Planet Waves (wave back!)

Old habits do, often, die hard.

When, just over a decade ago, I moved from my life as a crime-fighter, (investigating and exposing stock frauds, environmental calamities, and mobsters of various stripes), to re-enter the world of popular music, for a time my lives crossed over.

The trail of payola, of chart manipulations, lies, fraud and sociopathology in the record industry seemed as captivating as was the corruption uncovered in my earlier forensic career.

Of course, it is all that - richly entertaining, educational, and deserving of serious reportage. There's far too little insightful journalism that goes to the truth of the music "biz".

But, as Zimmy says, "it's never been my duty to remake the world at large, nor is it my intention to sound a battle charge."

My role in music, today, is akin to that of geologist and explorer Chuck Fipke (of the Dia Met/Ekati Mine discovery) - whom I encountered in my past life as he covered the distance to bring something real and true to the surface.

"In this age of fibreglass, I'm searching for a gem."

I've found one.

At the same time, I've lost my urge to unearth that which is bogus.

And, so, it's with pleasure, and some sense of relief, that I see that Semion Mogilevich, the biggest name associated with my final crime expose, YBM Magnex is in the news - and I have no desire to do more than watch/read a bit of what others are saying.

If only I had popcorn...

For background, YouTube hosts this BBC Panorama documentary on "The Billion Dollar Don".









For the latest, just search the web, it's all over the world these past couple of days. Here's a CNN piece that hits most of the key notes:

FBI: Mobster 'more powerful than a John Gotti'

CNN Story Highlights

•Semion Mogilevich accused of taking U.S., Canadian investors for $150 million

•FBI believes he moved on to manipulating international energy markets

•FBI: Mogilevich's business degree, large influence on nations make him dangerous

•Alleged Russian mobster known for his ruthlessness, power, business acumen

From Jeanne Meserve CNN
October 22, 2009

NEWTOWN, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- Semion Mogilevich may be the most powerful man you've never heard of.

The FBI says Mogilevich, a Russian mobster, has been involved in arms trafficking, prostitution, extortion and murder for hire.

"He has access to so much, including funding, including other criminal organizations, that he can, with a telephone call and order, affect the global economy," said FBI Supervisory Special Agent Peter Kowenhoven.

Mogilevich's alleged brutality, financial savvy and international influence have earned him a slot on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, though he has lived and operated from Moscow, Russia, for years. Watch CNN report on Mogilevich »

"He's a big man. He's a very powerful man," FBI Special Agent Mike Dixon said. "I think more powerful than a John Gotti would be, because he has the ability to influence nations. Gotti never reached that stature."

He is accused of swindling Canadian and U.S. investors out of $150 million in a complex international financial scheme. It centered on a firm called YBM, which purportedly made magnets at a factory in Hungary.

Authorities say the scheme involved preparing bogus financial books and records, lying to Securities and Exchange Commission officials, offering bribes to accountants and inflating stock values of YBM, which was headquartered in Newtown, Pennsylvania.

But there was one thing missing.

"There were no magnets," Dixon said.

It was all a sham, investigators say.

"In essence, what his companies were doing was moving money through bank accounts in Budapest and countries throughout the world and reporting these to the investment community as purchases of raw materials and sales of magnets," Dixon said.

And because the company was publicly traded, anyone owning the stock would have made a lot of money.

"And of course Mogilevich controlled large, large blocks of stock from the outset, and he made a substantial amount of money in this process," Dixon said.

Investors lost millions into the pockets of Mogilevich and his associates. He and his associates were indicted in 2003 on 45 counts of racketeering, securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering.

Russian authorities arrested him last year on tax fraud charges, but because the United States does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, he remained beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement. He is now free on bail.

The FBI believes Mogilevich moved on after YBM and began manipulating international energy markets, giving him a large influence on other nations.

Dixon noted that Mogilevich had control or influence over companies involved in natural gas disputes between Russia and Ukraine.

Authorities say Mogilevich, who has an economics degree from Ukraine, is known for his ruthless nature but also for his business acumen, which led to his nickname "the Brainy Don."

"He has a very sophisticated, well-educated, loyal group of associates that he works with," Dixon said. "He hires top-notch consultants, attorneys, risk management firms to assist him and protect him in his criminal ventures."

Louise Shelley, an organized crime expert from George Mason University, says Mogilevich is a new kind of criminal.

"The major criminal organizations in Russia have not only tapped into people with economics degrees," Shelley said. "They've tapped into people with PHDs in finance and statistics who assist them."

The FBI hopes Mogilevich will eventually travel to a country that has an extradition treaty with the U.S.

But, in case he doesn't, his wanted poster will be distributed all over Russia.

Hallelujah - victory march of Leonard Cohen's folk song

Hallelujah's magnificence shines in almost every version I've heard.

(Serving as manager to an artist who regularly performs it in concert, and has released a popular recording of the song, people frequently bring to my attention their cherished renditions.)

From my perspective, working in the music industry, it's fascinating to watch the evolution of media, and how a new folk tradition is being enabled. Fredric Dannen's book "Hit Men" details how major record labels, through a system of payola and control of physical distribution channels etc., effectively shut out independent artists and creativity - such that, by the 1980s/90s, access to music via the airwaves and record/CD stores was a racket controlled by a relatively few power brokers.

As Lovin' Spoonful and jug-band music-maker, John Sebastian put it to The New York Times, "The industry has been in the corporate noose for so long, it doesn't even have a leg jiggle left."

