By Robert W. Wood, Contributor
National Weed Day isn’t an official holiday. Not yet. Federal law still outlaws marijuana even in states that have legalized it. Forget even medical use. And while that may make you think of federal charges and drug raids, perhaps you should think of the IRS. After all, taxes brought down Al Capone.
Mexican drug cartels whose operatives once rarely ventured beyond the U.S. border are dispatching some of their most trusted agents to live and work deep inside the United States — an emboldened presence that experts believe is meant to tighten their grip on the world’s most lucrative narcotics market and maximize profits.
If left unchecked, authorities say, the cartels’ move into the American interior could render the syndicates harder than ever to dislodge and pave the way for them to expand into other criminal enterprises such as prostitution, kidnapping-and-extortion rackets and money laundering.
Cartel activity in the U.S. is certainly not new. Starting in the 1990s, the ruthless syndicates became the nation’s No. 1 supplier of illegal drugs, using unaffiliated middlemen to smuggle cocaine, marijuana and heroin beyond the border or even to grow pot here.
But a wide-ranging Associated Press review of federal court cases and government drug-enforcement data, plus interviews with many top law enforcement officials, indicate the groups have begun deploying agents from their inner circles to the U.S. Cartel operatives are suspected of running drug-distribution networks in at least nine non-border states, often in middle-class suburbs in the Midwest, South and Northeast.
“It’s probably the most serious threat the United States has faced from organized crime,” said Jack Riley, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Chicago office.
The cartel threat looms so large that one of Mexico‘s most notorious drug kingpins — a man who has never set foot in Chicago — was recently named the city’s Public Enemy No. 1, the same notorious label once assigned to Al Capone.
The Chicago Crime Commission, a non-government agency that tracks crime trends in the region, said it considers Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman even more menacing than Capone because Guzman leads the deadly Sinaloa cartel, which supplies most of the narcotics sold in Chicago and in many cities across the U.S.
Years ago, Mexico faced the same problem — of then-nascent cartels expanding their power — “and didn’t nip the problem in the bud,” said Jack Killorin, head of an anti-trafficking program in Atlanta for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “And see where they are now.”
Riley sounds a similar alarm: “People think, `The border’s 1,700 miles away. This isn’t our problem.’ Well, it is. These days, we operate as if Chicago is on the border.”
Border states from Texas to California have long grappled with a cartel presence. But cases involving cartel members have now emerged in the suburbs of Chicago and Atlanta, as well as Columbus, Ohio, Louisville, Ky., and rural North Carolina. Suspects have also surfaced in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania.
Mexican drug cartels “are taking over our neighborhoods,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane warned a legislative committee in February. State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan disputed her claim, saying cartels are primarily drug suppliers, not the ones trafficking drugs on the ground.
For years, cartels were more inclined to make deals in Mexico with American traffickers, who would then handle transportation to and distribution within major cities, said Art Bilek, a former organized …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
1859 – Zoological Society of Philadelphia, 1st in US, incorporated
1955 – Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus desires Cyprus joining Greece
1971 – Jan Ferraris wins LPGA Orange Blossom Golf Classic
1971 – Vermont seasonal snowfall totals 132.2″
1986 – Pittsburgh Associates buy Pittsburgh Pirates for $218 million
2006 – Immigrant workers constructing the Burj Dubayy in Dubai, The United Arab Emirates and a new terminal of Dubai International Airport join together and riot, causing $1M in damage.
1806 – Benito Pablo Juarez, Oaxaca Mexico, president of Mexico (1858-72)
1900 – Eugenie Leontovitch, Moscow Russia, actor (Homicidal)
1908 – Maurice Stans, rocker
1934 – Al Freeman Jr, Tx, actor (One Life to Live, My Sweet Charlie), (d. 2012)
1965 – Xavier Bertrand, French politician
1980 – Ronaldinho Gaucho, Brazilian international footballer
1801 – Andrea Lucchesi, composer, dies at 59
1843 – Guadalupe Victoria, first President of Mexico (b. 1786)
1881 – Samuel Courtauld, American-born textile magnate (b. 1793)
1921 – “Big Jim” Colisimo, US gangster, murdered by Al Capone
1970 – Manolis Chiotis, Greek songwriter and musician (b. 1920)
2007 – Drew Hayes, American writer andamp; graphic artist (b. 1969)
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at HistoryOrb.Com – This Day in History
By CNNMoney
Filed under: Taxes, Income Tax, IRS, Tax Laws
Dealt some drugs? Stole some cash? There’s a line on your income tax form to declare it.
As ridiculous as it sounds, the federal government requires that money acquired through illegal means be reported and taxed just like legitimate income. It’s right there on the official IRS tax instructions: “Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Form 1040, line 21, or on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity.”
Not surprisingly, tax experts say few criminals declare their loot.
But some do, often when they’ve either been caught during that tax year or think they are about to be caught, says San Francisco tax attorney Stephen Moskowitz, who has helped several clients document their illegal gains. Their goal is to avoid getting charged twice: once for their initial crime, and again for evading the taxes on their windfall. After all, it was tax charges that ultimately put away Al Capone.
Many of today’s criminals who choose to declare their illegal income are facing embezzlement charges, according to Moskowitz.
Like Tom Hughes, a New England accountant who was caught — multiple times — stealing money from his clients.
“I knew the money was taxable, there was no doubt about that,” says Hughes, who now runs an anti-fraud consultancy called Hire-a-thief. “I had already been caught, and I didn’t want to face federal tax charges.”
