Congrats to FBI on AARON ZAHN fraud conviction. Under one-party rule, corruption festers. Fortunately, Jacksonville voters elected Mayor Donna Deegan, a Democrat, ending Mayor LEONARD CURRY's corrupt reign of error. Here in St. Johns County , one-party rule continues. What's next? From Florida Politics:
FBI frames Aaron Zahn conviction as matter of ‘national security’'
A.G. Gancarski, Florida Politics, July 31, 2024
"The FBI will not tolerate those who seek to deceive American citizens.'
As Jacksonville appears to move on from the plot to sell its municipally owned utility, a spokesperson for the FBI says there was a lot at stake in that scenario and similar cases, which led to sentencing for former JEACEO Aaron Zahn.
“Fraud and corruption pose a fundamental threat to our national security and our way of life, and the FBI will not tolerate those who seek to deceive American citizens,” said Special Agent in Charge Kristin Rehler of the FBI Jacksonville Field Office.
“As a taxpayer, you are entitled to decisions based on the public’s best interest, and we take very seriously our responsibility to investigate and aggressively pursue individuals who attempt to defraud publicly funded institutions in a selfish effort to line their own pockets.”
Zahn, the architect of one of the most brazen grifts in Jacksonville history, got four years in federal prison for conspiring to steal municipal funds and for wire fraud, after a guilty verdict in a jury trial that ended in March.
He advocated privatizing or selling the utility, and contingent on that being successful, JEA employees would have been in line for a bonus scheme.
The so-called “performance unit plan” would have allowed people with the money to do so opportunities to buy shares of the public utility and profit personally off the sale. Per the Middle District of Florida, it “appeared to pay reasonable bonuses to PUP unit holders if JEA hit certain performance metrics. In reality, the PUP had hidden aspects designed to pay Zahn and other JEA executives lavish bonuses based on a calculation tethered to a sale of the municipal utility.”
“Trial evidence showed that the 100,000 PUP units were designed to increase in value from $10 to upwards of $11,500, for a potential bonus pool of $315,000,000, which would have been funded from the sale or privatization of JEA. Zahn expected to personally benefit from the PUP if JEA was sold in the amount of approximately $40 million, and Zahn expected other high level JEA executives to make approximately $10 million,” the Middle District added.
A.G. Gancarski
A.G. Gancarski has been the Northeast Florida correspondent for Florida Politics since 2014. He writes for the New York Post and National Review also, with previous work in the American Conservative and Washington Times and a 15+ year run as a columnist in Folio Weekly. He can be reached at AG@FloridaPolitics.com or on Twitter: @AGGancarski
1 comment:
Yeah they'd portray any crime as a threat to national security to justify violation of all sorts of rights constitutional and otherwise. Spying and setting people up is framed as "investigation" and systemic human rights abuses in the USA justified and rationalized as "it's jail, it's not supposed to be fun." Homicide or suicide every 10 days on average in Florida DOC alone can't be rationalized with "what you want us to do, bake them a cake." Government on all levels in the USA is sorry as shit. It's a bad example of the positive fruits of democracy, and the upper classes have the final say no matter how many others vote otherwise or say things should be different. At the end of the day, good government costs money and they don't want to pay another dime.
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