Many times I have referred to myself as a political prisoner. That is an odd distinction for me as I have never been considered a political person. My interests have always swayed toward economic theory and psychology...and the next Sudoku puzzle. My case brought to light the politics of the Texas justice system and what is going on inside the Legislature, of course. But even that is not what I am talking about here.
Today I spent time on the blog called Grits For Breakfast as I do everyday to get my fill of what is going on in the Texas justice system and to make comments when something sparks a nerve or an idea. The "Grits" blog has been recognized by many, including The New York Times: On criminal justice, Grissom wrote, "WHO TO WATCH Scott Henson, a very knowledgeable blogger, who writes about all things criminal justice at gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com." In reading this blog, participating in the very active discussions via comments and in general enjoying how Scott Henson seems to have no fear...just puts it out there...he has the John Wayne version of "true grit", I decided this morning to just get more brave.
It is time to put a piece of my case out there that I have been keeping to myself (and my attorneys and my husband and my mom....). I suppose you might be saying: but haven't you said it all by now? Well, far from it...after all I have to leave something for the book, RIGHT? Okay...here's another piece to this case of mine, although there was some mention of it in my post called A DEAD BATTERY? I did not really explain and give you the timeline so you could see the significance. This may also explain more of the reason the Contributor's business partner is so involved. For those of you who are new to my blog, in my case the "Contributor" made the false allegations and his "business partner" masterminded the scheme against me and conspired in the fabrication. It has his signature all over it. I am just introducing David McCall in this post. I give this to you in the form of a timeline:
July 1, 1992 The business partner loans $200,000 to an insurance man's corporation who was buying an existing insurance company. The loan was made because he could not have ownership in an insurance agency in the state of Texas without having an insurance license. The rate of the loan is 18%. Its considered a "sweetheart" loan as no lender would have done this or accepted the terms of repayment (cash flow).
October 28, 1992 The business partner loans an additional $100,000 at a rate of 12% to same corporation for initial operating expenses. Another "sweetheart" loan.
Throughout 1993 and 1994 Interest on loans is paid as cash flow allows. Not something a typical lender would accept, but it is how someone having ownership in the business would be distributed cash. Further, the business partner and the insurance man have monthly meetings to go over the operations of the company.
October 1994 The insurance business is sold. The loans and any remaining unpaid interest are paid off as well as a "back-end fee", called a "consulting fee" amounting to $185,910, in effect the business partner's share of the profits from the sale. He couldn't own a percentage of the business so he accomplished the same thing through the guise of a series of loans and a consulting fee.
October 1996 David McCall, an ex-mayor of Plano, pleaded guilty to bank fraud (after another ex-mayor of Plano, Jack Harvard, pleaded guilty to related charges and agreed to be a government witness against McCall). McCall is a new character in the story and his charges relate to the S&L scams of the 1980's. So McCall is now a felon and owns his own insurance company.
August 13, 1998 Date of stock issuance for TCT Holdings, Inc. and the date newspapers say TCT was formed (by the insurance man from 1992 above) through the merging of three agencies which includes "The McCall Insurance Agency". I have copies of the stock issued to the Contributor and his business partner. The business partner bragged that once again they had ownership in an insurance agency without being licensed. So not only was that illegal but McCall 's continued ownership, once a felon, is illegal. Felons are not allowed to have ownership in insurance agencies in the state of Texas. I checked, there is no grandfather clause to that. Apparently David changed his name to Bruce McCall for the insurance company purposes. David's middle name started with "B", but was Benjamin, not Bruce, which is what he was using.
1998- 2003 The business partner continues to require the insurance man to have monthly meetings with him to go over the operations and financials of the business. Micromanaging as usual. Once I started NOAH we used their agency for our policies. (Uh, would I use their agency if I was stealing from them? That would be bold!)
