#29Leaks

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

#20yrsago Kalashnikov: US gov’t is pirating my AK-47 design https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/26/world/who-s-a-pirate-russia-points-back-at-the-us.html

#20yrsago Real ships guerrilla DRM for the iPod https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/26/business/media-realnetworks-plans-to-sell-songs-to-be-played-on-ipod.html

#20yrsago 30,000 anti-Induce Act letters sent to Congress https://web.archive.org/web/20040723084653/https://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=2918

#10yrsago Journalist believes his phone was hacked by spooks at HOPE X, will upload image for forensics https://thecryptosphere.com/2014/07/23/report-from-hope-x-surveillance-snowden-stratfor-and-surprises/

#10yrsago What’s original? Cloning games versus making games https://www.raphkoster.com/2014/07/23/when-is-a-clone/

#10yrsago Great video explainer: Vint Cerf on ICANN and NTIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd3dH90tdhk

#5yrsago Trade war: Hasbro is shifting manufacturing to Vietnam and India, drawing down production in China https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/world-s-top-toymaker-joins-companies-leaving-china-s-factories

#5yrsago #Rickyrenuncia: Bowing to popular pressure, Puerto Rican governor Ricardo Rossello has resigned https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/puerto-rico-lawmakers-push-to-impeach-crisis-beset-governor

#5yrsago #29leaks: someone leaked 15 years’ worth of data from London’s most notorious shell-company factory https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/24/this-london-firm-helps-the-wealthy-hide-assets-or-steal-them-luckily-we-have-15-years-of-their-client-communications/

#5yrsago E-scooter companies are desperate for repo men to stop impounding their vehicles https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/24/20696405/dockless-scooters-share-repo-men-repossessor-lawsuit-tow-yard-lime-bird-lyft-uber-razor

#5yrsago Adblocking: How about nah? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

#5yrsago Countries with higher levels of unionization have lower per-capita carbon footprints https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331445998_Is_Labor_Green

#5yrsago Analyzing 800 daily tweets that say “Today was the day that Donald Trump became president” https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1154098035183329280

[loraxbbx]

Interview with Rod Webber about Barrett Brown

Start of DM history with Rob Webber:

I'm not looking for a written piece. I make documentaries-- But, if there was something marketable, we are able to bring people on as producers.

Apr 6, 2022, 11:48 AM

You accepted the request

You should do a documentary about Sylvia Mann. I liked her back when she was doing Laurie Love prison support work. Now she’s some kind of unpaid crisis communicator for a con artist. Interesting arc, that one.

Apr 6, 2022, 12:40 PM

How do you know Sylvia? We haven't dated for years.

Admittedly, things got weird with Mike-- but that was ages ago.

British student fights extradition to US for allegedly hacking the FBI and Nasa

I met her at one of Laurie's court dates. When I was covering that case for the Guardian.

*Lauri Oh-- I was thinking Sylvia Mann from Sylvie and the Fiver Dollar Hats, from the anti-folk scene

Apr 6, 2022, 1:12 PM

The Sylvia you're talking about has something to do with Barrett Brown I'm guessing? We had him in our film-- but frankly, I can't follow along with his bullshit.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:13 PM You wouldn't believe-- we were trying to get teh final print of the film out, but Barrett all the way along was dragging his feet and just couldnt pull himself together to sign the release

Apr 6, 2022, 1:15 PM

Something to do, yeah. Agreed on not being able to follow along with his bullshit. Sylvia is the person he alternately calls "girlfriend" or "fiancee" nowadays, depending on what mood strikes him.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:15 PM

Ah

Well-- more headaches than he's worth

Apr 6, 2022, 1:15 PM I am not surprised that Barrett is less than productive to work with. I came in to DDoSecrets at the tail end of a research project he was supposed to lead, but instead he nearly destroyed.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:16 PM

oh shit! I just figured it out!

That pitch was about him! lololol

Too fucking funny!!

OMG

Get the fuck out

I dont really know about DDOS We just kinda troll politicians for lols

But, Im not surprised

What a fucktard

Apr 6, 2022, 1:18 PM

We publish datasets. The dataset that Barrett wrote an announcement text for, was called #29 Leaks.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:18 PM

ok

Apr 6, 2022, 1:18 PM

It concerned a company formation agency in London that was facilitating money laundering.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:18 PM ok

Apr 6, 2022, 1:19 PM

There was an embargo period, involving investigative journalists, and Barrett fashioned himself as a participant in that embargo, but he didn't do any work.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:19 PM

gotcha

Apr 6, 2022, 1:19 PM

Now he thinks that, because we don't want to work with him anymore, we are probably a complex web of intelligence operatives and FBI informants, part of the massive conspiracy to get him extradited back to the US.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:20 PM

wow

crazy

Apr 6, 2022, 1:21 PM

We just think he's not worth our time and we'd rather focus on publishing more datasets with more journalists who research datasets.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:21 PM

So fucking stupid that she's with him

Fuckign creep

Well, I hope she is safe

Apr 6, 2022, 1:23 PM

Everybody has their own path. Yeah, I hope she gets out relatively unscathed.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:24 PM

I'm on his page, and there's all this shit about rape wtf

I'm so fucking confused

Wish I never had him in the movie

What the fuck is this shit

Sylvia is ayfrogs?

