Plus Another 18 Pencil Pushers at HQ

THE ONTARIO GOVERNMENT FINANCE MINISTRY has cleaned house at the scandal-plagued air ambulance service, Ornge.  A government spokesman revealed yesterday (Wednesday) that the government has assigned 28 forensic auditors to the offices of Ornge where they are working night and day to wade through the labyrinth of private, for-profit companies that Ornge insiders had set up to possibly funnel money away from the agency and into the private coffers.

The four directors of the air ambulance charity were asked to step down immediately, which they did, and a hand-picked group was appointed to a new 7-member board.  The directors that were tossed were receiving salaries while the new board is all-volunteers made up from respected business leaders.

The Toronto Globe & Mail adds:

The ouster of the board came one day after Mr. McKerlie terminated 18 administrative jobs at head office. As well, Maria Renzella, executive vice-president of corporate services, has gone on medical leave, according to sources. She is the second top executive to do so – Ornge founder and chief executive officer Chris Mazza went on "indefinite" medical leave in December.

Health Minister Deb Matthews is on the defensive over Ornge. Ms. Matthews was aware that Ornge planned to create new business ventures that would make money by trading on the expertise of the taxpayer-funded air ambulance service. Ornge was to receive just 3 per cent of the revenue from these businesses, and the new ventures would pocket the balance, according to a copy of a Stakeholder Briefing dated Jan. 19, 2011 and signed by chairman Rainer Beltzner.

Ornge is responsible for performing life-saving CPR on patients and ferrying them from accident scenes to a hospital. But it is also facing questions about whether patient care was compromised. The Globe has reported that the Health Ministry's Emergency Health Services Branch is investigating 13 cases, including three deaths. Most of these incidents relate to complaints about either response times or the adequacy of Ornge's new helicopter fleet.

Read the full article in the Globe & Mail HERE.

Globe & Mail / Hanley

Ornge was established as a charity but has seemingly been turned into a cash cow for the directors and administrators.  The Toronto Star goes right to the core of the scandal, reporting: 

Scandal has dogged the service since mid-December, with revelations by the Star of high salaries and executive perks, secrecy, less than speedy ambulance dispatches and some mysterious payments from overseas.

What McKerlie did not mention in his email to staff is that very few of the dollars the foundation received since it was created four years ago came from public and patients.

Instead, the money (and gifts like two fancy motorcycles painted orange) came from companies like Pilatus, which sold 10 single-engine airplanes to ORNGE at an estimated total cost of $40 million for use as air ambulances.

In one case, a press release from ORNGE noted that Pilatus donated $343,000 to the Foundation. When ORNGE purchased $144 million worth of helicopters (12 in total) from Agusta Westland, Agusta made a $6.7 million payment to an ORNGE for-profit and gave two orange "choppers" to the Foundation. Another former asset of one of the ORNGE charities was a $50,000 speedboat that founder Chris Mazza wanted to use to teach youth how to wakeboard and water ski safely.

Read The Toronto Star's story HERE.

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It Was Probably the Crash That Did It

THE WESTMONT, ILLINOIS, VILLAGE MANAGER announced on Monday that Fire Chief Frank Trout remains on unpaid administrative leave following his suspension on December 31.

The day before, on December 30 Chief Trout was arrested by the DuPage County Sheriff's office and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol, driving too fast for conditions and failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident after his vehicle struck a parked car.  He has a court date scheduled for January18.

Trout was previously a Westmont police officer, rising to sergeant before he was appointed Fire Chief in 1992.  His duties are currently being handled by Deputy Fire Chief Dave Weiss.

Suburban Life newspaper has the STORY.

Hat tip:  Mark H.

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SALISBURY, MARYLAND, FIRE CHIEF JEFF SIMPSON resigned suddenly on Monday just 14 months after taking the position.  He was hired in November 2010 following an extensive search by the city and had come from the Hanover County, Virginia, Fire Department.

