Stratesec, formerly known as Securacom and Burns and Roe Securacom, was a small security company founded in either 1985 in Chantilly or in 1987 in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. The company went public on October 2, 1997 on the American Stock Exchange AMEX, now NYSE MKT.
At IPO in 1997, Securacom listed among its clients Washington Dulles International Airport, Hewlett-Packard, EDS, United Airlines, Gillette, MCI, the World Trade Center, and other facilities.
Marvin Bush, brother of president George W. Bush, served on the board of directors from 1993- 2000.
The company was delisted from the AMEX in July 2002 due to inability to make financing payments to ES Bankest, its primary shareholder, and other financial problems. ES Bankest was to collapse in scandal.
At one time the company had an office in Moscow, Russia and a contract in Saudi Arabia. It was also based out of a building in the Watergate Complex. This building contained, amongst others, the Iraqi military attache, the Embassy of Yemen and the Embassy of Libya. Stratesec was located in a a suite payed for by the Saudi Embassy (who were located next to the Watergate complex). At least one man listed as a resident of the building online, shared a Virginia address with terrorist facilitator Osama Basnan.
The Stratesec board of directors comingled with an aviation company based at Wiley Post Airport in Bethany, Oklahoma. There is evidence Atta and other terrorists visited that airport. Zacarious Moussaoui's flight instructor took over the hanger after that company, Aviation General, moved out..
Description[]
Stratesec Incorporated provides technology-based security solutions for medium and large commercial and government facilities. The company services include consulting and planning, engineering and design, systems integration, and maintenance and technical support. The solutions provided by the company include integrated security systems, comprising a command center managing one or more subsystems and components, primarily access control systems, intrusion detection systems, closed circuit television systems, critical condition monitoring systems, and fire detection systems. Access control systems are designed to exclude unauthorized personnel from specified areas, and provide access control that is card-activated. Intrusion detection systems incorporate ultrasonic, infrared, microwave, and other sensors to detect unauthorized door and window openings, glass breakage, vibration, motion and noise, and other peripheral equipment. Closed circuit television systems monitor and record entry and exit activity, and provide surveillance of designated areas. The company's critical condition monitoring systems provide supervision of various systems and processes, such as sprinkler systems, heating and refrigeration systems, power levels, water levels, and general manufacturing processes. The company’s customers include airports, hospitals, prisons, corporations, utilities, universities, and government facilities. The company major competitors are ADT, Siemens, and Pinkerton. The company was incorporated in 1985 and is based in Chantilly, Virginia.
Directors[]
1997:
WIRT D. WALKER, III has served as a director of the Company since 1987, and as Chairman since 1992. Mr. Walker is a director and the Managing Director of KuwAm, a private investment firm founded in 1982. He has also served as Chairman of Commander Aircraft Company and Advanced Laser Graphics, Inc. since 1991.
RONALD C. THOMAS has served as President, Chief Executive Officer and director since 1992. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Thomas was employed for 16 years by ADT Security Systems Inc., a subsidiary of ADT Ltd., the world's largest electronic security protection company. During his tenure at ADT, he held a variety of management positions involving systems engineering and design, project planning and marketing and business unit management, and was Vice President, Integrated Systems from 1988 to 1992. Mr. Thomas is Chairman of the Standing Committee on Physical Security of the American Society for Industrial Security ("ASIS"), a member of the Board of Directors of the Closed Circuit Television Manufacturers Association, a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers ("IEEE"), a member of the National Society of Professional Engineers and a member of the National Fire Protection Association ("NFPA"). He is a past member of the Nuclear Standards Subcommittee of the IEEE, the Proprietary Fire Systems Subcommittee of NFPA and the Architect/Engineer Subcommittee of ASIS.
LARRY M. WEAVER has served as Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer since June 1996. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Weaver was employed by The Conduit and Foundation Corporation, most recently as its Chief Financial Officer from July 1995 to June 1996. Previously, Mr. Weaver was employed, from 1988 to 1995, as Group Vice President of Finance at William Bowman Associates, Inc., a residential real estate site development company, and from 1980 to 1988, as Partner and Finance Manager at Skelly and Loy, an energy and environmental consulting and engineering firm. Mr. Weaver has also served as Assistant Controller at Buell Division of Envirotech and was a Senior Accountant at Price Waterhouse.
