Tag: Ralph Fontcuberta Jr.

I hear Heather Hilliard has a new lawyer: Jefferson Parish Omnibus

Folks don’t get mad, get Slabbed.  I’m not certain why Ms. Hilliard changed counsel midstream but I certainly think she nabbed a fine lawyer. Newbies can find vital background here and here plus generally here. It is another example of a Slabbed scoop on the Jefferson Parish beat.

I’ve had a few things in my inbox on this and the Broussard flood suit for well over a month that need examining. Plus this Jefferson Parish hospital deal has people talking and they are not talking about the extensive coverage afforded to Councilmen Chris Roberts and Ben Zahn by NOLA.com and the Advocate or the quality of care provided by the various competitors to the deal. I’ll see if I can get something semi coherent together on that issue while I have a sliver of time to spare. It sounds like classic cesspool politics based on what I know at present.

The latest email blast from Jefferson Parish Citizens for Good Government came late last night. Speaking of Ben Zahn:

Supporters of Good Government:

The Jefferson Parish Council will meet this Wednesday, September 18th at 10 a.m. on the West Bank at the General Government Building. As we have been doing at every council meeting for the past three years, Citizens for Good Government will again present information from our Campaign Contribution Table shown below. The information which we present is summary information which supplements the contractor campaign contribution information read aloud by Council Clerk Eula Lopez. We have factually and precisely identified the entries in our table as total campaign contributions of at least $1,000 made during the PAST FOUR YEARS to our councilmembers by contractors and subcontractors on whom the Jefferson Parish Council is scheduled to vote at the next council meeting. The contractors and subcontractors in our table were obtained from resolutions in the Agenda for the council meeting and from the affidavits attached to the online Agenda Items. Continue reading “I hear Heather Hilliard has a new lawyer: Jefferson Parish Omnibus”

Slabbed examines the harassment of private citizens expressing their opinion on Jefferson Parish Corruption: Part 2

The post was insanely good except for one part but before we get to the post and part to which I refer, let’s visit with this New York Times story from 5 days ago:

The question is no longer who has been hacked. It’s who hasn’t?

The Washington Post can be added to the growing list of American news organizations whose computers have been penetrated by Chinese hackers.

After The New York Times reported on Wednesday that its computers as well as those of Bloomberg News had been attacked by Chinese hackers, The Wall Street Journal said on Thursday that it too had been a victim of Chinese cyberattacks.

The above illustrates the vulnerability of sophisticated corporate networks to hacking but we also learned that from News Corp in the UK in 2012.  I mention this because last month the Times Picayune’s Gordon Russell wrote a story on Fred Heebe’s witch hunt for a private citizen that used the guest computer at the International House Hotel to comment on NOLA.com about the scandal in Jefferson Parish, specifically Dutchie Connick’s role in the alleged conspiracy between the River Birch Landfill and the Broussard Administration to put in the fix in favor of River Birch and close the Parish’s own landfill.

And that brings me to that insanely good post I mentioned at the beginning as I have previously linked it twice on Slabbed, Jason Berry’s A corner piece of the commenter puzzle.  I featured that post in part 1 of this series and I need to feature it again to set up the balance of this post, which will be both long and thorough. Jason set up 4 possibilities which would explain how Fred Heebe ended up knowing the mystery commenters opined on Dutchie Connick from the International House computer along with the email address that he used to register with NOLA.com and I summarize:

1.  The IP information of this commenter was obtained from a second party marketer or vendor?……..
2.  Someone within the NOLA Media Group or Advanced Publications shared the IP and identifying information with Heebe’s defense team that allowed them to track the commenter back to the hotel………
3.  Advanced Publications/Nola.com servers were hacked………
4.  Heebe’s team somehow knew that the commenter was using the hotel’s computer already and they put a keystroke recorder on it in order to track down the exact time and date the commenter was using it……….

He then opines that the application of Occam’s Razor results in bullet point #2 being the most likely scenario. I disagree and will add a 5th possibility. None of the above. Continue reading “Slabbed examines the harassment of private citizens expressing their opinion on Jefferson Parish Corruption: Part 2”

Updated and Featured: South Coast Today adds to their continuing coverage of the unfolding scandal at the resort at Trout Point

New Orleans politician Aaron Broussard’s federal prosecution for fraud took another big step forward in New Orleans last week, when the disgraced Jefferson Parish president pleaded guilty to a number of charges, which he and his lawyers had previously denied.

One of the allegations made against Broussard by his ex-wife and others is that he used his ownership in Nova Scotia vacation properties and property firms to “shake down” individuals and businesses wanting to do business with the most populous parish in New Orleans. Broussard’s connection to Trout Point Lodge and to the Trout Point region in trhe Kempt Wilderness has been a frequent issue in various lawsuits and media reports surrounding Broussard over the past two years or more.