October 30, 2003 I received a call from Betsy of TCT telling me to extend the Directors & Officers insurance policy to cover end-of-business contingencies. The policy had lapsed a couple weeks earlier. Her example was ...what if a parent decided to sue us. I told her "No, we did not have the wherewithal to pay and I was not going to extend it." TCT went on and paid it anyway, extending without my permission. Remember the Contributor and his business partner have ownership in TCT!!
November 2003 False police report and false insurance claims filed with regard to alleged theft for the funding of The NOAH Project school.
Thursday, February 12, 2004 McCall goes into a coma as a result of cancer.
Saturday, February 14, 2004 President Bush approves pardon of McCall. Alberto Gonzalez, then the General Counsel to the White House, drew up the pardon papers.
Monday, February 16, 2004 Presidential pardon of McCall is announced.
Tuesday, February 17, 2004 McCall dies, never came out of coma so doesn't even know he was pardoned.
Monday, February 23, 2004 Temple-Inland purchases TCT and renames it Guaranty Insurance Services.
The pardon accomplished several things. It caused the continuing Federal investigation on McCall and subsequently his estate to cease. It cleared the way for the sale of TCT to an SEC regulated company. It also made the paper trail of the fraudulent claims and the extension of the policy related to my case impossible to follow. And, outside of the McCall pardon, the Contributor and business partner, once again get away with owning and profiting from an insurance agency that is not allowed under Texas law.
Don't you wonder, given the false allegations on me and false insurance claims, how many more false claims there might have been? All of the Contributor's and business partner's development deals and existing finished properties and business operations were insured through this agency. Don't you wonder when someone changes their name to do business and was a felon as a result of the S&L insurance scams of the 80's what kind of business they were doing in this group of insurance companies that merged in the late 90's? There was a big question when Bush pardoned McCall....it was so out of pattern from all prior pardons of Bush. Much was written about that, in newspapers and blogs with many people speculating. It's far from a coincidence that a week after the pardon TCT was sold to Temple-Inland (a Texas based SEC regulated company). You know Temple-Inland would have done a fair amount of due diligence before buying TCT. But, not one word was ever spoken to me about this before I left at the end of October (just three months prior) and I was always placed in the middle of these types of transactions for my ex-clients....as a sort of watch dog. (No, I'm not a dog.)
I handed this information to the prosecutors and what I was given in return was a Motion in Limine saying we could not bring up past "bad acts" of the Contributor or his business partner. That would include the false insurance claims made from the false allegations of me and the unlawful extension of NOAH's Directors and Officers policy....which was quite relevant to my defense.
Further we subpoenaed all the insurance records from TCT (then Guaranty). They were not required to bring them to court. Instead my attorney and I went to their offices, after being told on the phone we would have to sort through about 15 to 20 boxes. When we arrived, we were ushered into a conference room and given two small stacks of paper with two of the previous TCT employees watching us and answering questions. Of course what we were looking for was not there. They were never made to render the documents as outlined in the subpoena. Nor did my attorney bring any of the people from TCT into the trial to be questioned. There were three people I specifically requested: the insurance man heading up all the deals and operations, and the two women who sat at that table the day we went to their offices, the three key personnel of TCT.
Perhaps you see the political overtones I first spoke of in this blog. There is more and it relates to Harlan Crow, business partner to my two ex-clients and trustee to Bush's campaign funds. I was specifically told in the fall of 2004 to take nothing of what I knew regarding other issues to the media because this country could not afford to have John Kerry as President. At the same time my attorney asked for another $50,000 to continue on my case, of which everyone involved knew I could not afford, thus precipitating the recategorization of me to "indigent" and throwing me to the public defenders.
For being a-political I managed to get right in the middle of things, wouldn't you say?