That's changing. Thanks in large measure to the freedom of the internet, there's now a window open for artist and audience - as there was on mainstream radio before payola and corruption became so institutionalized. People today have increasing access, and opportunity to experience a much wider range of musical performances - whether or not such recordings are part of the major label system. Those many still do, a new artist does not have to "play the game". This makes for a great release.

Instead of limiting people to a narrow selection of choices, today's new, as yet, significantly uncontrolled, media makes it possible for people to hear any number of versions of Hallelujah or other songs being recorded and performed globally. (Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen's magnificent song, is the well-spring of this post - originally inspired by some discussion of that song on The Leonard Cohen Files forum.) The marketing muscle that has established the position of many recordings in the public consciousness in past decades is - at this moment in time - losing dominance.

With the gates now open, Hallelujah is truly becoming a song of the people. Shrek, with its Rufus Wainwright version on the soundtrack has had a tremendous role, too, in the song's evolution, from revered cult status into the popular canon. It's a much-loved folk song - being heard in new voices, of all ages. A poll as to people's favorites - of this, and many other songs - taken some years down the road is likely to be a very different thing should this newly democratized listening environment continue to flourish free from marketing dictates.

Hallelujah enobles those who sing it, and enriches those who listen. It's to be loved in all it permutations ( :

Marié Digby - and the beat goes on

An illuminating article in today's online edition of the Wall Street Journal brings me back to this blog for a punctuation.

WSJ writers Ethan Smith and Peter Lattman, in their page one feature, Download This: YouTube Phenom Has a Big Secret, shine a light on a current, and classic, case of how the old-school record business is playing in the arena of "new media" or "social media".



Drawing the schematics of how "Singer Marié Digby Isn't Quite What She Appears", the journalists show how an online sensation, a "YouTube phenom", in the words of MTV's Carson Daly, is really just the same-old same-old product of marketing minds in an industry that has lost its way.

As with last year's PR hoax of UK recording artist Sandi Thom, falsely touted as a worldwide DIY webcasting sensation, the case of Marié Digby has a silver lining for music-lovers. (NB the incorrect spelling is Marie Digby)

It's obvious that there exists a steady stream of musicians and would-be musicians more than willing to "play the game" in pursuit of whatever it may be they're seeking. Some want fame. Some fortune. Some may believe that, in order to advance their music, they have to go along with marketers - and end up as a cog in schemes that may have all the integrity of a smoke and mirrors stock promotion. Parents, managers, friends and supporters of all stripes, wanting "the best", cheer-lead from the sidelines. A well-greased network of publicists and pluggers help keep the machine humming.

One of the most telling passages, for me, in Fredric Dannen's study of the U.S. recording industry, "Hit Men", is when Dick Asher, then Deputy President of CBS Records, attempts to boycott the spending of millions of dollars in payola. Without the payola, delivered to shadowy middlemen then known as "indies" (or independent promoters - the kingpin of the day was the Networks' Joe Isgro), the label's artists can't get commercial radio hits. Asher says the practice is wrong and stakes the position that the music should be what matters. CBS, he says, is no longer going to pay for play.

In "Hit Men", Dick Asher recounts his meeting with the brilliant percussionist and songwriter, Maurice White, leader of the hugely popular band Earth, Wind and Fire: "When we first went off indies, Maurice White came into my office. He made the rounds and found out this (boycott) comes from Asher. We had a long conversation. He was saying he had to have independents. I said, we're just not doing it, Maurice. I said, Maurice, you're the greatest artist in the world, you're such a huge talent. Isn't it demeaning to you that some guy with an Italian name has to get paid off to get your records played on the air? You know?

"He said, 'Look man, I only have one career. So don't make me your crusade'."

Is it any wonder the beat goes on?

The diligent journalism of Smith and Lattman exposes a fascinating rot in the record industry and a lack of imagination in its traditional marketing practices - plays that now are being called online.

Encouraging to me, as a former investigator of fraud, is that there is now an electronic "paper trail" to the promotion of singers and bands. It's more possible than ever to see the strings that animate the puppets in pop music.

And, for musicians who love music most of all, and want to reach their audience, the same tools that are being used by industry players to manipulate public perception, remain to be used for more legitimate promotion,

Truly, the internet IS doing those things that enable artist and audience to meet, and to build relationships not possible prior to the web, social networking, etc. becoming common-place. This is the most exciting time to be a recording artist since the late '60s/early '70s. There is a chance, however slight, to beat the racketeers, and succeed honestly as a popular musician via blogs, podcasts, forums such as YouTube, MySpace, Pandora, Jamendo and many more.

In this wild-west frontier, a new transparency is present. Real fake acts and fake real acts are now facing competition from real acts.

Articles like the one published today in the Wall Street Journal can help people appreciate the difference.

Can't say who's to praise and who's to blame...

A new book by American writer Hank Bordowitz has just been published: "Dirty Little Secrets of the Record Business: Why So Much Music You Hear Sucks".

It's a great read - full of worthwhile information and lots of laughs, too (light and dark). The author synthesizes analyses of the many elements of what is a sprawling, multi-tentacled, story into a cogent, satisfying, whole. The book's provocative title may lead to wrong assumptions - that this is a sensational expose lacking veritas and offering bleakness rather than solutions. Not so, it's a plain-talking look at the "biz" written by someone who loves music. It deserves to be read by any and all who care about the subject.

("Hit Men", Fredric Dannen's 1990/91 look at the business mechanics of the U.S. record industry is another worthwhile read - with a different, but complementary, focus. It aids understanding of the game, and how popular music, once vital and original in force, has become the plastic product one mostly hears today. And, these books point the way to how we can get back to where we once belonged. Jojo.)

