Here is some interesting info on Cumo...
http://www.alamanceind.com/newfol~2/nation_31.html
At age 30, Andrew Cuomo was a dealmaker in the go-go days of the savings-and-loan industry in the late 1980s - and by the time you finish reading this article, it will be abundantly clear why the official White House news release when Cuomo was appointed never mentions his days as a precocious young bankster.
In 1987, Andrew Cuomo was a minor investor in an attempted takeover of Oceanmark Savings - an S&L in North Miami Beach. His role in the incident has spawned several lawsuits - at least one of which is still pending in Dec. 1999. Andrew Cuomo and New York developer Sheldon Goldstein - who had been fundraising for both Cuomo's governor father and Sen. Alfonse D'Amato - tried to do a hostile takeover of Oceanmark from the family that founded it, the Fensters.
The Fenster family sued Cuomo and those in his group, alleging that they were trying to illegally loot the assets of Oceanmark. Federal regulators ordered Cuomo and those associated with him to give up their stock in the S&L to the Fenster family. However, the Office of Thrift Supervision - the federal agency supervising S&Ls- refused to let the Fenster family see the exact order.
On July 9, 1999, Oceanmark was taken over by federal regulators in the first failure of an S&L in three years - on the basis that the S&L had a negative net worth. In Sept. 1998, members of the Fenster family sued Cuomo, other non-Fenster stockholders in Oceanmark, and the federal Office of Thrift Supervision - alleging that the feds had failed to force Cuomo to comply with that order to forfeit his stock in Oceanmark.
Other lawsuits by the Fenster family against Cuomo date literally to the start of his involvement with Oceanmark in 1987. And Cuomo's Oceanmark scandals literally trace themselves to his days as a young lawyer with a prestige firm.
Ordinarily, lawyers exercise a lot of care as to who they become partners with - both because partners in a law firm can be sued for any malpractice by just one of them in any matter amounting to the practice of law, and because partnership with a "bad apple" invites tax audits. This concern is especially severe among the - many - young lawyers with political aspirations, as Andrew Cuomo surely was from the start.
So what did Andrew Cuomo's choices of who to associate himself with when seeking work - and ultimately partnership - at a law firm say about Cuomo? He sought and got partnership at Blutrich, Falcone, and Miller; as with the many young lawyers with political aspirations in law school, his led him straight to a firm heavily connected to political activity.
But Blutrich, Falcone, and Miller was a troubled firm. One of its founding partners, Michael Blutrich, age 49, is now serving 25 years in federal prison for 1998 racketeering charges - from a case strikingly similar to the savings-and-loan debacle Andrew Cuomo is now being sued in, also in Florida.
Blutrich had tried to do a hostile takeover of the National Heritage Life Insurance Company with its own assets in a scheme beginning in 1990. In all, Blutrich and his cronies, some from his law firm - including fellow partner Lucille Falcone, looted National Heritage Life Insurance of over $24 million. The insurer - which had tens of thousands of elderly policyholders - collapsed in 1994.
Some of the stolen National Heritage Life money was used by Andrew Cuomo and Blutrich to finance a similar hostile-takeover scheme at Oceanmark Savings & Loan - the savings-and-loan debacle Cuomo is now being sued in.
Before the insurer collapsed, Blutrich used a $300,000 "loan" from it to start a high-class strip joint in Manhattan. One significant difference between Blutrich's crimes and those Cuomo is now accused of in a civil case is that - according to court records - Blutrich improperly used his law firm's escrow account money to facilitate his scam.
But even before that 1998 felony conviction of Blutrich's, what young lawyer with political aspirations would want anything to do with him - if he had any sense? Blutrich already was known as a pedophile - having plead guilty in 1994 to reduced charges after taking a teenage boy who played on a basketball team he coached at their YMHA to that strip joint Blutrich co-owned and then having sex with him, which was just the tip of the iceberg of a multi-year year investigation that got him charged with sexual assault on a minor. He also has kiddie-porn-related guilty pleas as a matter of public record.
Only the day before taking office as HUD Secretary - in Jan. 1997 - does documentable proof of Cuomo's business partnerships with Blutrich end. Until then, Blutrich was mailing Cuomo checks - addressed to him at HUD headquarters - for his share of a tax shelter partnership called L&M Associates whose three general partners where Cuomo, Blutrich, and Falcone.
Andrew Cuomo likes styling himself as a homeless advocate and now as a HUD secretary suing gunmakers - but it is time to tell the truth.
-30-
If you want me to delete this and start a new thread with it, just let me know.
Joe