The Lodge was built ten years ago by well-connected New Orleans lawyer Danny Abel, former New Orleans Lawyer Vaughn Perrett and wild mushroom expert Charles Leary. The lodge and neighboring properties have been a home away from home for ther creme-de-la-creme of New Orleans political royalty and has been the frequent subject of travel and food magazines the world over. Media stories describe Abel, Leary and Perret as “friends for decades”. Abel reportedly “infused” the project with funds from his successful law practice, while the couple managed Trout Point Lodge, then the Cerro Coyote property in Costa Rica and a small hotel and cooking school in Granada, Spain.

Continue Reading at the South Coast Today

Feeling blue that Aaron Broussard shook you down for money to build vacation hotels and lodges overseas?

Well folks all you gotta do is make one call thats all.

I mention this because of an excellent column written last week by the T-P’s Stephanie Grace about all the Parish venders/contractors whose names have popped up in the ongoing federal investigation into Aaron Broussard’s shithouse business dealings. Slabbed of course has been on the cutting edge mentioning names such as Ralph Fontcuberta Jr. that are connected to Broussard’s land and business dealings at the Trout Point Development near East Kempt Nova Scotia. Grace made some very insightful points including this one:

Among the facts that the document claims “the Government would have proven” beyond a reasonable doubt, are these: That throughout his nearly two terms as parish president, Broussard pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars from contractors and vendors, under the guise of “retainers,” “consulting fees” or “finder’s fees.” And that Broussard was majority owner in a holding company that owned income-generating property in Canada, which was partially funded by people who did business with the parish.

So what does Broussard’s appetite for other people’s money have to do with Parker’s confession?

Not a lot, in a legal sense, anyway. Parker admitted only to knowing about the felony in which she’s the central figure, not any alleged misdeeds that stem from a much broader and deeper pattern of corruption on her then-husband’s watch. You could argue that the additional allegations don’t belong in this document at all, since Broussard has not been formally accused, let alone convicted, of the other offenses.

Yet U.S. Attorney Jim Letten and his prosecutors included it for a reason. More likely, many reasons.

The passage serves as a warning to Broussard and Wilkinson on two fronts: They now know that Parker, who has agreed to cooperate in exchange for a vastly reduced charge that shortens her potential prison time from nearly 600 years to three, is telling the feds everything she knows about Broussard’s relationships with all those parish businesspeople. And Broussard in particular knows that he’s got to worry about a lot more than the payroll fraud charges if he doesn’t cut his own deal. Continue reading “Feeling blue that Aaron Broussard shook you down for money to build vacation hotels and lodges overseas?”

The media in Nova Scotia pick up on the Broussard indictment and State Ethics Board Investigation.

I love local lore and history folks so the story in today’s SouthCoast Today on Aaron Broussard’s legal troubles and connections to Nova Scotia is right up my alley and ranks as a must read folks.  Here is a snippet:

On Februray 28, 1765, less than a month after being chased by the British government in Nova Scotia out of the colony for his murder, mutilation and scalping of hundreds of British subjects, famed Acadian firebrand Joseph Beausoliel Broussard stepped off a ship in New Orleans, where his progeny have multiplied and still reside. One of the most famous of those today is Aaron Broussard, alledgedly one of the most corrupt officials in a notably corrupt region…..

Read more at the SouthCoast Today.

sop

Sop gets a cyber first: Behavioral finance/economics intersects with Slabbed. An Aaron Broussard/Trout Point Lodge Update.

Some of my better received work here on Slabbed deals with the topic of behavioral finance/economics.  That said when my curiosity compelled me to enter the laboratory I invariably would go to the Yahoo Finance Boards and issues like Allstate or the pump and dump de jour such as XING.

Cerro Coyote has changed that folks and I want to give everyone a flavor for what I am seeing by communicating with people on this topic.  After all this blog is called Slabbed, a sizable portion of our readership was slabbed by Hurricane Katrina not that long ago. Before we get to “the finance” part of behavioral finance we must start with the behavioral. Universally the investors I have heard from share 3 common traits:

1. They were sold a small stake in Cerro Coyote as evidenced by the stock purchase agreement I posted here on Slabbed last year.
2. They have found out via Slabbed the Inn at Coyote Mountain, the major asset of Cerro Coyote has been sold.
3. They have not yet received anything back on their investment.

So what do people feel upon learn such information?  The answer lies in the Kübler-Ross model and Wiki does a very good job explaining it:

The Kübler-Ross model, commonly known as The Five Stages of Grief, was a theory first introduced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying. Continue reading “Sop gets a cyber first: Behavioral finance/economics intersects with Slabbed. An Aaron Broussard/Trout Point Lodge Update.”