"This is the book that any one who once did time in the music business wish we had written," says Hugo Burnham, drummer for the Gang of Four (who's also served as an artist manager and in major-label A&R). A mentor to me in this crazy business, Jack Ponti (songwriter, producer, manager and record exec) says: "Brilliantly written, insightful, a good history, and a great read."

Agreed. It's a great read.

Now, I'm told that newer and bluer Meanies have been sighted in the vicinity... There's only one way we can go out!

How's that?

Singing!

Here's Ani DiFranco covering Phil Ochs' "When I'm Gone":

Postscript: Spinning a silk purse out of a sow's ear

Dorset, U.K.-based music mogul Ian Wellesley Brown reportedly likes to be described as a former pig farmer.

I live just down the road from pig farmers, and, though industrious these folks be, such earthy characterization serves to underplay Brown's hand in those PR successes he's spun in the past five years - among them: Erin Rocha; Gordon Haskell; Cantamus Choir; and, most recently, Sandi Thom.

When the dust settles on the pen, it's clear how Brown's role is pivotal - and, as each act sees their day in the sun set, Brown manages to surface, yet again, with a new tale that brings the press to the trough in droves.

A sporting chap, Brown has proven equally keen to play the game on defence as offence. Earlier this month, when the portrayal of his newest charge, Thom, as a DIY webcast revolutionary was effectively debunked online, and, to a lesser extent, in the mainstream press, Brown was ready with an explanation.

"It was really the media who got carried away," he told The Telegraph. "But I'm not going to phone up newspapers and say, 'By the way, you claimed more people watched my artist than actually did. Can you please retract that because we're in danger of selling more records?' "

(Had the reporter elected to counter that, in truth, it was Brown’s friends, London’s Streaming Tank webcasters, that had made inflated, unsubstantiated, claims that were then dutifully repeated by the press, Brown could really have shown his wordplay mettle. Likewise, Brown's spin to explain why there is no online evidence of an internet phenomenon was disingenuous - but effective. It happened via untrackable email quoth he. Despite this entertaining damage control being easy to eviscerate, it's proved sufficient to stall web-ignorant reporters from probing further into the mechanics of the PR hoax.)

And, while it’s evident to many that Sandi Thom is not an internet sensation, but, rather, an example of traditional PR at work, using the currently sexy hook of the web and social networking to garner ink and sound-bytes, Ian Brown still has cause to celebrate.

He appears to be the first pig-farmer-turned-songwriter to have, both, a #1 single in the UK and a #1 album. Brown’s song, “I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)” topped the pops in early June. A full-length album, “Smile… It Confuses People”, on which he’s credited with writing at least six tracks, crowned the charts the following week.

Around the same time that The Sunday Times’ Andrew Billen was reporting that Thom “writes both her own (often catchy) tunes and (sometime funny) lyrics”, the EMI Music Publishing database was reporting that, of 30 songs listing Sandi Thom among their credits, not a single one was written by Thom on her own. On seven, almost one quarter, of the songs she’s teamed with John McLaughlin - UK hitmaker to boy bands Blue, Busted and Ireland’s Westlife. (McLaughlin and Ian Brown earlier paired to write "Soul Mining" - a song recorded by the Brown-promoted Cantamus Choir, and, subsequently, by Thom.) In a promo video made for Polar Flame Music, McLaughlin refers to "Sandi Thom, who I'm about to unleash on the world right now, as you'll see". On a pair of songs she’s also joined by Dave James, another in the Windswept/P&P Publishing stable - and creator of hits for boy band Take That. (James is currently co-writing with Kian of Westlife.) And yet another veteran pop songsmith, Simon Perry, who’s crafted tunes for Westlife and for triplet trio, The Noise Next Door , ("Lock Up Ya Daughters"), shows up as a regular in this co-writing circle.

For the record, here’s the songwriting credits as they appear for “Smile… It Confuses People”:

1. When Horsepower Meant What It Said - Ian Brown (Gilbert, Tom), Sandi Thom

2. I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair) - Ian Brown (Gilbert, Tom), Sandi Thom

3. Lonely Girl - tbd

4. Sunset Borderline - Jake Field, Sandi Thom, Duncan Thompson

5. Little Remedy - Jake Field, Sandi Thom, Duncan Thompson

6. Castles - Ian Brown (Gilbert, Tom), Jake Field, Sandi Thom

7. What If I’m Right - Ian Brown (Gilbert, Tom), Sandi Thom

8. Superman - Ian Brown (Gilbert, Tom), Sandi Thom

9. The Human Jukebox - Ian Brown (Gilbert, Tom), Sandi Thom

10. Time - Simon Perry, Sandi Thom

(Source: EMI Music Publishing )

Bringing home the bacon is Ian Brown’s gig, however you slice it.

Addendum: As of mid-June 2006, after an extensive tv advertising campaign, and massive coverage in the mainstream media, the number of fans signed up to Sandi Thom's official website is under 500. in a discussion thread asking members how they first heard of the singer, not one of these online fans say their introduction to Thom was a basement webcast - still being billed today, and, obviously, falsely, as an "internet sensation". Thom, herself, on the defensive, taking a cue from Ian Brown - blames the media for creating the "too poor to tour" myth - even though press archives show Thom herself spun that line. Under fire this month, Thom told a Scottish reporter: "I'm very proud and protective of the integrity of this band. At the beginning of all of this, way back when, the one thing I wanted was to keep intact the band members, the music, everything about our identity. I am so proud that we've done that, and I have an album coming out which is precisely the way I wrote it before all of this happened." The obliging scribe didn't confuse people by noting that Marcus Bonfanti (guitarist) and Craig Connet (drummer), Thom's bandmates to whom she pledges such fealty, play not a single note on her just-released album. Until sometime, in late 2005, Bonfanti and Connet had a regular gig in the band Fun Tony, a fixture at Bar Hannah and other Liverpool nightspots. In this intact world of identity, even the album title changed shortly before release - until late 2005 it was labeled Rockabyeberry in a nod to Thom's “childhood home of Whistleberry, near Kinneff", Scotland. Now the record title is a slogan lifted from a bumper-sticker that's been around the block plenty. The songs are crafted by a team of veterans - hitmakers behind some of the U.K.'s biggest boy bands+, with Thom receiving co-writing credits. To quote a Seinfeld-ism, not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just not what Sandi Thom, her investors and her promoters are selling the public.