Daily Times photo

His short resignation letter read:  "Life circumstances are such that I am afforded the opportunity to pursue personal and professional interests and I kindly wish to take advantage of those opportunities at this time."

Has already relinquished his duties and Deputy Chief Rick Hoppes is serving as interim chief.  Tuesday the mayor announced that he will put Chief Hoppes' name to the city council to be appointed permanent chief.

WBOC-TV has the latest report HERE.

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The Arrest Count Continues to Climb

THE MASTERMIND BEHIND THE FATAL ARSON of a casino in Monterrey, Mexico, has been arrested.  Baltasar Saucedo Estrada, 38, nicknamed "dog-killer" is alleged to be a local leader of the Zetas drug cartel. The outrageous daytime arson of the Casino Royale on August 25 killed 52 people and shocked the nation.

Reuters

Firegeezer reported on the fire HERE and showed the surveillance videos documenting the raid of the gang members into the casino HERE. Reputedly, the action was taken against the casino owner because he refused to pay "protection money" in an extortion scheme.

So far 20 people who were participants in the raid have been arrested including the regional leader of operations of the cartel (HERE).

Saucedo was arrested Thursday after he crashed his car while trying to outrun police officers who were chasing him. Inside the car they found a large amount of cash and coccaine.

AP

Saucedo had a $1 million bounty on him.  Reuters has filed this video report on this week's capture:

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Eyewitness Testimony Convinces the Jury

THE 2-½ YR. SAGA OF THE INFAMOUS GRAND VIEW Topless Coffee Shop arson in Vassalboro, Maine, has concluded.  On Friday (Dec. 30) a jury convicted Raymond Bellavance, now 50, on two counts of felony arson that carry a maximum sentence of 30 years imprisonment each.  The trial lasted ten days and included a variety of unusual witnesses and Bellavance's own self-testimony.  The verdict was handed down at 5:50 pm.

Raymond Bellavance

Bellavance claimed that he was nowhere near the shop when it burned down on June 3, 2009.  But an eyewitness who was with him that night told the jury that he saw Bellavance splash gasoline around the outside of the former motel building and light it.  At the time of the fire, the coffee shop owner was sleeping inside the living quarters as well as his wife, their two young children, and two older daughters who also lived there with their boyfriends.

AP / Joel photo

Firegeezer covered this story from the beginning with a report on the FIRE HERE.  This was followed by a report HERE on the re-opening of the business under a tent while the former motel dining room was being rebuilt.

Later in the following December it was announced that the fire was an arson and that a warrant was issued for Raymond Bellavance.  But he immediately beat feet to South Carolina where the U. S. Marshals found him in May 2010  (see Firegeezer video report HERE).  After being extradited back to Maine he has been held without bail since then.

In the trial several witnesses said that Bellavance was always hanging around the shop vying for the favors of one of the waitresses who was a former girl friend of his.  He became angry when she rebuffed him while she was having a sexual affair with the owner whose wife and another two girlfriends of his also lived there.  It gets complicated.

WMTW-TV Ch. 8 filed this video report on the day before the jury began deliberations:

A complete summary of the trial and the accusations and counter-accusations was published by the Kennebec Morning Sentinel HERE.
The Kennebec Journal has MORE.

Grand View follow-up:  Earlier this year in May, the owner Donald Crabtree announced that he was giving up trying to stay in business and would close soon.  Besides the expense of rebuilding and declining business, the local government kept a flurry of ordinance violations coming his way to the point where he could not take any more.  Crabtree said the final straw for him was the recent notice from the town of violations over large signs he set up. One advertised a benefit topless car wash, while a portable sign proclaimed: "Boobies Wanted."  He said he removed the signs after he was given seven days by the code officer to do so or else face legal action.  Read that Firegeezer report HERE.

Crabtree has just recently sold the property.

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Sentence Delayed Until After Rehab Attempt

A FORMER VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTER WITH THE MINOT, Maine, fire department pleaded guilty Thursday to an arson charge.