CHARLES C. SANDER has served as Senior Vice President for the Mid-Atlantic Region since 1993. From 1988 to 1992 Mr. Sander was president of his own aviation consulting firm which he sold to Ogden Services Corporation in 1992. From 1992 to 1993 Mr. Sander was employed as President of the Technical and Maintenance Services Division of Ogden. Prior to starting his own company, Mr. Sander had been employed since 1972 by Baltimore/Washington International Airport, where he served in a variety of positions, most recently as Deputy Chief, Airport Operations.
FRANKLIN M. STERLING has served as Senior Vice President for the Western Region since August 1995. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Sterling served as President of Franklin M. Sterling and Assoc., Inc., an engineering consulting firm specialized in integrated building control systems, which he founded in 1987. Previously, Mr. Sterling was employed by the Bechtel Corporation for sixteen years, most recently as a project manager for a Bechtel subsidiary, and has held positions with ITT Data Services and the RCA Corporation. Mr. Sterling presently serves as Chairman of the Airport Consultants Council Security System Standards Committee and is a member of the Federal Aviation Administration's Advisory Committee on Security System Standards. He is a senior member of the IEEE, the IEEE Control System Society, the American Society for Industrial Security, the National Fire Protection Association, the Construction Specification Institute and the National and California Societies of Professional Engineers.
ALBERT M. WEINSTEIN has served as Vice President overseeing corporate engineering and design since 1989. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Weinstein was Vice President and General Manager of the Electronic Security Systems Division of Stoller Company, a nuclear consulting company, for 17 years.
MATTHEW V. WHARTON has served as Vice President for the Southwest Region since 1994. From 1993 to 1994 he served as Manager of Consulting Engineering for the Company. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Wharton worked from 1992 to 1993 as Director of Sales and Marketing for Integrated Security Control Systems, a California security company.
MICHAEL V. TOTO has served as Vice President for the Northeast Region since 1994. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Toto served as a communications engineer with ADT Security Systems, Inc. for two years.
JON W. BALAKIAN has served as Vice President for the Southeast Region since 1996. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Balakian was a senior manager of the national physical security program for MCI Telecommunications since 1990.
MISHAL YOUSEF SOUD AL SABAH has served as a director of the Company since 1987. Since 1982, Mr. Al Sabah has been the Chairman of the Board of Directors of KuwAm. He has also served as a director of Advanced Laser Graphics, Inc. and Commander Aircraft Company since 1991.
ROBERT B. SMITH, JR. has served as a director of the Company since 1995. Mr. Smith has been a private investor since 1984, and has been a director of Sunshine Mining Company, a New York Stock Exchange listed silver mining company, since 1993. He has been a trustee for the Dalkon Shield Claimants Trust, a public interest trust created to compensate those damaged by the Dalkon Shield, since 1989. Mr. Smith was formerly Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the Senate Government Operations Committee.
Other Board Members On Board Members:
- Barry McDaniel
- Wirt Walker III
- Emmit McHenry
- Charles Archer
- James Abrahamson USAF
Mr. Barry W. McDaniel serves as the Chief Executive Officer of LS2, Inc. and Global Service and Trade, Inc. Mr. McDaniel has been the Chief Executive Officer of Stratesec Incorporated since January 2002 and previously served as its President. He served as Executive Vice President of InteSec Group. He previously served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Commercial Services division since December 2000, and as a Director since January 1999. He served as leader of a division for Lockheed Martin. Prior to joining Stratesec Inc. in 1998 as its Chief Operating Officer, Mr. McDaniel was employed by BDM International from 1989 to 1998, most recently as Vice President of Material Distribution and Management Systems. From 1989 to 1992, he served as the Vice President, Business Development and Operations for the Systems and Communications Group. Mr. McDaniel was previously employed, from 1988 to 1989, by Proxim as Vice President, Government Systems Integration. From 1970 to 1987, he was employed by the U.S. Government with his last assignment as a member of the Senior Executive Service (SES), serving as Deputy Director of Readiness for the United States Army Materiel Command. He serves as a Director of Global Service and Trade, Inc. and LS2, Inc. Mr. McDaniel has been a Director of Stratesec Incorporated since January 1999.