*gayfrogs

👍

1

Apr 6, 2022, 1:26 PM

I also heard about the rape allegations only recently. Had I known in 2019, I would have taken more steps to distance the publishing collective from Barrett ahead of publishing the #29 Leaks data.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:26 PM

For sure

But I still don't get it.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:27 PM

Which part?

Apr 6, 2022, 1:28 PM

Your pitch sounded like Barrett once I put 2 and 2 together

What was all that?

Like, hes using sylvia?

to get a visa

and owes a shitton of money to someone

Apr 6, 2022, 1:28 PM

Yeah. The marriage to the fiancee is a Plan b) for a UK visa, if the Plan A) Prove Government Conspiracy to Extradite Me doesn't pan out.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:29 PM

taxes i think u said

ok-- im not crazy-- the pitch was about that

what a tool

Apr 6, 2022, 1:29 PM

The taxes angle: as a part of his original plea agreement, he agreed to pay this company large restitution. He has said, since leaving the US, that he has no intentions to pay that amount that he agreed to pay in his plea agreement.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:30 PM

yeah-- well, thats what you get for dumpster diving

Apr 6, 2022, 1:30 PM

The IRS doesn't forget. His long term plan must be to renounce US citizenship and apply for citizenship in whatever country he ends up in.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:30 PM

But i guess they have nothing to hold him on?

Apr 6, 2022, 1:30 PM

Who's they?

Apr 6, 2022, 1:31 PM

I dont know-- cops?

I dont know who hes pissed off

i guess theyre bobbies in england

Or I guess the US for extraditing

however that works

Apr 6, 2022, 1:32 PM

He thinks there's a sealed indictment in the US. No idea what he thinks that sealed indictment is for.

In the UK he was ticketed for disturbing the peace, basically.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:33 PM

Right-- but like Assange if he raped someone -- the UK would hold him-- so the UK has no proof?

he probably leaked some shit

thats what they do

right?

thats why they would indict

Apr 6, 2022, 1:34 PM

I don't think he's being charged for the sexual assault/s I've heard about, no.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:34 PM

ok-- so its hacking i guess

Apr 6, 2022, 1:35 PM

He grooms people from the activist community who have a distrust of cops and prosecutors.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:35 PM

or drugs

but they would arrest him if he was grooming

you cant just fucck kids

wgat a pig

what

Apr 6, 2022, 1:36 PM

I don't think he's been charged for anything in the US. I think he's doing tax avoidance to avoid paying back the hundreds of thousands of dollars he owes for his plea agreement.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:36 PM

yeah-- but wtf

grooming?

fuck that

Apr 6, 2022, 1:36 PM

Not the QAnon type of grooming.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:36 PM

im more worried about whoever hes around

what?

if he's diddling kids-- they need to arrest his ass

Apr 6, 2022, 1:37 PM

The generic grooming, of impressing upon young people a set of untrue facts that lead them to trust him and enter romantic relationships with him. I'm not talking about kid grooming or underage grooming, just general grooming.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:38 PM

oh fewww

i was about to get on a plane and beat his ass

Apr 6, 2022, 1:38 PM

There is a significant age difference between him and Sylvia, but she's not underage.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:38 PM

how much

Apr 6, 2022, 1:39 PM

I don't know for sure, I'd guess about 15 years.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:39 PM

he must be 40?

so, she's 25?

Its not great

But at least hes not raping

How did all that Q stuff get started anyhow

Apr 6, 2022, 1:41 PM

No idea.

Apr 6, 2022, 1:42 PM

ok-- well what a fucktard

i gotta actually get back to work

but if you have any thing that would be a good true crime story

my distro is looking

fucking prick

Apr 6, 2022, 1:42 PM

I'll keep that in mind. I mostly focus on writing about hackers, these days, and the best ones stay anonymous, so there is not much to shoot.

(footage wise)

Apr 6, 2022, 1:47 PM

[crystaluki]

Massive Document Leak Reveals Global Network of Money Laundering and Fraud

A family-owned company in Britain is operating a global network of businesses hiding money for fraudsters, criminals, and ultra-rich ass****, according to a massive treasure trove of data leaked to media. (THAT’S RIGHT. WE GOTTA ANOTHER LEAK FOLKS!)