He paid taxes on his illegal gains in 1999 and 2001, and again in 2004, after he stole from another client. After a nine-month prison stint, Hughes swears he’s now reformed.
So how many self-confessed crooks does the Internal Revenue Service deal with each year? The agency isn’t saying. A spokesman declined to discuss the issue, saying only that declaring illegal income “is what the law requires.”
Documenting illegal income is tricky, Moskowitz says.
The IRS doesn’t require any details on the return beyond an approximation of how much you made. The hard part comes if you get audited. There’s usually no paper trail, so IRS agents will typically ask for the names and contact information for people that may have been part of the illegal transaction, Moskowitz says. The agency will then try to verify your numbers with them.
If you tell the IRS you made $1 million from stealing money or dealing drugs, does the agency tip off the cops?
Legally, it can’t, unless a law-enforcement agency gets a court order granting it access to a specific taxpayer’s return. The IRS isn’t supposed to proactively alert other agencies about misdeeds unless terrorism is involved. In that case, it still needs a court order to disclose anything, but the IRS can initiate the legal process on its own.
The …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By Kris Zane
Reading the headlines the past few weeks has been like a page out of the book of Revelation. Barack Obama riding on his red horse has been foretelling a literal Armageddon if the so-called “draconian” sequestration cuts go into effect.
But Armageddon turned into Chicago’s cutthroat streets with Obama’s Al Capone-like thugs shaking down enemies when pundits, politicians, and journalists began to show that Obama as John the Baptist crying in the wilderness was really the boy crying wolf.
That the sequestration amounted to about two percent of the budget, that the “draconian” sequestration cuts were Obama’s idea. That it was all a sham to get another tax hike on the “fat cat millionaires and billionaires.”
Of course, the leftist media easily spun the narrative for Obama, blaming those evil Republicans.
At least until journalistic giant Bob Woodward came on the scene, setting the record straight. It was hard to argue against Woodward’s facts, given that he had written an entire book, The Price of Politics, describing the whole sequestration debacle.
So the Obama White House did what they do best: the shakedown.
Obama minion and thug Gene Sperling sent Woodward a threatening email, basically telling him to keep his mouth shut:
But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.
Team Obama’s mistake was that they weren’t dealing with one of their hacks in the mainstream media. This was the man who had brought down Richard Nixon. This was the man who, as the mainstream media began to drink Obama’s Kool-Aid, remained at the water cooler of real journalism.
And he began to sing like a canary. First on CNN. Then on Fox. Then, well, his words were beamed as millions of ones and zeros over the Internet, and Team Obama and the Left did the only thing that was left: mockery.
This was exemplified with Obama henchman David Plouffe’s tweet that Woodward’s statements were merely rantings of a senile old man. And the Left parroted this narrative ad nauseam. Woodward was washed up. Put him out to pasture. Nothing to see here, move on. Give Woodward a teaspoon of Geritol and wheel him out onto the patio.
Except then came Lanny Davis, former Bill Clinton special counsel who had been writing a column for the Washington Times. He too received the shakedown treatment from Team Obama.
Then the wheels began to fall off the sequestration bus.
The media began to turn on Obama.
Arne Duncan, Obama’s Education Secretary, was caught in a lie about the sequestration resulting in “thousands of teacher layoffs,” which was a total fabrication.
But this was only the innocuous part of Obama’s spin machine.
Beneath the surface, there was simmering what can only be called treason.
Barack Obama, putting politics above his primary duty as Commander-in-Chief—that of protecting it’s citizens—pulled the aircraft carrier <a target=_blank target="_blank" …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism
The world’s most powerful drug trafficker, Mexican billionaire Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, was designated by The Chicago Crime Commission and the DEA as Chicago’s Public Enemy #1, a title held by Al Capone at the height of Prohibition in the 1930s. In making the announcement on Valentines’ Day, Art Bilek, the commission’s executive vice president, said that “What Al Capone was to beer and whiskey, Guzman is to narcotics.” Guzman deserved the designation for the “viciousness, the evil and the power of this man.” …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
Chicago’s new Public Enemy No. 1 is a cartel kingpin in Mexico.
It’s the first time the Chicago Crime Commission has used the label since Prohibition.
The commission and the Chicago office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will formally give Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman that distinction Thursday.
The Public Enemy No. 1 label was created for mobster Al Capone. But the DEA says Sinaloa cartel leader Guzman is more menacing than the Chicago gangster was.
The DEA‘s top Chicago official, Jack Riley, says Guzman resides in a Mexican hideaway. But he says Guzman’s cartel is now the main narcotics supplier to Chicago and so is effectively a local crime boss.
Guzman has been indicted on federal trafficking charges in the nation’s third-largest city.
Chicago’s new Public Enemy No. 1 is a cartel kingpin in Mexico.
It’s the first time the Chicago Crime Commission has used the label since Prohibition.
The commission and the Chicago office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will formally give Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman that distinction Thursday.
The Public Enemy No. 1 label was created for mobster Al Capone. But the DEA says Sinaloa cartel leader Guzman is more menacing than the Chicago gangster was.
The DEA‘s top Chicago official, Jack Riley, says Guzman resides in a Mexican hideaway. But he says Guzman’s cartel is now the main narcotics supplier to Chicago and so is effectively a local crime boss.
Guzman has been indicted on federal trafficking charges in the nation’s third-largest city.