MySpace flames out + "Voice of the Canucks" signs off

Aye, there'll be no after-life for the current edition of my hockey team. No denying that's disappointing. And, it's for the best. There's been something evidently wrong with the Canucks for quite some time. Attention may now be focussed on repairing the situation.

For me, this spells the end to my blogging fun time.

To wrap things, here's a quick (well, for me!) and, hopefully, final, (again, for me), look at one specific aspect of the Sandi Thom PR saga - the promotional claims that this "ultimate viral marketing campaign" was ignited by word ~ of live basement-casts from a Victorian home in Tooting ~ spreading like "wildfire" on MySpace.

Focussing on the unsubstantiated claims of webcast viewership "up to 200,000" nightly can be a bit of a mug’s game. According to Thom's team, (once the management and PR force had gone public with its story in early March), on February 24, 2006 - they had 74 viewers; a week later, on each of March 2 and 3, they claimed over 62,000 were watching; by Sunday, March 5, this nightly audience was said to be 182,000. By March 7, team-member Chris Dabbs, (of London-based Streaming Tank), was projecting more than one million netizens would soon be watching a live webcast from Tooting.

Such data that can be calculated or constructed out-of-sight relies upon the integrity of the source for its accuracy. So far, no one has presented any credible basis for these claims. And the team record on other disclosures makes taking basement-cast claims at face value a high-rise proposition.

Technorati data suggests quite plainly that internet “buzz” or discussion of the webcasts was, in fact, generated first offline - by PR releases and traditional media (newspaper, tv and radio reports). These insider-created and media-propagated stories of an internet viral (word-of-mouth) sensation were first released to the world in concentration between March 5-7 and, a second round, (reporting on the record deal), was let loose on or about April 4, 2006 (depending on your time zone).

Prior to the first webcast PR shot across the bow from Quite Great Publicity, and associates, there is no evidence of any significant online discussion or awareness in the web community of the basement-casts themselves. There was no real conversation happening in the blogosphere. (Those few posts apearing in February, eg. on Thom's own MySpace blog, and at Hypebot, did not spark a blaze of interest.) Nor were people chatting up things on such web forums as Slashdot.org. (This site, home to "News for nerds. Stuff that matters", is pointed to by proponents of the viral story as being one of the hubs of discussion; it was, but not until March 7 - in explicit reaction to the offline PR/news).

According to Chris Dabbs: "It's been talked about on blogs and word has spread all over the internet. It's turned into the ultimate viral marketing campaign." Dabbs is"group account director" of Streaming Tank and a principal of its owner, The Creative Tank Group said to have the technical wherewithal to pull-off what they claim vis-a-vis webcasting. (Even if his outfit doesn't exactly fit with the under-dog image of bargain-basement gear conquering the world.)

Joni Mitchell says that, in today's music biz, things are "rudely calculated". Should that be what's happened here, the math might look like this: one blagged camera - £60; six IKEA stools - £18; mainstream media response - priceless.

Actors in this media play, ranging from the venerable BBC to less staid performers such the The Sun tabloid, have been supplied with the same script. "Rumours of her gigs spread like wildfire over Myspace.com," they recite. "By the middle of her 'tour' the crowd had swollen to an amazing 70,000 per performance. That is the same as a sell-out at the old Wembley stadium." (In several newspapers, in different locations, the local stadium equivalent to Wembley was simply substituted to retain this catchy hook.)

Looks like the stage-manager forgot to tell the folks on MySpace about their parts. The cast of thousands didn't even mail it in. On MySpace, for fans of Sandi Thom there is a Fan page/site and an "Official" page/site. The webcasts, we're told, ran from February 24 through March 16, 2006. On Sandi Thom's original MySpace Fan page/site, not a single comment was posted between January 23 and March 17 of this year.

Visitors to Thom's more recently created “Official” MySpace page/site, were not entirely keeping their words-in-their-own-mouths during the material period. They do, however, appear to have been non-participatory in the word-of-mouth sensation they were creating. For the first two weeks of this, the "ultimate viral marketing campaign", only 13 posts were made to Sandi Thom's "Official" MySpace home. The first message to make any mention of the webcasts did not appear until March 8, two-thirds of the way into the Tooting scenario:

Mar 8, 2006 4:30 AM

'Eylo. :)
Thanks for accepting the add!
My dad told me about you, he showed me an article about you that was in the Press & Journal the other day, I read it and I thought it all seemed rather interesting.
So, naturally I looked you up on myspace and here I am.
Got to say I really like what I've heard so far. :)

All the best,
Siâny

That's how internet wildfire spreads. In a vacuum.

It was a March 6 article, singing the familiar PR refrain about web-mania+, that led Siâny, via her Dad, to look up Thom on MySpace. The Press and Journal is a daily newspaper serving the north of Scotland.

