Four Years Ago Today a Public Records Request was Submitted for the City of Beaumont’s General Ledger & Bank Statements.
Happy Anniversary Beaumont
Four Years Ago Today a Public Records Request was Submitted for the General Ledger & Bank Statements.
Judy Bingham first contacted me after reading an article on RDA that I published State-Wide. It was right after the 2012 Election in which Nancy Gall was voted out and Brenda Knight was voted onto the Beaumont City Council.
The other Members of ‘Beaumont Citizens for Responsible Growth’ had resigned after Urban Logic Consultants sued the Organization for $3 Million in order to stop them from publishing the City’s illegal activity on ‘beaumontgate.org.
The crooks were a big crowd and they were all against Judy Bingham and for the most part Judy Bingham stood alone.
Judy first emailed me regarding my RDA article and started telling me about RDA abuse in Beaumont. My response to Judy was: “Your city doesn’t have any RDA Bonds – they’re all Mello Roos.”
After emailing back and forth for about a week I told Judy to submit a public Records’ Request for the General Ledger and Bank statements and I’ll take a look at the information. We did a PRR for the documents from July 1, 2010 to Present because 2010 was the year the State closed down RDA.
I’ll never forget the date we pulled the General Ledger and neither will former Chief of Police Coe; November 18, 2012 was the same day that Coe took a $25,000 ‘loan’ from the City.
The Beaumont General Ledger was printed in 6-point print and the paperwork was over 3 feet tall. I’m sure Bill Aylward thought I’d never read, but I read it twice before I went to bed that night.
And there it was – listed right there on the general ledger; personal loans to Cops and Councilmen, Beaumont Electric operating their company out of the City, ghost accounts, Stacy Love’s Brother’s shooting range equipment, plugged numbers, and millions of dollars was being paid to Urban Logic Consultants.
Something was horribly wrong.
Judy also sent a lot of other documents about Urban Logic, but I pushed all of those aside. When I asked Judy about Urban Logic she got mad at me and asked: “Didn’t you read any of the documents that I gave you?”
And I said “No. I’m an Independent Auditor. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks – i have to find the information in the Books.”
I was living in San Diego and Urban Logic’s website listed a Temecula address, so I drove to the Urban Logic Office and found an empty building.
I called the phone number listed on Urban Logic’s website and the phone was answered with “Sewer Plant”.
Something was horribly wrong.
Rob had already narrowed in on the bond scam and was trying to inform Beaumont Citizens on the Patch writing under the pseudo “Ken’s Corner”. When I started posting Audits on the Patch Rob contacted me and forced me to focus on the bonds. And Rob was right – the bond scam was the basis of all the other corruption.
After Auditing for 4 months I had enough evidence to file Complaints with Local, State, and Federal Regulatory Agencies, which resulted in the State Controller and SEC Investigations and the Attorney General’s Office intervention.
Four years after submitting a public records request for the City’s bank statements and general ledger the State and Feds are Investigating, the City is frozen out of the bond industry, every old councilman has been removed from office, and the Expendable Seven are looking at spending the rest of their lives in prison.
Four years after exposing a private sector corruption scam operating in a government agency all five Councilmen unanimously Approve hiring the Associates of the Expendable Seven, continue to trade bond money for mitigation fees, refuse to hire honest staff or to properly set the city, and are funneling money to lawyers and consultants at an even faster pace.
Four years after exposing public corruption and not one person has been fired or held accountable by the Citizens of Beaumont.
Happy Anniversary Beaumont. You’ve got a lot to be ashamed of and very little to be proud of.