Former FCC Broadband Panel Chair Arrested For Fraud (dslreports.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from DSLReports: The former chair of a panel built by FCC boss Ajit Pai to advise the agency on broadband matters has been arrested for fraud. Elizabeth Ann Pierce, former CEO of Quintillion Networks, was appointed by Pai last April to chair the committee, but her tenure only lasted until September. Pierce resigned from her role as Quintillion CEO last August after investigators found she was engaged in a scam that tricked investors into pouring money into a multi-million dollar investment fraud scheme. According to the Wall Street Journal, Pierce convinced two investment firms that the company had secured contracts for a high-speed fiber-optic system that would generate hundreds of millions of dollars in future revenue. She pitched the system as a way to improve Alaska's connectivity to the rest of the country, but the plan was largely a fabrication, law enforcement officials say. "As it turned out, those sales agreements were worthless because the customers had not signed them," U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in prepared remarks. "Instead, as alleged, Pierce had forged counterparty signatures on contract after contract. As a result of Pierce's deception, the investment companies were left with a system that is worth far less than Pierce had led them to believe." Quintillion says it began cooperating with lawmakers as soon as allegations against Pierce surfaced last year. Pierce was charged with wire fraud last Thursday and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Comments

Like Madoff...

[Mal-2]

Like Madoff, the crime isn't that she stole a bunch of money. It's that she stole a bunch of money from rich people. This pierces the "one rule for me, and another for thee" veil.

Mod parent up

[rsilvergun]

it's just coincidence that she's related to somebody /. hates. And I'm sure she was promptly replaced by somebody just as bad. I keep saying this, but if people want this to stop you need to get out there and vote these bums out.

Re:Mod parent up

[youngone]

...get out there and vote these bums out....

Ha ha! As if that will make any difference. It's America, you just vote in some other bums.

Re:Mod parent up

[Jeremi]

Ha ha! As if that will make any difference. It's America, you just vote in some other bums.

All bums are not created equal. The trick is for voters to accurately evaluate the bumminess of each bum, and choose the less-bummy bum in each election. That way, in the best-case scenario, we slowly work our way up the bum-gradient, and even in the worst-case scenario, while things don't improve, they don't degrade either.

Saying it won't make any difference only discourages voters from evaluating the candidates carefully, which increases the chances of them accidentally choosing the bummier bum, and thereby making things worse than they were before.

Re: Mod parent up

[Green Mountain Bot]

More shit is flushed out every day.

Too bad it's all been the shit that Trump and company brought with them to DC.

What did Ajit know and when did he know it?

[Proudrooster]

It's time to find out what Ajit knew and when he knew it. I wonder if he is nervous.. Did Ajit know about these contracts? We he a reference for investors? Was he a willing party to the fraud? Was the connection to the FCC leveraged in the fraud? So many questions and inquiring minds want to know.

Re:Don't forget whose fault this REALLY is!!

[AceViper]

True. However, it's important to point out that he was forced to select a Republican, by law. It's possible Ajit was the best of all the bad options.

Draining the swamp

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Trump meant to drain the swamp by having everyone associated with him and his appointees arrested and thrown into prison, but it's starting to do the job.

Re:Draining the swamp

[skids]

If this keeps up he'll run out of names to namedrop during his speeches which don't result in "lock em up" chants.

Show up at your primary

[rsilvergun]

your primary vote is incredibly powerful since so few people show up to it. If you show up at your primaries you can do away with crap like the "Sheldon" primary (google it).

You are looking at the wrong problem.

[thesupraman]

Actually, I beg to differ.

The current Bozo and friends are, as expected, foolishly blatant and open about what they are doing.
This comes from a lack of political experience, and is actually rather refreshing.
The other mod were almost the definition of pure slick politics - where everything was hidden.
They only mad a few slip ups that got leaked out and tipped the balance, but they were certainly adept at playing kiss the baby while selling out your freedom.

Having a loudmouth idiot in charge can have benifits, and I would suggest is making the whole system less corrupt, not more, as it is at least being exposed and made obvious.

Re:You are looking at the wrong problem.