(MySpace data indicates that during this period there was ongoing a recruitment of "friends" for Sandi Thom. Basically, that happens when someone, or an "add-bot", proactively invites a large number of other MySpacers, often strangers, to become a "friend". It's a sign of marketing flow extending outward, not coming inward, organically. It's private and mechanical, not public and viral in nature. It's another area in which old-school marketing can insinuate itself into the "democratic" free-er thinking web. And, it's another story...)

Between this first spark, and the extinguishing of the Tooting "tour" on March 16, only another 14 posts appear on Sandi Thom's "Official" MySpace. Just three of these refer to the webcasts, but only in the context that they, too, heard the news from traditional PR/media (eg. Grampian News, BBC London News). By March 15, the day before the webcasts flame-out, there is only a single flicker of the raging interest reflected - and it comes from offline:

Mar 15, 2006 3:21 AM

Hey there! My middle-classed Indian landlord just advised me to do some podcasting like you are, so it must be working! "What if I'm right?" has hit written all over it! Well done you!

Dan

Up until April 1, another 14 posts are made on MySpace. Sandi Thom also has a MySpace blog. On February 22, Thom, (or, at least, someone representing themself as Thom), posted word of the upcoming webcasts on this blog. The first of only two responses to this 'message from the artist' came six weeks later - on April 4.

"Silence is Golden" can make a hit for The Tremeloes, with or without Brian Poole. But, it's no slogan for the world's "ultimate viral marketing campaign".

"Voice of the Canucks" signs off

Not only does tonight mark the final game of this Canucks season, it's also the team's final broadcast on flagship radio station CKNW, "the voice of the Vancouver Canucks" since the team entered the NHL - and even since before the city gained its major-league hockey franchise.

Of life memories, I share some of the big ones in common with people of my generation in the west: the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy; The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. John Lennon's assassination. There's some obcure ones - either no one else, saw, or will admit to remembering, Tiny Tim on Carson (or another tv talk show), pulling off clothing as he performed "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?". (I keep waiting for a vid of that to appear on YouTube. Now, we're talking ultimate experiences!)



(NB update - anguulo, who read this blog post, emailed to say that this classic performance is NOW on YouTube! Dreams DO come true! hehe Here is a real punk with flowers in his hair subverting Rod Stewart's disco hit... check out Johnny Carson's take - and note a very young David Letterman seated next to Mr. Tim at the clip's end. And now, tiptoe through the tulips with me... back to the rest of this hockey commentary! Thanks anguulo! God bless Tiny Tim!)

For folks living within the broadcasting reach of Vancouver radio station CKNW, since the birth of the NHL Canucks, this "end of an era" really has meaning. There's a whole lotta love and loyalty that's been laced together in that pairing for 35 years.

During tonight's game broadcast, play-by-play man John Shorthouse eloquently spoke of having fulfilled his childhood dream. Colour man Tom Larscheid choked up - and said just as much without words. Dan Russell and his brilliantly entertaining Sportstalk show and team remain on 'NW. It's an ending, though, of a beautiful friendship.

The first Canucks goal, any die-hard fan can tell you, was scored October 9, 1970 by Number 4, Barry Wilkins. Hall-of-Famer Jim Robson, was the flesh-and-blood voice of the Canucks for most of their first 25 years in the NHL. Sports play-by-play was his art. Robson's on-air descriptions of action and environment gave them physical form and life. On many a night, Canuck games would be followed by music-man Jack Cullen spinning his collection of records on the Owl Prowl. I found my thrill - in Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday ... old radio shows on "Network Replay". (Still do!)

Jim Robson's famous-to-listeners time-out greeting he humbly acknowledged having adopted from CKWX announcer Cal George (who signed off with his version):

“At this time I'd like to pass along a special hello to hospital patients and shut-ins. To the blind, the pensioners, those of you who can’t get out to the game. Thanks for listening in tonight."

He shoots. He scores!

(I've just heard the news that veteran radio broadcaster, and the first Canucks PA announcer, Tom Peacock "died Saturday (04/15/06) at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver at the age of 66. He succumbed to a second stroke following quintuple bypass surgery. Peace )

Back to the Future: The Magnex Files

I'm receiving requests for my non-music writings - dating back to the 1990s and earlier. Oy!

Starting with the saga of YBM Magnex and its web of white collar, and Russian, organized crime.

Wading back into paper files in this computer age is not something I'll be doing for a long time. If ever. Online, there's not one common repository for all that I wrote about YBM Magnex. It's a big, sprawling story. Numerous essays were published in 1997/98 on a website that I took down (offline) before this millenia. There were also quite a number of articles written for a Canadian trade publication called Canada Stockwatch. Finally, there was a multi-part feature that appeared in The Vancouver Sun newspaper.

Sincere requests have prompted me to look for writings I've not seen in almost a decade! It's cool to find, that, while, not all, quite a lot, of my reportage on YBM Magnex, and assorted tales of white collar crime and rascality, remains cached in cyberspace thanks to the Wayback Machine and archives of various financial forums, newsgroups, and major media publications. To collect this mass of data would require intensive digging and sorting (and/or having an account in some instances). There's no rush, eh!

In the case of YBM one finds years of coverage in newspapers and other media that followed my reportage of '97/'98. The scandal - involving Semion Mogilevich and his network - spawned lawsuits, criminal charges, government regulatory hearings+ - all of which earned extensive, often international, press coverage.

RACKETEERING; SECURITIES FRAUD; WIRE FRAUD; MAIL FRAUD; MONEY LAUNDERING

SEMION MOGILEVICH

SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS AND AN ESCAPE RISK

IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION CONCERNING THIS CASE, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR

LOCAL FBI OFFICE OR THE NEAREST AMERICAN EMBASSY OR CONSULATE.

