14 Mar 2012

Teri Buhl Blows the Whistle on Sex and Money Scandal in New Canaan, CT! + Crowd funding - Capital Account

Informants are running to US regulators to report allegations of accounting fraud and market manipulation, lured by the possibility of multi-million dollar payouts under a Dodd-Frank program. That's according to a Financial Times story. We'll have to wait and see where that goes, but we'll talk to someone whose been blowing the lid off of banking and hedge fund corruption for years.
Teri Buhl brings us into that world firsthand and tells us about her latest story of sex and scandal in New Canaan, Connecticut, which she's already been sued over. We visit hedge fund land, for a story which is perhaps much more representative of the fraud and moral decay of its Wall Street inhabitants. It involves Mitchell Vazquez (or Mitch Vazquez for short), a trader whose been busted by regulators and banned from the business in the past by both the CFTC as well as the SEC, but that seemingly hasn't stopped his trading or troubles. He tried to bust his stripper assistant Helen Kapoutsos for stealing (she's been charged with embezzling) after she was allegedly paid to have threesomes with him and his fiancé Pamela Mercedes Chiesi, who also happens to be the sister of a convicted insider trader Danielle Chiesi. Quite the plot. We hear about it from Teri Buhl, investigative journalist, who tells us about the story and the bigger picture issues. For instance, when Vasquez settled with regulators multiple times, he never had to admit or deny guilt. It's a more widespread treaNd we've seen as these players, potentially guilty of fraud, return right back to working in finance. Part of the story is a new model for doing this kind of journalism. That's because Teri Buhl (You can read more of Teri Buhl's work on her website at teribuhl.com) is going about this story in an alternative way. As opposed to pitching it to a publication like those she has written for in the past including The Atlantic and Forbes, she's getting funded this time through crowd-funding. Her readers are investing through the website Piratemyfilm.com, which Max Keiser (host of Keiser Report on RT) is CEO and founder of. And its about time too that the alternative media audience got behind the independent journalists and film makers who are working hard to break the MSM cartel, which has been seen most recently in the popularity of Kon2012, the fastest growing viral video in history. This is an internet campaign about the Lord's Resistance Army Leader and fronted by a handsome activist filmmaker. It's drawn its fair share of criticism, and Jon Stewart points out it mainly seems like the mainstream media is jealous that their Uganda stories didn't go viral.

And tonight marks the start of March Madness with President Obama taking British Prime Minister David Cameron to Ohio for a game. And it's not just the president who wants to take time off to catch a glimpse of basketball this time of year, experts say the number of men getting vasectomies jumps by 50% during the NCAA tournament...meaning clinics are capitalizing on "vasectomy madness." Plus as the CFTC expands its inquiry into customer funds in the wake of MF Global and has sued MBF Clearing Corp. whose CEO Mark Fisher is also an CNBC contributor. MBF has allegedly been performing the same "vaporization" activity MF Global was engaged in, failing to properly segregate customer accounts that it held at JP Morgan. Besides the usual wall street corruption, what does this say about the main stream media, and the type of guests and contributors that it has on its programs? We'll give you our two cents.