[rtb61]

Actually it is a solid indication of the extreme problem, corruption in US politics is causing. It is so bad and rampant, it is spreading through out the entire system. It is infecting US government at every level, Federal, State, Local and in every Agency. They are seeing the corruption at the top and emulating it. Seriously wire fraud from the agency that is meant to fight wire fraud (the distribution of the data and the management of the scam), a top level political appointee. Alarm bells should be ringing, you have serious, deep and pervasive corruption going on, you desperately need to crack down on it hard, otherwise it will destroy the country and it has already caused an enormousness amount of damage to the economy, to the society as a whole, to infrastructure, to global presence, to all government agencies and even to education of the generation. The continued failure to 'properly' investigate, prosecute, convict and penalise, in glaringly public incidents, is destroying your country. Corruption is becoming a mass problem and spreading, failure to carry out high level prosecutions ie 'See no one is above the law and everyone gets caught', is accelerating that growth of corruption, you have hit second world government levels of corruption, it looks like you a going on to third world level government, where bribes are expect to be paid for everything. You should be freaking the fuck out.

Re:You are looking at the wrong problem.

[Undead Waffle]

You seem to think this is a new thing. This problem is the basis of the "small government" philosophy. Corrupt people will seek power, so the best protection is to limit the available power and localize it as much as possible to minimize the damage. Ideally corruption would be punished but it rarely is anywhere.

Re:You are looking at the wrong problem.

[Green Mountain Bot]

Of course, the problem with that is that power abhors a vacuum. Might Makes Right is the fundamental law of nature, so if you reduce the power of government, you end up with warlords (or their economic equivalent). And distributing governmental power doesn't do squat to curb corruption - it just localizes the corruption, and makes it cheaper to achieve.

There's no way around the fact that dealing with corruption is difficult. It requires one to be a better version of oneself, and to demand others to be better versions of themselves. It requires transparency, and it requires vigilance. And it requires people to make it a priority. There is no easy mode.

Doubtful

[aepervius]

He could have searched for somebody knowing tech among the republican, launched a call for a republican with fair and balanced view. He did not. He took an industry lobbyist, which had already very publicly made clear of its view.

Re:Don't forget whose fault this REALLY is!!

[Shikaku]

It says right there, appointed FCC chairman by Donald Trump (emphasis mine). Under Obama he was in the FCC as the Republican seat; the chairman under Obama was Tom Wheeler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

Re:Don't forget whose fault this REALLY is!!

[Undead Waffle]

And Obama appointed Ajit Pai to the FCC board.

It says right there, appointed FCC chairman by Donald Trump (emphasis mine). Under Obama he was in the FCC as the Republican seat; the chairman under Obama was Tom Wheeler: ...

The original post made no mention of who was chairman.

This part is also interesting (from the wikipedia article):

He was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate on May 7, 2012

So everyone is at fault. Don't worry though guys he is a historic diversity appointment.

Re:Yawn

[drinkypoo]

How can that possibly cost more than the almost weekly vacations previous presidents took to Hawaii and Africa?

That is a lie, and you are a liar. Trump has gone on more vacations so far than any president in history. Further, it doesn't much matter where he goes; the principal cost is security, which costs about the same amount whether he goes to Mar-a-Lago or Hawaii. Further, Trump is paying himself to stay at Mar-a-Lago, so he's actually just defrauding the American People by staying there every weekend. AFAICT it's his plan for getting out of debt. Just keep paying himself for vacation time.

Criminals all the way down

[ne7minder]

The entire Trump maladministration is criminals all the way down. Not a one of them that isn't feathering their own nest at the expense of the nation.

Re:Yawn

[Antique Geekmeister]

Most of the White House security still has to be maintained, for the rest of the staff and documents in the White House, when the President is elsewhere. That makes the security on his travels an extra cost. I'd also suspect that much of the security at the White House uses tools and equipment that can be handled in bulk, much more efficiently, with a stable base of operations.

Re:OBAMA's FCC CHAIR

[Green Mountain Bot]

He wasn't Obama's FCC chairman. Wheeler was. It was Trump who made him chair.

Re:Ajit Pai's friends

[rsborg]

This is how corruption is done. They are only sad because they got caught.

In fact, this administration's only rule seems to be "don't get caught".