ROBERT S. MUELLER, III DIRECTOR FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON, D.C. 20535 TELEPHONE: (202) 324-3000

From 1986 until 1995, I wrote, primarily, for print publications around the world - newspapers and magazines including those Canadian journals mentioned in my first post on starting this blog - and others including The Observer (London), The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes and Barron's. Though largely in print, I also worked in broadcast media - researching documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4 in the UK, ABC in Australia, ABC-TV and CNN in the U.S., and, home in Canada, for the CBC's Fifth Estate and CTV's W5 investigative tv programs.

From 1995 to 1998, I created one of the first, and most detailed, investigative journals on the internet. "Back in the day", this was more like posting a book online. My YBM Magnex web-text alone is 50,000 words. Sheesh. (I don't know a total, but it looks like I wrote several hundred thousand words on other entities! All in laborious HTML-tagged text. lol)

Discovering blogging, I'm reminded of the thrill of those days. Only it's better now. Writing online is faster and more fun! It's easier to make things graphically appealing. Web searches are superior. So much data is now online. And, people are connected. What I find especially welcome is that there is now a genuine global community on the web.

In light of this exciting new environment - given time, (yeah, right - more like, given next-to-no-sleep), I may attempt to reconstruct "my back pages". If it'd make for a potentially entertaining cultural study of corruption. Maybe, eh?

First, however, I'd want to find a blog or other format that doesn't run all the words into one long page - or, make the archives less prominent than the present content. Something not-so-linear in contextual applications. A blog or other format with multi-dimensional form. Maybe I just need more time to play with links on blogger. Is Wordpress the answer?

Should anyone, in practice, not theory, want to read several books-worth of writings on the arcana of con-artistry, well, good for you! Unless, though, it can appear on multiple pages, and be enlivened with great images, even sounds ~ it's seems too static. Also, it may be that I need two, separate, blogs. Combining historic "true white collar crime" essays with current analyses of the music world may be too jarring. It's an uneasy juxtaposition - to my mind. Of course, blogs seem to be about anything people choose them to be! Something to sleep on...

Even should it seem like a good idea to be acted upon, it'll be months, likely more, before I'll have any opportunity to do the job right. For now, if you've a taste for stories like YBM Magnex, here's a page that contains a nice mix of items - a few by myself, and a few by other investigative writers. It's the reporter's equivalent of a mixed-tape or CD song-sampler: Russian Mafia

Here, below is the intro that appeared online in 1998 to:

The Magnex Files

- Eternal Russia. The soul of this country is so deep, the beauty it can create so powerful, perhaps unique in the world. But there is always that other dark, brooding, violent and greedy side that is never far from the surface.

Jennifer Gould -- Vodka, Tears, and Lenin's Angel

The strange case of YBM Magnex International, Inc. is the most extraordinary I've ever investigated. A study of YBM is extraordinary in that it so clearly reveals the essential nature of Canada's stock markets.

The articles on this web-page will, hopefully, shine some public light into corners of the most bizarre affair, and the case most graphically illustrative of the nurturing corporate culture, encountered in close to 20 years work, much of it exploring the dark underworld of Canada's junior financial markets.

The saga of YBM Magnex began to receive expansive coverage through such regional U.S. newspapers as The Bucks County Courier Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News in mid-May 1998. The first American print journal to give extensive national coverage to related subject matter was The Village Voice with its publication of Robert Friedman’s May 26 1998 cover story, “The Most Dangerous Mobster in the World”. However, word of the criminal activities of Russia's Semion Mogilevich (and the alleged use of Arigon/YBM as a money laundering conduit by the Russian mafia) was widely accessible long before May 1998 on the internet and in European print journals. As early as 1995/96 newspapers and magazines in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and countries formerly of the Soviet Union, carried details of such activities. By at least 1997 (and likely earlier) various news articles and police intelligence reports were accessible on-line to anyone with an internet connection.

On this, my own, web-site I began publishing analyses of the YBM Magnex scam in March 1998 (following the first stock market exposes of YBM which appeared in Canada Stockwatch). In April 1998 I alerted virtually all major Canadian media outlets to YBM’s Russian mafia links (including Mogilevich and another “godfather”, Sergei Mikhailov). The story gained international attention when dozens of U.S. federal agents raided YBM’s Newtown, Pennsylvania headquarters on May 13 1998. Within days of the raid, the YBM story (and the history of Mogilevich et al in the U.K.) appeared on television news, and in newspapers and magazines around the world - from London’s The Observer and The Financial Times to Hungary’s HVG and The Financial Post and The Globe and Mail in Canada.

In May of 1999, David Baines, a reporter with The Vancouver Sun newspaper, and I received a National Newspaper Award (Canada’s top print journalism award) for our breaking coverage of the YBM-Russian mafia story.

In handing out the award, the NNA noted:

“The Vancouver Sun’s David Baines, working with freelance securities investigator and writer Adrian du Plessis, unraveled the intriguing tale of YBM Magnex International Inc., the Canadian company that operated as a money laundering vehicle for the Russian mafia. The Sun began its early work on the company’s murky business dealings and links to organized crime even as investors were driving its share prices to record levels on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Judges called it a thoroughly comprehensive effort that combined extraordinary initiative, research, analysis and writing.”

There were bells, on a hill, but some never heard them ringing...