The #29Leaks contain 15 years of documents, data, and phone records from the London-based company/fraud mill Formations House. (Don’t you love it when criminals meticulously document their crimes?) 

Journalists first got their grubby little muckrakers on the leaks back in July. But it’s taken this long to even make a dent in the more than 100GB of data. The first articles on the leaks went live at midnight last night (*lightning crash, werewolf howl, sound of journalist vaping*) and detailed more than $300 million of fraud linked to Formations House.

According to the leak, this adorable little family-run business operates as a one-stop-shop for fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion (which is very convenient if you’re into that sort of thing).

The company’s illustrious clients included such prestigious figures as an African dictator, a fake Gambian bank, a Hell’s Angels boss, the Italian mob, and no this is not the setup to a joke.

And that’s only the tip of the griftberg. Over the years, Formation House has churned out more than 400,000 companies for grifters, fraudsters, and organised criminals around the globe.

"In only a matter of days, a client could purchase offshore companies bundled into packages touting minimal compliance requirements, tax-free operations, and anonymity for directors and shareholders,” said Burkhart Pursuance Project Outreach Director Annalise Burkhart, who led the global collective of journalists in the investigation.

Basically, if you have a fun and very illegal racket going on, Formations House wants in. (Hey, if you need to create a shadow corporation or autonomous financial region in your backyard, I would definitely give ‘em a call. They are still open for business.)

Oh yeah, I almost forgot the best part. Now we now know exactly how Iran has been sidestepping U.S. sanctions to sell its oil.  

According to the #29Leaks (we need a better name for this. its fine but it’s no “Panama Papers,” that’s for sure), Iran’s national oil company NICO hopscotches across the globe from tax-haven to tax-haven.

With the help of its Swiss partner-firm, Naftiran Intertrade Co (Sàrl), NICO has repeatedly switched homes for more than a decade, attempting to circumvent international sanctions aimed at halting Iran’s development of nuclear weapons (because the last thing we need is more assholes with nukes).

The documents pull back the curtain on a network of accountants and lawyers (most of whom were from Pakistan but operating under hilariously British fakes names) who helped Iranian oil interests set up tax havens and sell their oily wares secretly.

From this leak, we can see how fun, regulatory loopholes can leave the global financial system vulnerable to fraud, money laundering, corruption, and general tomfoolery.

The top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Oregon’s Ron Wyden, went as far as to call for an end to anonymous shell companies in a statement on the Formations House leak:

“Entities are eager to exploit the secrecy afforded by anonymous shell companies to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran, undermining our national security,” said Wyden.

“Ending anonymous shell companies would make it easier for law enforcement to ‘follow the money’ when investigating complex financial crimes like sanctions evasion.”

Reporters from more than 20 outlets in 18 countries have been slowly trawling through the documents for notable stories. But they’ve barely scratched the surface yet.

We’ll likely be hearing more from the #29leaks in the coming months. I’ve got a gentlemen’s bet with myself that at least one major celebrity, political leader, and a children’s entertainer is in there. (If I’m right, y’all can buy me dinner.)

[hannibal-td]

#29leaks 

[beyondenigma]

/u/barrett_brown: "It is my cheerful duty to announce the acquisition of around 85 gigabytes of leaked emails, phone calls, faxes, and other documents originating from the London-based tax shelter firm Formations House..." - @BarrettBrown_ #29Leaks

Want To Read Fascinating Articles On The Occult, Esotericism, And Spirituality? Then Click This Link To Visit BEYOND ENIGMA!

[political-fluffle]

The story of how Iran seeks to evade sanctions is a tale of fake Westernized names, offshore tax havens, an arrest in Miami, and — finally — a document leak that fully illuminated the enterprise.

Take the arrest of an Iranian-born Turkish citizen during a jaunt to Disney World. Factor in the irrepressible Rudy Giuliani, who briefly served as the arrested man’s lawyer. Add a dash of Turkey’s authoritarian leader, Recep Erdogan, a favorite of President Donald Trump. Mix in a massive leak of more than a million documents from a British offshore shell company provider. (…)

The glimpse comes from a cache of leaked documents from a British offshore provider, Formations House. The massive data set of communications, incorporation certificates and other documents was leaked to journalists, and after months of collaboration, news organizations across the globe are collectively publishing stories starting this week under the title #29Leaks.

The name is a nod to the address of Formations House at 29 Harley Street, an upscale neighborhood in London. Similar to the 2016 Panama Papers, the leak of documents again shows that when the veil of secrecy surrounding offshore services is pierced, the light that shines in is often revealing.

