March 29, 2006

Security Aviation Draining a Charitable Trust?

The federal raids on Security Aviation had as much to do with fraud as with illegal weapons systems, fighter jets, and delusional fantasies of secret intelligence connections.
ADN reports that the FBI suspects the company was draining the assests of the $360 Mil, San Francisco-based Smith Charitable trust, as well as questionable loans from Wells-Fargo (!) to Security Aviation.

Presumably to add a colorful minor character for the movie script, a dotty old rich widow at the Trust has been shipped off to the Bahamas. (Anchorage Daily News).

According to the defense motion to suppress evidence, Campe alleged that "Mark Avery made wire transfers and that $7.3 million was deposited into Security Aviation's Wells Fargo Account in September and October of 2005."

Kane's wife also told agents she knew of an "old lady" in the Bahamas, presumably a reference to May Wong Smith, the motion says.

May Wong Smith is the widow of Stanley Smith, the source of the trust's money. Stanley Smith was described in a 2003 San Jose Mercury News story about the trust as an Australian war correspondent and orchid collector who made a fortune in mining in Malaysia. He died in 1982.

Campe asserted in an affidavit that Avery, Kane and an Anchorage arms dealer and paramedic named Dennis Hopper "may have assisted in moving May Wong Smith from Europe to the Bahamas and that Avery has arranged to have two former law enforcement members take care of May Wong Smith in the Bahamas," Clendaniel says in his motion. The affidavit indicated that the woman may have Alzheimer's disease, according to the motion.

The SF papers really should start checking this out.

2 Comments:

Blogger VMM said...

I love this:

"There is absolutely no evidence that a single penny was ever fraudulently or illicitly obtained from anyone," Allen Clendaniel, a lawyer for Security Aviation, wrote in his motion to suppress the Smith trust evidence.


So, you wish to supress the (non-existent) evidence?

March 29, 2006 at 1:19 PM  
Blogger Undersecretary to the Deputy Commissariat said...

What I don't get is why they aren't amping the Karen Kane angle. She'd make a very, ah, photogenic poster child for immigration reform.

March 29, 2006 at 8:56 PM  

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