Herewith, some reportage of the last scam I exposed in my career as a white collar crime investigator. The context is explained in the next post on this blog:

May 27, 1998 THE NEW YORK TIMES

U.S. Raid Helps Crash Former Canadian High-Flyer

By ANTHONY DePALMA

TORONTO -- A small cinder-block building in a suburban office park outside Philadelphia is an unlikely setting for a complex tale of international intrigue.

But the FBI and other federal agents descended on it earlier this month to haul off boxes of records from the offices of YBM Magnex International, a maker of bicycles and magnets. On the same day, the once high-flying shares of YBM were suspended from trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange, the only place they had been listed.

The events have raised questions about the individuals involved in the company and the financial records it kept, and about the reliability of the Toronto exchange, whose previous problems include the Bre-X gold-mining fiasco.

An official with the U.S. Customs Service, who spoke on condition that his name not be used, said YBM was being investigated on suspicion of money-laundering and having close ties to members of Russian organized crime. The company's primary manufacturing plant and most of its sales are in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics.

Separately, YBM's auditors, Deloitte & Touche, have so far declined to certify its financial statements for 1997. Deloitte has asked YBM to commission an independent review because of irregularities in the company's sales records, concerns about individuals involved in the company and serious questions about whether illegal acts had occurred.

The Financial Post of Toronto, among other newspapers, has cited a 1995 report by the National Crime Squad of Britain that links YBM to Russian organized crime. According to The Financial Post, the British police identified Semyon Mogilevich, one of YBM's original shareholders, as a director of Arigon Co. Ltd., a Channel Islands concern linked to the Russian mob, which was a predecessor of YBM.

The British police report, according to The Post, stated that Canada has been used by Mogilevich "purely to legitimize the criminal organization by the floating on the stock exchange of a corporation which consists of the U.K. and U.S.A. companies whose existing assets and stock have been artificially inflated by the proceeds of crime."

YBM has facilities in Kentucky and in Southport, England. Company officials deny that they have been involved in any wrongdoing. Guy Scala, a vice president, said operations were continuing at the headquarters in Newtown, Pa., and at manufacturing plants in the United States and abroad. He expressed confidence that the company would eventually be allowed to resume trading on the Toronto exchange.

"I wish I had a crystal ball so I could understand what they're all looking for and where this is going," Scala said.

Investors who briefly made YBM one of the hottest stocks on the Toronto market -- and until recently a member of the exchange's leading index of 300 companies -- are uneasy. Particularly worried are the managers of the Canadian mutual funds that hold 40 percent of YBM's 44 million shares, according to Portfolio Analytics Ltd.

"There seem to be a lot of allegations flying around now but very few real facts," said Alastair Dunn, a director of Connor, Clark & Lunn Investment Management of Toronto and Vancouver, which manages mutual funds holding about $48 million (Canadian) in YBM stock. "It's obviously a very embarrassing thing to have happened, not only to ourselves but to a lot of other very fine investment managers."

Although the Ontario Securities Commission ordered a halt in trading for at least 15 days on the day the FBI agents seized the company's records, the commission said its action was unrelated to the possibility of a criminal investigation. Rather, it was YBM's inability to file its 1997 financial statement that forced the trading halt.

Subsequently, the Toronto Stock Exchange decided to remove YBM from the 300-company index.

YBM shares had shot up as high as $20.15 (Canadian) in March. On the day trading was suspended, it was valued just over $14. There is no way to know its true current value, but some Canadian mutual fund managers recently organized a conference call to establish a value for carrying YBM stock in their portfolios while trading is halted. They agreed to lower it to a range of $5 to $7 a share.

Technimetrics, a listing company, indicates that at least one mutual fund in the United States may also hold YBM stock. Invista Capital Management of Des Moines held 53,000 shares at the end of last year. Invista officers declined to respond to phone calls seeking comment.

For Canadian investors who have been burned by other hot stock deals that flamed out, YBM's trouble is an all-too-familiar story. Just over a year ago, thousands of shareholders in Bre-X Minerals of Calgary were wiped out on the disclosure that someone had falsified samples to make its Indonesian gold strike appear to contain huge amounts of gold when in fact there was almost none.

Even before the U.S. agents swooped down on YBM's headquarters May 13, there were signs -- widely overlooked by the market and many stockbrokers -- that the company might not be all that it said it was.

In February, Adrian du Plessis, who publishes a newsletter that investigates stock offerings in Canada, raised questions about the company's history.

After being listed on the Alberta Stock Exchange in 1995, the value of YBM rose rapidly, and in 1996 it was listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. By March its shares had soared to $20, as it reported rising revenue in North America and a total market value of more than $800 million (Canadian). The stock was heavily promoted by Canadian investment brokerage houses, some of which had substantial holdings.

"The fundamentals weren't outlined," du Plessis said in an interview. "It was just a lot of cheerleading." Company audits eventually showed that YBM had vastly inflated sales in North America.

But that was not the most worrisome of du Plessis' findings. He determined that Arigon, the YBM predecessor, had "been identified by the European media and intelligence agencies as conduits for the Russian Mafia."

YBM officials acknowledge that Mogilevich was one of the 31 original shareholders of the company but deny that he ever had any management responsibilities.

FBI officials would not comment on the nature of their investigation of YBM or on the connection of Mogilevich to the company. Nor would the agency confirm any suspicions about Mogilevich's activities, other than to say that "we are aware of him."

YBM also confirmed that the British police had investigated Arigon. which it acknowledged was its predecessor, in 1995 on unspecified charges, but that the case had been dismissed.

In an earlier statement about the U.S. authorities' search, the company said that along with the FBI, agents from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the U.S. Customs Service and the IRS had arrived to retrieve documents.