It is time to put a piece of my case out there that I have been keeping to myself (and my attorneys and my husband and my mom....). I suppose you might be saying: but haven't you said it all by now? Well, far from it...after all I have to leave something for the book, RIGHT? Okay...here's another piece to this case of mine, although there was some mention of it in my post called A DEAD BATTERY? I did not really explain and give you the timeline so you could see the significance. This may also explain more of the reason the Contributor's business partner is so involved. For those of you who are new to my blog, in my case the "Contributor" made the false allegations and his "business partner" masterminded the scheme against me and conspired in the fabrication. It has his signature all over it. I am just introducing David McCall in this post. I give this to you in the form of a timeline:
July 1, 1992 The business partner loans $200,000 to an insurance man's corporation who was buying an existing insurance company. The loan was made because he could not have ownership in an insurance agency in the state of Texas without having an insurance license. The rate of the loan is 18%. Its considered a "sweetheart" loan as no lender would have done this or accepted the terms of repayment (cash flow).
October 28, 1992 The business partner loans an additional $100,000 at a rate of 12% to same corporation for initial operating expenses. Another "sweetheart" loan.
Throughout 1993 and 1994 Interest on loans is paid as cash flow allows. Not something a typical lender would accept, but it is how someone having ownership in the business would be distributed cash. Further, the business partner and the insurance man have monthly meetings to go over the operations of the company.
October 1994 The insurance business is sold. The loans and any remaining unpaid interest are paid off as well as a "back-end fee", called a "consulting fee" amounting to $185,910, in effect the business partner's share of the profits from the sale. He couldn't own a percentage of the business so he accomplished the same thing through the guise of a series of loans and a consulting fee.
October 1996 David McCall, an ex-mayor of Plano, pleaded guilty to bank fraud (after another ex-mayor of Plano, Jack Harvard, pleaded guilty to related charges and agreed to be a government witness against McCall). McCall is a new character in the story and his charges relate to the S&L scams of the 1980's. So McCall is now a felon and owns his own insurance company.
August 13, 1998 Date of stock issuance for TCT Holdings, Inc. and the date newspapers say TCT was formed (by the insurance man from 1992 above) through the merging of three agencies which includes "The McCall Insurance Agency". I have copies of the stock issued to the Contributor and his business partner. The business partner bragged that once again they had ownership in an insurance agency without being licensed. So not only was that illegal but McCall 's continued ownership, once a felon, is illegal. Felons are not allowed to have ownership in insurance agencies in the state of Texas. I checked, there is no grandfather clause to that. Apparently David changed his name to Bruce McCall for the insurance company purposes. David's middle name started with "B", but was Benjamin, not Bruce, which is what he was using.
1998- 2003 The business partner continues to require the insurance man to have monthly meetings with him to go over the operations and financials of the business. Micromanaging as usual. Once I started NOAH we used their agency for our policies. (Uh, would I use their agency if I was stealing from them? That would be bold!)
October 30, 2003 I received a call from Betsy of TCT telling me to extend the Directors & Officers insurance policy to cover end-of-business contingencies. The policy had lapsed a couple weeks earlier. Her example was ...what if a parent decided to sue us. I told her "No, we did not have the wherewithal to pay and I was not going to extend it." TCT went on and paid it anyway, extending without my permission. Remember the Contributor and his business partner have ownership in TCT!!
November 2003 False police report and false insurance claims filed with regard to alleged theft for the funding of The NOAH Project school.
Thursday, February 12, 2004 McCall goes into a coma as a result of cancer.
Saturday, February 14, 2004 President Bush approves pardon of McCall. Alberto Gonzalez, then the General Counsel to the White House, drew up the pardon papers.
Monday, February 16, 2004 Presidential pardon of McCall is announced.
Tuesday, February 17, 2004 McCall dies, never came out of coma so doesn't even know he was pardoned.
Monday, February 23, 2004 Temple-Inland purchases TCT and renames it Guaranty Insurance Services.
The pardon accomplished several things. It caused the continuing Federal investigation on McCall and subsequently his estate to cease. It cleared the way for the sale of TCT to an SEC regulated company. It also made the paper trail of the fraudulent claims and the extension of the policy related to my case impossible to follow. And, outside of the McCall pardon, the Contributor and business partner, once again get away with owning and profiting from an insurance agency that is not allowed under Texas law.