The documents were given to journalists by the anti-secrecy group Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoS. It did not describe how it obtained the documents, and has said it will make them public after investigative journalists have finished their review. (…)

Included in the voluminous Formations House documents is a register of shareholders in an offshore company called Naftiran Intertrade Company Ltd, or NICO. This list of shareholders was attached to an email from December 2014, declaring the state-owned National Iranian Oil Company as theoverarching shareholder and having complete control over NICO. Also attached was a register of NICO directors listing five Iranian nationals.

NICO, the gasoline import arm of the state oil company, came to renewed international attention in March 2016 after the arrest at Miami International Airport of Reza Zarrab. He flew to Florida to visit Disney World and on that trip was charged with conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions through an elaborate gold-for-gas scheme between Turkey and Iran, and using global banks to process transactions on behalf of Iran.

Prosecutors contend that Zarrab and a co-defendant, Mehmet Hakan Atila, who was a director at Turkey’s Halkbank, schemed to help Iran skirt U.S. sanctions by trading Turkish gold for oil and natural gas. Using companies across the globe, they facilitated $20 billion worth of transactions.

“High-ranking government officials in Iran and Turkey participated in and protected this scheme,” the Justice Department in Oct. 15, 2019. statement announcing charges against Halkbank, which incriminated Zarrab. “Some officials received bribes worth tens of millions of dollars paid from the proceeds of the scheme ... and to help shield the scheme from the scrutiny of U.S. regulators.”

Zarrab pleaded guilty in October 2017 and turned against Atilla, who was convicted on Jan. 3, 2018, and after serving a total 32 months behind bars was returned to Turkey and has since become the head of the Istanbul stock exchange.

Shortly after his arrest, Zarrab, who is married to a Turkish pop star and has citizenship in Iran as well as Turkey, implicated Turkish President Recep Erdogan as having approved the operation. Zarrab was represented briefly by Rudolph Giuliani, who has since become President Trump’s personal attorney. Zarrab was also a focus of Special Counsel Robert Mueller III’s prosecution of Trump adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn for lying under oath the FBI. Mueller looked at Flynn’s lobbying for Turkey. (…)

NICO also appeared in the April 2016 Panama Papers, the massive leak of documents from offshore legal services firm Mossack Fonseca, a now-defunct Panamanian law firm and corporate services provider. Documents in the Panama Papers show the firm actually resigned from some of Iran’s oil-related shell companies as early as 2010 ⁠— before global sanctions took effect in 2012 ⁠— and the Formations House documents suggest a hand-off of sorts. (...)

[webrm]

The latest The webrm Daily! https://t.co/JtX6M0RYaG #29leaks #arubait

The latest The webrm Daily! https://t.co/JtX6M0RYaG #29leaks #arubait

— Marco Raimondi (@mraimondi3) December 7, 2019

from Twitter https://twitter.com/mraimondi3 December 07, 2019 at 10:55PM via IFTTT

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#29leaks: someone leaked 15 years' worth of data from London's most notorious shell-company factory

Formations House is a London "financial services" firm that has been implicated in some of the world's most notorious money-laundering and fraud schemes, a company that has formed more than 400,000 companies, trusts and partnerships for its customers, many of them prefabricated, anonymous "shelf companies" that have been used to disguise the parties behind breathtaking frauds, some perpetrated by corrupt heads of state.

Counterpunch is in receipt of 15 years' worth of data from Formations House (courtesy of the activist group Distributed Denial of Secrets), totalling 85gb (mailboxes of "specific employees of interest"; SQL table for every email received by the firm; faxes; phone messages; and miscellanea). They've formed a coalition with other news orgs, including Propublica, CNN, The Daily Beast, and the Columbia Review of Journalism, to sort through the leaks and report out the stories they find there. They've also offered to search their database on behalf of nonaffiliated journalists and anti-corruption officials who want a peek.

It's hard to overstate how notorious and suspicious the firm is: for one thing, one of its directors was convicted of using an anonymous Formations House shell company to launder proceeds from a Spanish Prisoner fraud (!!). Formations House companies were also the vehicle of choice for corrupt Ukrainian dictator Viktor Yanukovych, who used them in many ways, including to assume ownership of vast state assets that he'd stolen.

Counterpunch hopes that their reporting will end up with the return of vast sums stolen from poor nations. They writes, "If even one of the '400,000 companies, partnerships, and trusts' Formations notes having set up for its clients since the turn of the century are discovered to serve a similar function, and the stolen funds returned to the developing the nation that can scarce afford to have lost them, this project will have served its purpose."

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/25/formations-house.html