According to the search warrant, which was issued in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the agents seized bank statements, billing invoices, expense-account receipts, customs documents, employee records, tax returns and many other documents relating to YBM as well as to Arigon and other companies connected to YBM.

***

Dumb Us September 18, 1999

By Alan Abelson, Barron's

New Haven, Connecticut, long has been known as the home of ivy-clad Yale University. Now, we're able to report, it has another, equally impressive claim to fame -- the zeal with which it guards the intellectual integrity of its police force.

Unlike many an unhappy hamlet that has cut its civic cloth to meet the political or social fashion of the day, New Haven remains steadfastly true to principle. More specifically, it refuses to veer from the strict standards it has traditionally employed to determine the fitness of potential peace officers.

Thus, New Haven's finest recently affirmed a longstanding policy of screening out applicants burdened by a high IQ.

In so doing, the estimable guardians of public safety ensured that they would keep unsullied a record stretching back some 35 years of never having solved a major crime.

At the same time, the New Haven P.D. has avoided degrading the unique characteristics that distinguish it from the vast majority of the nation's police departments. It has, for example, no intelligence unit. And virtually alone among the country's law enforcement agencies, it uses only dum-dum bullets.

In truth, in refusing to hire persons of elevated cognitive capacity as police officers, New Haven is in perfect tune with many of America's leading institutions. Indeed, the linchpin of our democratic structure -- our vaunted system of checks and balances -- has been preserved only because the citizenry has been so vigilant in keeping the executive, legislative and judicial bodies equally free of superior
intelligence.

Can you imagine, for instance, the chaos that would ensue had we a bright President and the usual dim Congress? Or if the Supreme Court were adorned with gray matter as well as black robes?

Happily, to judge by the front-runners for next year's Presidential election, the Republic is in no imminent danger of its leadership emerging from the slough of mental mediocrity. So we can all relax, sit back and enjoy another thrilling battle of wits between unarmed opponents.

Nor, if Jesse Ventura has his way, will the Reform Party offer an alternative. If anything, its choice could significantly lower the average of the candidates' acuity, since Mr. Ventura is trumpeting Donald Trump as the party's standard-bearer.

Critical to Mr. Trump's acceptance of their nomination is that the Reformers agree to his demand that the party platform be 135 stories high and display his name in five-story letters. Besides a lifetime fruitfully spent speculating in real estate and operating gambling casinos, Mr. Trump is renowned as an author who has never read a book.

Although we think it's patently unfair to conclude that "smart banker" is an oxymoron, one is compelled by an extensive file of evidence --added to most recently by Republic New York and the Bank of New York -- to admit that banking is a peculiarly attractive field to the intellectually challenged, perhaps because they often achieve positions of eminence in it. (The same can be said of various other of our bulwark institutions -- journalism, for one; economics, for another.)

Republic was seemingly an unwitting and certainly witless accomplice of Martin A. Armstrong and his investment advisory firm, Princeton Economics International, in allegedly bilking scores of Japanese corporations out of nearly a billion dollars. The victims were ensnared by a rather transparent old-fashioned Ponzi scheme, with the lure taking the form of guarantees of handsome returns on fixed-income instruments (apparently not all Japanese executives are eligible for membership in Mensa).

According to The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Armstrong is one of the two scheduled keynote speakers at the Canadian Society of Technical Analysts conference next month. The Journal failed to identify the other keynote speaker, but rumor has it he's Martin Frankel (who may encounter trouble booking air passage from Germany).

The president of the society says he still hopes Mr. Armstrong can fill the engagement because of his "wealth of knowledge" (presumably of Ponzi schemes).

Since technical analysts of whatever nationality use a vocabulary based exclusively on the entrails of animals, their IQs do not lend themselves to any of the standard measures of intelligence. So, grudgingly, we'll give the Canadian variety of this strange species a pass.

However, no such barrier exists to determining the intellectual level of Canadian securities regulators, most notably those overseeing the Toronto Stock Exchange, as Barron's West Coast editor Jaye Scholl, who has done some great pieces on sleazy operators up north, reminds us.

Noting that the notorious Russian financial manipulator Semion Mogilevitch has recently come under suspicion for his involvement in the Bank of New York money-laundering scandal, Jaye points out that Adrian du Plessis, a muckraking Canadian financial journalist, co-authored a pair of revealing articles on Mogilevitch's machinations early last year. In particular, he exposed the seamy history of Mogilevitch-controlled YBM Magnex, a company based in a suburb of Philadelphia but whose shares were traded in Toronto.

Among other things, Adrian's articles linked two of YBM's Canadian directors to previous stock swindles and questioned how mutual funds, analysts and especially regulators could ignore not only the Mogilevitch connection but also a Deloitte Touche audit questioning whether YBM's U.S. sales were real.

Even though Great Britain had banned Mogilevitch from the country because he had allegedly laundered millions of dollars from illicit activities, including such nice stuff as prostitution, drug smuggling, arms sales, extortion and murder, in 1996 the Toronto Stock Exchange cheerfully granted his company a listing.

The damning information was there for the taking for anyone with an Internet connection and a little time to spare. But obviously, the folks at the Toronto Exchange aren't plugged in. Ah well, if they ever decide to emigrate, they seem to have the necessary qualification for a job with the New Haven police.

Up & Down Wall Street, Part 2

Lord Stanley's Mug

There'll be no post-season for Canuckle-heads this year. After a loss last night to the Sharks of San Jose, the Canucks are now mathematically eliminated from contention for the above-pictured prize ~ The Stanley Cup. May the best team win!

"I don't believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear." ~ Woody Allen