NASI Victims

Just in on the Quatloos forum, per an email from the AUSA and posted by Lost Income: Defendants Joel Gillis and Edward Wishner were sentenced today (November 16, 2015) to the following: Gillis: 120 months imprisonment, followed by 3 years of supervised release Wishner: 108 months imprisonment, followed by 3 years of supervised release A restitution hearing has been scheduled for February 1, 2016 at 10:00 AM before Judge Otero, courtroom #1, on the 2nd floor of the U.S. Courthouse, 312 N. Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012. the notification system will be updated after the restitution hearing. The court ordered the defendants to surrender to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons on December 28, 2015. So, Joel got 10 years and Ed 9 years.  Given their ages, these sentences may result in life in prison. That’s a far cry from the 2 years in prison and 3 years supervised release that they both wanted.  If you’re looking for where I mentioned that before, I didn’t.  Joel and Ed posted their take on the whole situation in two separate documents and I was slowly chipping away at responses but missed the boat on getting it done before sentencing.  Crap. 

I apologize that this update has taken so long.  I’ve been pulling between 50 and 60 hours at work a week and the shifts keep bouncing around.  We’re all zombies. The Receiver’s fourth report is fairly short this time around (as is the legal report), mostly because it seems that they’re just continuing to chug along doing what they’ve been doing  There have been some developments to report on though. There are now 205 ATMs in use and 36 not in use because they’re outdated or need repairs.  Didn’t the Dickwad Duo say that their ATMs were top of the line or something?  Ah, surprise!  More bullshit. ATM income increased in the 2nd Quarter and the Receiver thinks that it’ll be about the same for the 3rd Quarter.  The Receiver is actively seeking to sell.  Cardtronics and National Link were initially interested but now the Receiver is in talks with a different buyer. They hope to complete the sale by the end of the year.  This will decrease the amount of monthly income the receivership takes in, but it will also cut back on the expense of operating the ATM business. The Receiver is continuing to figure out which equipment

First off, sentencing has been rescheduled until November 16th at 9AM.  Read on though, there was some drama leading up to it. Joel’s lawyer (obviously with Ed’s lawyer’s consent) attempted to push the date to mid-December.  There’s a heavy amount of whine in that document, which starts off with how they need more time because there’s just so many documents to review.  Apparently, Joel met with the Probation Officer for a Pre-sentence interview.  At that interview, Joel gave the Probation Officer his version of the amount of loss.  I find this a bit funny.  The Dickwads didn’t keep any records but Joel magically has a full loss “analysis.” Those are sarcastic finger quotes.  It was probably done up in crayon on a bar napkin using some unauthorized version of new math.  Considering that Joel thinks that the government hasn’t properly accounted for returns on investments made to corporations and trusts, etc, I’m not sure what the hell he’s trying to pull. Anyway, Joel also gave reasons why he thinks that he deserves a departure from the sentencing guidelines.  Since I doubt he’s arguing for a worse sentence, he basically stated why he thinks he should be punished less.  If you

Joel & Ed’s sentencing has been rescheduled to September 21st. In a document filed May 21st (I really need to start checking these dockets more frequently), Ed’s lawyer, in agreement with Joel’s lawyer, tried to push the hearing to December 14th. There was a short list of what they call “declarations,” which I like to call “excuses with some random statements:” The discovery in the case exceeds 137,000 pages and is likely going to grow; the amount of losses will factor into the sentencing, and that still hasn’t been fully realized; both the boys continue to cooperate with the government; Ed is 76 years old, not in good health had a stroke in March of this year and their probation officer would have to file a less thorough report (which I can see as a problem). The government sent in their opposition, basically saying that December was too damned far out and instead recommended a more reasonable September 28th. And then the court shaved a week off and went with that.

