This is one of the least surprising things ever:
Sean Hannity’s real estate venture bought houses through a property dealer who was involved in a criminal conspiracy to fraudulently obtain foreclosed homes, according to records reviewed by the Guardian.
In 2012, a shell company linked to the Fox News host bought 11 homes in Georgia that had been purchased by the dealer, Jeff Brock, following foreclosures. Brock transferred the properties to corporate vehicles that sold them on to the Hannity-linked company at a profit.
Brock pleaded guilty in 2016 to federal charges of bank fraud and conspiracy for his role in an operation to rig foreclosure auctions between 2007 and 2012. He was sentenced to six months in prison and had to pay more than $166,000 in fines and restitution.
Some of the houses sold on to the Hannity-linked firm in 2012 had been acquired by Brock from banks later named by prosecutors among his victims.
In fact, it’s so predictable that I basically did predict it. Prior to me knowing anything about Sean Hannity’s real estate holdings, I said that it was inevitable that he’d made some very poor investment decisions.
Sean Hanniity has way more money than he knows how to use productively.
Everyone Sean Hannity knows is a venal tax-averse creep.
Ergo, Sean Hannity has been convinced to do some very stupid things with his money.
— Martin Longman (@BooMan23) April 18, 2018
I don’t know that Hannity was a witting participant is this fraud. It’s possible he may even have been victimized by this Jeff Brock character. What I do know is that the crowd he travels in is always looking for a loophole and a get-rich-quick scam or some kind of tax avoidance scheme or a government program they can hijack. So, a guy like Hannity who has more money than he could ever spend and basically no education to speak of is a natural mark for countless scoundrels. Convince him to let you handle or invest his money, and you’re on the gravy train.
A rich right-wing demagogue engaging in antisocial criminal behavior is so overdetermined.
I hear you can be pretty tricky yourself.
😄
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I’m sure he can be (Odin is another chief diety of a pantheon, and he can be tricky, at least as portrayed in “American Gods”), but Marduk is not the trickster in the Babylonian pantheon. That’s Enki. Besides, lawful neutral is the wrong alignment for a trickster.
To put things in D&D terms, the portfolios of the Mesopotamian gods was quite fluid. Many of the myths and stories about Enki (certainly not all) were later attributed to Marduk.
We don’t know whether Hannity was a witting or unwitting participant in the fraud, but hiring a crooked lawyer like Cohen when there are tens of thousands of highly qualified honest real estate lawyers looks suspiciously like “witting”.
Yep!
Except a highly qualified honest real estate lawyer is going to tell you to pay your taxes, deal with honest and established real estate agents, never to deal with convicts, and that your reputation is worth more than whatever extra cash can be squeezed from sketchy deals.
Hannity and everyone of his `friends’ think that advice is for the suckers.
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You rite:
Are you sure?
I’m not.
On painful experience.
AG
I await some active duty Iraq War vet to come forward with a tale about how Sean foreclosed on his home.
A – Always
B – Be
C – Closing
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these grifters won’t settle for a set of steak knives
If the ongoing set of scandals and legal actions take down both Mr. Trump and Mr. Hannity, none of you need send me Christmas or birthday presents.
That is really a dream to put under my pillow.
Conservatives see criminality in business dealings as “smart” and any attempts to hold them to account is not justice but left wing swamp dwellers hatin on America.
. . . the needed “scare quotes” around “conservatives” (“conservatives against conservation” being both an oxymoron and a core pillar of current “conservatism”, just for one glaring example).
Most likely I’m not up to speed on this latest Conserva-scandal (they arrive so quickly and in such numbers), but my inclination is that Hanniturd has done fine with these investments, buying low (perhaps criminally) and holding on for the wild appreciation that buoys the scam-filled real estate markets across the nation. Housing prices are basically back to pre-meltdown levels in many areas, so Sean’s Scams probably have (so far) done well for him.
Plutocrats quickly moved to buy up the foreclosed homes at bargain basement prices and now are holding them to reap ever increasing rents from wage slaves and 21st century urban sharecroppers. Just like they have purchased most of country’s undeveloped rural lands and much agricultural farmland. This is what it means to have 1% of the citizenry holding 50% of the nation’s assets.
So is the operative folk-wisdom here “The Rich Get Richer” or is it “A Fool and His Money are Soon Parted”? Inquiring minds want to know!
`Money makes money, and the money that money makes, makes more money’. Benjamin Franklin
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