How’d anyone so dumb steal so much?
State legislators are lucky nobody’s paying much attention to them right now, because if people were, we would probably have bounties out on most of them.
Think about all the trial balloons they’ve been floating at the State House these past few weeks.
At least one of them has proposed tolling every major road in the commonwealth.
The Senate president has suggested imposing a sales tax on services — not goods, services.
And they’re actively promoting a graduated income tax — supposedly just on millionaires, but by mid2019, when the supply of “millionaires” fails, everyone in the state making over, oh, $40,000 a year will be designated a millionaire, at least for income-tax purposes.
The hacks need all this new do-re-mi because their greed is insatiable. As the saying goes, it’s one thing to feed at the trough, it’s another thing to lick the plate.
Consider the case of exRep. Jailbird John George, a thieving greedhead from Dartmouth, now better known by his Bureau of Prisons (BOP) number, 96292-038. Jailbird John is currently incarcerated at the federal medical center at Devens until October 2020. He was carted off to prison in 2015 for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Bristol County transit authority — a bus company.
He was just indicted again by a federal grand jury, this time for obstruction of justice. See, when the extinguished solon (and town selectman) was convicted, he was ordered to return $688,772 he’d embezzled, as well as to forfeit another $1.38 million.
Before he went to prison, George reported to the feds that all he had in his possession was a mere $28,000 in cash.
The G-men were dubious, to put it mildly. They did a little digging. Turns out, the statesman had nine different accounts and seven safe-deposit boxes in three different banks in New Bedford and Fairhaven. In all, the cops grabbed over $2.5 million in cash, four Rolex watches, an Omega watch and a diamond ring from George’s assorted stashes.
I understand that George was a state rep, which means he is most likely distinctly below average in the brains department, but did George not understand that banks have surveillance cameras all over? Did he learn nothing from the case of, say, Jackie Bulger, Whitey’s brother, among so many others? Apparently not. Let’s go straight to last week’s indictment: “Bank surveillance video from a Citizens Bank in Fairhaven, MA showed defendant GEORGE bringing a large suitcase to the safe deposit room. ... (and) bringing a gym bag to the safe deposit box room ...”
Another thing this criminal mastermind from Beacon Hill didn’t know or forgot: The feds record phone conversations into prisons. Two days before Christmas in 2015, one of George’s friends, whom the feds call “X,” called him at the Big House to let him know about the raids going on down in Bristol County. I’m sure the feds were chuckling as they put this transcript into George’s indictment.
X: “So the feds have seized your safe deposit boxes.”
George: “You’ve gotta be (bleeping) me!”
X: “Oh, John, I am not, I am not.”
George: “Can they get in there?” X: “In your boxes?” George: “Yeah, have they been in there?”
X: “Oh they already did! Took pictures of it and everything! It’s on the Standard Times website, um … It’s on the Channel 4 news, um, they said you had over a million dollars in there. They seized over a million dollars in cash.”
George: “I’ll never get out of here then, I guess.”
Ya think, Representative?