Don't you wonder, given the false allegations on me and false insurance claims, how many more false claims there might have been? All of the Contributor's and business partner's development deals and existing finished properties and business operations were insured through this agency. Don't you wonder when someone changes their name to do business and was a felon as a result of the S&L insurance scams of the 80's what kind of business they were doing in this group of insurance companies that merged in the late 90's? There was a big question when Bush pardoned McCall....it was so out of pattern from all prior pardons of Bush. Much was written about that, in newspapers and blogs with many people speculating. It's far from a coincidence that a week after the pardon TCT was sold to Temple-Inland (a Texas based SEC regulated company). You know Temple-Inland would have done a fair amount of due diligence before buying TCT. But, not one word was ever spoken to me about this before I left at the end of October (just three months prior) and I was always placed in the middle of these types of transactions for my ex-clients....as a sort of watch dog. (No, I'm not a dog.)
I handed this information to the prosecutors and what I was given in return was a Motion in Limine saying we could not bring up past "bad acts" of the Contributor or his business partner. That would include the false insurance claims made from the false allegations of me and the unlawful extension of NOAH's Directors and Officers policy....which was quite relevant to my defense.
Further we subpoenaed all the insurance records from TCT (then Guaranty). They were not required to bring them to court. Instead my attorney and I went to their offices, after being told on the phone we would have to sort through about 15 to 20 boxes. When we arrived, we were ushered into a conference room and given two small stacks of paper with two of the previous TCT employees watching us and answering questions. Of course what we were looking for was not there. They were never made to render the documents as outlined in the subpoena. Nor did my attorney bring any of the people from TCT into the trial to be questioned. There were three people I specifically requested: the insurance man heading up all the deals and operations, and the two women who sat at that table the day we went to their offices, the three key personnel of TCT.
Perhaps you see the political overtones I first spoke of in this blog. There is more and it relates to Harlan Crow, business partner to my two ex-clients and trustee to Bush's campaign funds. I was specifically told in the fall of 2004 to take nothing of what I knew regarding other issues to the media because this country could not afford to have John Kerry as President. At the same time my attorney asked for another $50,000 to continue on my case, of which everyone involved knew I could not afford, thus precipitating the recategorization of me to "indigent" and throwing me to the public defenders.
For being a-political I managed to get right in the middle of things, wouldn't you say?
Whoa.
ReplyDeleteVERY interesting.
Hey Audrey, this is perfect fodder for a Book and Documentary. Now that this is out, consider placing a video camera on a tri-pod and slowly tell the story from the very begining. Not all at once but more like a little each day ending with where you and the case are presently at.
ReplyDeleteNaming names, dates, locations & quoting everyone's statements all the way. Should you happen to brake down and cry simply ask us to work with you as you attempt to tell a story that has had devestating consequences as it reeked havock on your life and those in it. I'd make sure to put your current attorney in it by capturing any quotes he has to offer from his office chair. Your notes are aleady in your head & in the WUF Blog for reference. Still shots can be taken from the footage for photos to go in the book.
Then I'd turn 'the loose cannon' free to provide copies of the finished product (doesn't have to professionally edited by you) to the world at large. Local TV, CNN, A&E, OWN, ID, Governor of Texas, President Obama & the First Lady, etc... With a letter attached saying that you are currently accepting bids on the Story & Footage to be edited by winner with exclusive interveiw rights. The President's & Govornor's letter could simply ask for FBI intervention and that a special prosecutor be assigned to the case. You might be sitting on a tiny gold mine?
Just thinking out loud after reading about how politics played a major role in your railroading (case)from the start. Until then. Thanks.
Wow! Lies to cover more lies to cover more lies to protect the guilty. This reads like a novel, but the sad part is that it's non-fiction...and the victim is one of the finest women I know. Keep telling this story! Truth will prevail!
ReplyDelete"All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field." ~Albert Einstein