Joshua Michaud  (WMTW -TV)

Joshua Michaud, now 20, was charged with starting a fire in July 2010 in a restaurant that caused $30,000 in damage.  Witnesses said that they saw Michaud near the restaurant dressed in his turnout gear before the fire alarm was sounded.  After determining that the fire had been deliberately set, the fire marshal arrested him following an interview where Michaud admitted setting the fire.

The fire scene in July 2010  (WMTW-TV)

The young man has no prior criminal history and has a lengthy list of character references from leading citizens which led to the judge delaying sentencing until June to see how well an intensive counseling program that he is undergoing will turn out.

The Sun Journal has a good report on this rehab program and the related information on the case HERE.

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Pleaded Guilty Last Month

RICHARD AND RANDALL CARR, BROTHERS AND FORMER paid-on-call firefighters in Mahoning County, Ohio, were sentenced yesterday for stealing money from the Beaver Township Fire Department after pleading guilty to felony theft last month (See Firegeezer video report HERE).  Following an audit, it was found that they had been backdating time sheets to indicate that they had been responding to incidents, yet never showing up at the scene.

The Youngstown Vindicator reports this morning:

Two former Beaver Township firefighters accused of theft were sentenced Wednesday to two years of probation, 250 hours of community service, and they were ordered to pay restitution. They were sentenced by Judge Maureen Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

Randall Carr and Richard Carr Jr. were instructed to pay $3,861.19 and $2,559, respectively, in restitution to Beaver Township, per the prosecutor’s recommendation, according to court records.

The Beaver Township Fire Department is volunteer, but stipends are provided to ranking officers. Volunteers are paid a nominal fee for each call they respond to. Randall Carr was an assistant chief and received $550 each month; Richard Carr was a lieutenant and received about $110 a month, the fire chief has said.

Both men were placed on paid administrative leave in June when the investigation began, and part of their restitution is the monthly salaries they received during that time, records state.

Richard Carr Jr. also resigned his second-grade teaching job in the South Range school district at the school board’s Nov. 21 meeting.

WKBN-TV Ch. 27 had their camera in the courtroom Wednesday and filed this video report:

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Three Years on the Lam Before Trial

EDER ROJAS, THE FORMER FLIGHT ATTENDANT who set a fire in his airplane's bathroom was convicted and sentenced Friday to nearly 7 years in prison.

(Fargo PD)

His saga began 3-½ years ago in May 2008 while he was working a Compass Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Regina (Saskatchewan).  Rojas, reportedly angry with being assigned to an unpopular route, took a lighter and set the paper towels on fire in the lavatory while the plane was in flight.  Rojas, along with another attendant and a passenger, put out the fire with extinguishers as the plane made an emergency landing in Fargo, North Dakota.

Read the full story in earlier Firegeezer reports HERE and HERE.

While awaiting trial, he was ordered to stay in a halfway house in Chicago where he later walked out in the middle of the night and fled to Mexico.  When he failed to appear for his trial, the judge ordered the U. S. Marshal to find Rojas and bring him to the court.  (See Firegeezer HERE.)

Three years later, the FBI and the U. S. Marshal tracked him down to Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico and had him arrested on March 26 of this year.  (Firegeezer HERE.)

In this week's trial Rojas said that he was very sorry and would accept any punishment handed out.  Not buying his croccodile tears, Judge Erickson said Rojas did not truly accept responsibility for the crime.  "You ran away, you had to be extradited," Erickson said. "I'm not going to reward that behavior today, tomorrow, or ever."

Erickson sentenced him to 74 months and ordered him to pay a more than $100,000 fine, most of which will go towards compensating Compass Airlines for damage to the bathroom and the cost of emergency accommodation for passengers.

The Associated Press has the full story on the verdict and sentencing HERE.

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No performance bonds?