Mr. Wirt D. Walker, III, has been the Chief Executive Officer of Stratesec Incorporated since January 1999. Mr. Walker has been the Managing Director of KuwAm Corporation since 1982., which he co-founded. He has been the Chief Executive Officer of Aviation General, Incorporated since June 1998. He served as the Chief Executive Officer of Aviation General Inc. from May 1991 to August 1991 and also from December 1992 to May 1995. Mr. Walker also established and managed two private investment partnerships providing capital and corporate finance services to more than 30 companies. He founded Eigerhawk, Ltd. in 2003 and serves as its Chairman. He has been the Chairman of the Board of Stratesec Incorporated since 1992. Mr. Walker has been the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Aviation General Inc., a holding company of Commander Aircraft Company and Strategic Jet Services, Inc. since May 1991. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of Commander Premier Aircraft Corporation. Mr. Walker has been a Director of Aviation General Inc. since September 1989 and Stratesec Incorporated since 1987. Mr. Walker served as a Member of Advisory Board of Electronic Control Security Inc. Mr. Walker served as a Director of Electronic Control Security Inc.until August 2012.
Mr. Emmit J. McHenry serves as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and founding Principal of Archura, LLC. Mr. McHenry founded Netcom Solutions International, Inc. in 1995 and serves as its President and Chief Executive Officer. Prior thereto, Mr. McHenry was a founder of Network Solutions, Inc., the internet domain services provider. In the past, Mr. McHenry has held management positions with IBM, Connecticut General, Union Mutual, and Allstate Insurance Company. Mr. McHenry serves as Chairman of the Board of NetCom Solutions International, Inc. He is an active member of the State Department's Advisory Committee for International Communications and Information Policy and serves as a Commissioner for the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority. He has been a Director of Stratesec Incorporated since 2000. He is also a Director of James Martin Government Intelligence and Global Technology, L.L.C. Mr. McHenry has a BA in Communications from the University of Denver, passed the qualifying exam for a PhD after receiving his MA in Communications from Northwestern, and holds an Honorary Ph.D. from Shaw University.
Mr. Charles W. Archer, Chuck served as Vice President of Federal Sector at Identix Inc., since October 18, 2004. Mr. Archer served as the U.S. Attorney General and the Director of the FBI as Assistant Director In Charge of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division, with oversight of all criminal justice services, including IAFIS and Uniform Crime Reporting systems. Mr. Archer was an Assistant Director and managed a $300 million annual budget, and launched the $1 billion expansion, development and automation of the agency's activities that culminated in the new National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and National Instant Check System for handguns. He led a workforce of more than 3,000 FBI employees and 600 outside contractors, and established and maintained strong relationships with other Federal agencies and Congress .In addition to ever-increasing responsibilities during his FBI tenure, from 1993 to 1996 Mr. Archer served as Legal Attache at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, Canada. He was a the Senior Us Law Enforcement Official in Canada. From 1998 to 1999, Mr. Archer served as President and Chief Executive Officer of publicly traded STRATESEC, Inc., where he spearheaded a period of rapid expansion, while broadening STRATESEC's offerings to a full suite of integrated services including engineering and design, systems integration, maintenance and technical support. Mr. Archer served as Vice President of Strategic Business Development for Criminal Justice for Litton. He served as Vice President and General Manager of Office at Integrated Public Safety Programs. He oversaw all PRC domestic and international public safety business units, and was a Member of the PRC executive Quality Management Board. He serves as an Executive Chairman of Covata USA Inc. He has been a Director of Stratesec Incorporated since March 1998. He serves as a Member of Advisory Board of Powertek Corporation. