We hear a lot about Joel. It’s no wonder, given that he seemed to be the face of the scam. An outsider might even walk away from this whole thing thinking that Joel somehow convinced poor little Ed to get in on this scheme. But Ed’s no saint. While I can only dig so far into the past, what I have found isn’t all squeaky clean. As you know, Ed’s been a CPA for a great many years. And if you hold yourself out to be a certified public accountant, there is a code of ethics by which you must abide. Ed engaged in various conflicts of interest throughout his career. Behold! First of all, the oil and gas lease scam happened in the early ’80s. Secondly, it doesn’t matter if he ever coerced a client. Either: He was in business with Joel at Prudential Petroleum, the people running those deals or He was a client of Prudential Petroleum and hocked those investments to his own clients Keep in mind that I can’t prove that Ed was running Prudential, although I don’t doubt that he was. In any event, in the first case, there is a very clear conflict of
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A Look Back: Ed’s Sentencing Brief: Letters of Support
Unlike Joel’s letters of support, these seemed a lot less…cloying and mentioned more about Ed’s history, which we tend not too see much of. I didn’t actually see red when reading them. Ed started his accounting career in the 1960s, working for a firm. Later, he and another person at the firm opened Tax Master Inc. They later sold the business. In 1980, he moved his family from New York to California to start his accounting firm. His two of his sons own a restaurant together. This restaurant is within walking distance of Ed’s firm. I know that there was a theory bandied about that the restaurant was started using fraudulent funds from the NASI scheme. Considering that the restaurant was started in 1988, a good eight years before NASI began, I think it’s safe to say that the theory is dead. Onto the quotes! First of all, I would like to point out that this guy uses a letter (either a capital “i” or lowercase “L”) instead of the digit “1” two times in his letter. It’s disturbing. They’re nowhere near each other on the keyboard. Why? Just WHY? Don’t dare blame horrible transcription or OCR, either! You still
Continue readingA Look Back: Ed’s Sentencing Brief
We’ve already covered Joel’s infuriating response to the sentencing brief and now we’ll cover . I don’t focus as much on Ed, probably because we just don’t hear as much about him. My theory is that while he had his fingers all up in those numbers, he didn’t do as much of the day-to-day scamming. To start, this will only be busted up into two parts. One for the majority of the filing and one for the character statements. And we’re off and running! His lawyer didn’t lay the whole “upstanding member of the community” on too thick while recognizing that he’s done harm to others. I would have thrown the phrase “considerable and irreparable harm” in there somewhere, but we can’t win them all. And then they follow up with this noise again. Like Joel, Ed lived in a land of denial for months before finally admitting wrongdoing. The absolutely best time to come clean was in 2001 when the $11 million contract fell through. It would have been easier and they would have been fifteen years younger. Probably would have only had to pay a fine for unregistered securities. The next really good milestone to come clean was
Continue readingNew York Class Action – The Declarations
There were four declarations attached to the New York Class action couldn’t be covered in the last post. I planned to cover all four of them here, but the two from the investors don’t really add anything we didn’t already know, so I think I’ll leave them off for now. I’ve also left out information stated in yesterday’s post since these are all a part of that filing but some repeated information was included for context. Ed Wishner In a shocking turn of events, Ed is actually helping the victims. Or screwing over a former co-conspirator. I doubt either is being done out of the goodness of his heart. As you know he’s been at Terminal Island, but what you may not have heard is that he’s been living in the infirmary because he requires “frequent medical attention.” He’s doing this declaration because he “may not survive in prison long enough to testify in person.” My heart bleeds. Ed says that they kept investor files in file cabinets at NASI. These files generally included the purchase and lease agreements, proof of payments from the investor, copies of correspondence to and from the investor, copies of some monthly Investor Summary reports and
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