THE LEWISBERRY COMMUNITY FIRE COMPANY in York County, Pennsylvania, had to close its doors and cease operating in September when it could no longer pay its bills.

This Tuesday police arrested and charged Jennifer Cassada, 37, and Markwood Albright, 37, with theft. Cassada is the department's former president and treasurer while Albright is the former fire chief.  Investigators said the two, who were romantically involved, had taken and spent more than $11,000 on personal items and pleasures.

The York Daily Record reports:

The fire company could no longer pay workers compensation, municipalities dropped its services so it no longer responded to calls, and it was evicted from the fire hall, (Police Chief John) Snyder said.

Members of the fire department had suspicions about how the money was being used, Snyder said, but it took some time to get access to the accounting books.

The investigation began in October 2010 and was passed on to Newberry Township Police from the York County District Attorney's Office in October 2011.

Sgt. Steven Lutz with Newberry Township Police was head of the investigation and found that $4,373 had been spent on a Caribbean cruise, $1,288.38 was used to purchase items online through PayPal, $6,154.14 was used to pay utility bills and $8,990 in cash withdrawals were taken from the general account and the fireman's relief account for no apparent reason, according to charging documents.

They were arraigned and charged with theft by unlawful taking, access device fraud, criminal conspiracy and receiving stolen property. They each posted $25,000 unsecured bail and were released Tuesday.  The investigators believe that much more than that has been stolen, but much of it was in cash and will be hard to trace.

According to the Daily Record, the Lewisberry Borough Council asked the nearby Fairview Fire Department in September to provide primary fire protection in the borough.  They moved in to the building that housed the former Lewisberry Community Fire Company in November are using the same volunteer system, involving volunteers from the old fire department.

WHTM-TV filed this video report:

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Firegeezer points out that responsible fire departments carry performance bonds, a relatively cheap form of insurance against internal thievery and embezzlement. Why wasn't that done here?

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Digital Assymetric Warfare

An amazing development in the Mexican drug wars. 

Diane Shiller, writing in the October 29 Houston Chronicle, posted this article:

An international group of online hackers is warning a Mexican drug cartel to release one of its members, kidnapped from a street protest, or it will publish the identities and addresses of the syndicate's associates, from corrupt police to taxi drivers, as well as reveal the syndicates' businesses. …

"It won't be difficult; we all know who they are and where they are located," says the man, who underlines the group's international ties by speaking Spanish with the accent of a Spaniard while using Mexican slang.

He also implies that the group will expose mainstream journalists who are somehow in cahoots with the Zetas by writing negative articles about the military, the country's biggest fist in the drug war.

"We demand his release," says the Anonymous spokesman, who is wearing a mask like the one worn by the shadowy revolutionary character in the movie V for Vendetta, which came out in 2006. "If anything happens to him, you sons of (expletive) will always remember this upcoming November 5."

Click on headline to read rest of article, which includes a transcript of the video demands: Online hackers threaten to expose cartel's secrets: Group called Anonymous demands release of one of their own who was kidnapped

Information is a disruptive power

Just as WikiLeaks raised havoc with international politics, Anonymous has the capability of disrupting the operations of the Los Zetas Cartel and their partners.

Asymmetrical Warfare

Definition: "warfare in which opposing groups or nations have unequal military resources, and the weaker opponent uses unconventional weapons and tactics, as terrorism, to exploit the vulnerabilities of the enemy."

In this situation we have the second largest and most violent Mexican drug cartel being threatened by a decentralized online community of information technologists who are growing into a significant international force.

Anna Heim, writing in TNW Latin America, looks at the online actions taken against alleged Los Zetas supporters that appear to match the approach taken by Anonymous against earlier targets.

October 29: How Anonymous is threatening a Mexican drug cartel

Why should Firegeezer readers care?

After the publicity of a NYPD commander pepper-spraying an Occupy Wall Street protestor, Anonymous made a similar threat last month:

Hello NYPD, We are Anonymous.

