly, but at least the D's got their share. Since the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994, however, corporate dollars have increasingly flowed in one direction.

This happened, in part, because Republican leaders like Tom “The Hammer” DeLay instituted a program to punish corporate lobbyists who were too bipartisan with their donations. Even more significantly, the evolution of the GOP into a militantly anti-tax and anti-regulation party has made Republican policy goals and the political aims of big corporations indistinguishable. 

Now, in 2012, the discrepancy in campaign contributions is stark. Where once big business favored the GOP by 2 to 1, a survey by the Center for Responsive Politics has found Republicans enjoying a 7-1 advantage in some sectors. Energy companies, in particular, are giving heavily to Republican candidates, but so are financial institutions, insurance companies, real estate firms and agribusiness.

In addition to direct contributions, corporate givers -- unleashed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling allowing unlimited contributions to independent political action committees – are dumping massive amounts of money into conservative "super PACs." And those super PACs are certainly not coming to the aid of any Democrats. 

Even as an incumbent, President Obama is having a tough time attracting corporate dollars. Hedge fund managers who gave big to his campaign in 2008 are putting their political investments elsewhere in 2012. He may have saved Wall Street from its own excesses and provided the bailouts that allowed the financial moguls to hold on to their fortunes, but they are not showing Obama any gratitude. They would prefer to have one of their own, Mitt Romney, in the White House.

Go here for the full article at the Los Angeles Times newspaper's website   --->>>

San Francisco union sends members to picket Fresh & Easy market

 

(Originally published in the April, 2012, issue of the Richmond Review newspaper, a community news source serving the Richmond District of San Francisco.) 

 

By Thomas K. Pendergast

 

People living around the Lincoln Park and Seacliff neighborhoods of San Francisco have probably noticed a few picket signs in front of the new Fresh & Easy market at Clement Street and 32nd Avenue. 

The store has about 25 employees and none of them belong to a union, which the United Food and Commercial Worker's Union (UFCW) Local 648 takes issue with. The union represents retail clerks throughout the City in stores like Safeway, Luckys and Mollie Stone's.

According to a flyer handed out on the picket line, the union is asking the public to boycott the store. It says Fresh & Easy's parent company, the United Kingdom's Tesco, "is pulling money out of our community, state and country. It's bad enough that good American jobs are being outsourced to other countries, but now this global giant from the U.K. is taking advantage of American workers."

 

Go here for the full story at the Richmond Review newspaper's website   --->>>

Teen Suspect In SF Lamborghini Theft Had Stash Of Weapons

 

KCBS reported that authorities say a San Francisco Bay Area teenager charged in a drive-by shooting and the theft of a celebrity chef’s Lamborghini kept an arsenal that included assault rifles, phone-jamming equipment and a police uniform.

Court documents show that the items were stashed at a storage locker rented by 17-year-old Max Wade. That’s where authorities found a motorcycle linked to the April 13 shooting and the yellow Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder owned by chef Guy Fieri.

Authorities said they believe Wade stole the Lambroghini from a San Francisco car dealership on Van Ness Avenue last year and believe he is also responsible for a drive-by shooting in Mill Valley last month, shooting at two people who were in a parked vehicle.

“We located a motorcycle which we believe was used in the drive-by shooting in Mill Valley,” said Sgt. Mark hale with the Marin County Sheriff’s Office. “And we recovered other items that we think are related to our shooting.”

Hale said among the other items they found in a rented storage container were false ID cards from several states, a full San Francisco Police Department uniform with a badge and duty belt and a dismantled AK-47.

 

Go here for the full report on the KCBS website   --->>>

Suspected burglar charged with attempted homicide

 

By Thomas K. Pendergast

 

San Francisco police announced the arrest of a man suspected of severely beating a 32-year-old San Francisco resident with a pipe, while burglarizing the victim’s house on the 1100 block of Ingerson Avenue.

The SFPD says De Angelo Winston, 22, of San Francisco, was booked on suspicion of attempted homicide, attempted robbery, burglary, possession of burglary tools and resisting arrest.

Police say that on April, 23, 2012 at 8:21 a.m., officers from the Bayview Station responded to a report of a break-in and beating. The victim told police dispatch that a man broke into his house and beat him. He was in the shower bathing when the suspect suddenly appeared and struck him repeatedly with a metal bar before fleeing the house. 

When police arrived they found the victim injured and bleeding.

 

Go here for the full story on Examiner.com   --->>>

 

Alaska's governor pulls oil taxes from special session

 

Reaction from lawmakers ranges from disappointment to elation

Lisa Demer of the Anchorage Daily News newspaper reported that Gov. Sean Parnell made an abrupt reversal that astonished legislators Wednesday evening, when he said that he was abandoning his top priority for the special session -- big oil tax cuts -- because he saw no hope of getting a bill through the Legislature.

His decision came on the eighth day of the 30-day session and leaves only a bill for a natural gas pipeline, a priority of House Speaker Mike Chenault, on the legislative agenda. Lawmakers already passed one bill in the special session related to sex trafficking.

House Democrats were elated. Chenault took the about-face in stride. Senators were perturbed.

The governor blamed the state Senate as unwilling to dramatically cut taxes to boost declining oil production, but some senators said the governor called it off when there was still hope of compromise.

"It was way too early to pull the plug," said Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, the influential co-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who had pronounced the governor's proposal "nonsensical."

 

 

Go here for the full story on the Anchorage Daily News website   --->>>

Protesters air grievances at Wells Fargo meeting

 

Carolyn Jones, Vivian Ho, Jill Tucker and Kevin Fagan of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper reported that protesters enraged about the country's economic miasma disrupted Wells Fargo's annual summit Tuesday, as shareholders celebrated the bank's record profit and awarded its chief executive a pay package of nearly $20 million.

Hundreds of activists - including union members, Occupy activists and people whose homes have been foreclosed - surrounded the Merchants Exchange Building in downtown San Francisco, where about 250 shareholders gathered on the 15th floor to hear details of the bank's 28 percent profit increase last year.

Shareholders meetings are seldom tense affairs, but people attending this one had to pass through metal detectors and several layers of security. Afterward, San Francisco police ordered them to stay inside the chandelier-laden Julia Morgan Ballroom for 45 minutes as protesters outside dispersed.

Fifteen protesters, allowed into the meeting because they own stock in Wells Fargo, shouted over CEO John Stumpf as he presented a PowerPoint slide show about the bank's $15.9 billion profit last year.

Police escorted out the protesters, who were cited for disrupting the meeting and released.

 

Go here for the full story on SFGate.com   --->>>

SFPD release sketches of scam suspects

The San Francisco Police Department is asking the public to help identify this woman and others suspected of defrauding Chinese women in the Sunset District. 

 

By Thomas K. Pendergast

 

The San Francisco Police Department released six sketches of suspected con artists who specialize in preying upon Chinese women.

Police say several victims in the Sunset District have been conned out of at least $88,000 between them in cash and another $20,000 in jewelry throughout the past couple of months.

So far 21 incidents have been reported to police.

Some of the cases involved the sale of jade bracelets, which supposedly bring good luck and fortune to the wearer. The victims handed over thousands of dollars for bracelets that were worth about $8 each.

In more recent incidents, the victims were alone when they were approached by three suspects, all Chinese females, 40-46 years old, 5’2” and 5’5” tall, 130-135 pounds each, with black hair and speaking Cantonese.

Police say they defrauded their victims by taking advantage of “superstitious beliefs.” Victims were told that they had “a ghost attached" to them and that they were "cursed,” so they and their valuable property needed to be “purified.”

 

Go here for the story and slide show of suspect sketches on Examiner.com   --->>>