The receiver’s site is a little behind on uploading new documents.  I know because I checked Pacer late last night and sure enough, the receiver filed his 3rd report on May 27th, and the second round of billings on June 7th.  I pretty much blew through the last of my $15 free Pacer usage for the quarter downloading them.  The last fifteen days of the month are going to be tight on the downloads, folks! So why the fatalistic title?  The fees actually went up.  UP.  This time around, the receiver had to spend a lot of time getting the tax forms out and trying to get a handle/their hands on the Relief Defendant’s stuff.  The Relief Defendants seem to be more complicated than previously thought.  Initially, only Oasis was really mentioned but now there’s at least six other related companies coming up in these filings.  They finally got Keller (of Oasis) into a deposition in March and it really helped locate assets.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like they’ve cooperated much beyond that. ::sigh::  I’ll update the By the Numbers page with the new figures early next week.  The way I set things up on my spreadsheet isn’t meshing as

I spent a considerable part of yesterday evening sipping drugstore Merlot, binging on the Almighty Johnsons and playing with numbers.  After a sober re-read, I present a new blog page – By the Numbers!  That page will be updated with new figures as they become available.  It’s mostly speculation, but we don’t have much more than that to go on.  And I’ll be saving all the drafts of the page so we can all laugh (or cry) about how wrong my figures have been.

I don’t know when it happened, but the receiver posted a Tax Questionnaire on his site (it’s in the margin on the right).  It’s incredibly short, simply asking if you received a 1099-MISC from the receiver along with the normal contact information.  He must need confirmation for some reason or another.  There’s no explanation as to who should be filling that out, so I’m gonna say that if you received a 1099-MISC for last year, you should totally fill it out.  And if you think you should have received one, you should probably fill it out.

Well, we’ve had some activity. First up is the criminal case against Ed & Joel.  On January 21st, Joel finished entering his guilty plea. The court document confirms that Joel did suffer some kind of illness at the last hearing, but doesn’t go into any details.  It also mentioned that Joel has been taking his prescribed medication for the 72 hours prior to this hearing, but and I’ll repeat that – BUT – he felt well enough to proceed.  Is that a typo or does Joel’s medication have some nasty side effects?  Anyone’s guess.  In any event, the boys were supposed to be sentenced on March 30th, but at the request of the US attorney, it was moved to July 20th.  Apparently, the US needs more time to determine the extent of damage that these two have caused in order to figure out a fair sentencing recommendation.  Understandable. On the receivership front, the receiver’s submitted a proposal for clawbacks.  Bullet lists are awesome: NASI may have actually owned 238 ATMs, but the investors owned none.   Not one.  NASI didn’t actually “sell” any of their ATMs to investors.  I once had this theory that they “sold” real ATMs to multiple investors

There’s nothing too juicy in this new report.  It’s all Ed & Joel’s fault.  If they kept decent records, the receiver would be further along.  But as it is, the receiver has to completely rebuild the books from scratch, or close to it.  I used to do this as a bookkeeper, although not in a forensic capacity, and it’s truly time consuming.  And annoying.  And I’m really glad I don’t have to do it anymore. On with our adventure: The ATM business has provided some steady income (don’t get your hopes up!).  That one servicer who withheld $25k from the September payment has now held a total of $70k. It’s allegedly for a line of credit, which is not unheard of, but they’ve failed to provide sufficient documentation – that is, they’ve handed over something but it’s not good enough.  The receiver may end up going to court to get them to release the funds.  I don’t think he intends to sit on this for long.  I mean, they’ve already had three months to make this right. Over October, November and December, the ATM business only averaged about $52k net income.  Net income means your income minus your expenses.  In

I’m a little late to the party on this (work got a little too busy).  A lot of stuff has happened since the last update. I’ve since expanded the library as we now have two active court cases – one against NASI and one against Gillis and Wishner.  The first is a civil case by the SEC and the second is a criminal case. So, the boys were arrested on the 16th.  On the 17th, they had to appear in court.  They each ended up with $500k bail and had to surrender their passports.  Joel also is not allowed to solicit investor funds, while Ed is not to involvement in any manner with investments… of… I can’t read that writing but I think it has to do with third parties.  Also an interesting thing is that Joel has to participate in a mental health evaluation and/or counseling and/or treatment.  Per the handwritten notes, it appears that it may be part of ongoing treatment. They had until January 7th to meet the conditions of the bail and appeared to do so.  I should note that it was not cash bail and that they both used property as bond.  Of course, what