Around the internet, we have seen countless videos of your blatant disregard for first amendment rights. Whether it be by tasering, macing, kettling, or otherwise physically harming those involved in the occupy wall street protests.

We will not stand idly by and let these misdeeds go unpunished. We are hereby calling for an immediate apology and resignation of NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelley and the supervising officers involved. We already know who they are, their information is a matter of public record.

And to those police officers that are "just following orders:" We invite you to join us and stand with our cause in solidarity. An enemy of our enemy is our friend. Join us.

If our demands are not met by october sixth, we will unleash hell on your phones, your servers, and anything else we can find.

We are anonymous. We do not forgive. We do not forget. You have nine days.

They released personal information on the officer and disrupted some of the information technology assets of NYPD. They may have organized a denial of service (DoS) attack on the Oakland police department.

The implication is that public safety organization information (organization and personal) and digital technology are vunerable to hackers.

Mike "FossilMedic" Ward

Related: 

Tech-Savvy Occupy Protesters Use Cellphone Video, Social Networking To Publicize Police Abuse (Radley Balko [2011 Oct 29] Huffington Post)

Convicted On Manslaughter Charge

THE PRIMARY CULPRIT IN ONE OF Toronto, Ontario's most famous arsons was finally sentenced late last month to serve 12 years in prison for manslaughter and conspiracy to commit arson.  The building that burned is regarded as the largest single-building fire in Toronto's history and made additional headlines several days later when the body of the man who set the fire was found in the basement of the fully-burned out store.

John Magno and his two brothers Frank and Carlo, owned the large hardware store in the Woodbine area of the city that was a neighborhood landmark.  The business was started and built into a successful operation by their father.   But they wanted to expand by moving to another location and then using the old property to build condominium apartments.  After getting a quote for the cost of demolishing the original building which was still open for business and fully stocked, they decided to take another route.  They contracted with two criminals, Sam Paskalis and Tony Jarcevic, to torch the business on Christmas Eve, 2001.

Paskalis and Jarcevic arrived with two other men shortly before midnight in two vans and loaded them up with some selected goods for themselves and one of the vans then drove away.  The others went to the basement and then poured gasoline around the stock before trying to light it off, thinking that the gasoline would simply burn hot and set the entire store ablaze.  Instead, the vapors ignited and a thunderous explosion blew the building apart and rousted the entire neighborhood.

Toronto Sun

The Toronto Fire Department responded with six full alarms and mounted a valiant and successful attempt to contain the fire to the Woodbine Building Supply store.  The responding units found a badly-burned Paskalis wandering the neighborhood, but nobody else was around.  Before the ambulance reached the hospital, Paskalis slipped into a coma and didn't come out of it for several months.  It was just before that when Magno attempted to cash in on a fire insurance policy claim for $3.5 million that had just been bumped up a couple of months before the fire.

It was two weeks after the fire when the investigators finally worked their way down into the basement searching for the cause when they discovered the charred corpse of Jarcevic.  They were able to make a case against Paskalis after he regained consciousness and convicted him on arson charges while preparing to file a 2nd-degree murder count later.  After spending a year in jail while suffering unbearable pain from his injuries, Paskalis made a plea deal with the prosecuter to have his charges reduced in exchange for his confession and full story of who did what.

Sam Paskalis  (Toronto Star)

After years of court procedings and motions, the Magno brothers were finally brought to trial with Frank and Carlo tried and convicted first.  John, who was the ringleader and planner, was convicted in 2008 but not sentenced until last month.

John Magno arrives at court for
his sentencing last month.  (National Post)

The National Post has a complete and detailed report on this complicated case HERE.
The Vancouver Sun reported last month on the sentencing and included some other updates HERE.

Hat tip to Mark Donovan for assistance.

Ten years after the fire, the only thing remaining from the family fortune
that Dad built is this hole in the ground that remains on Danforth Avenue.
(Google Street View)

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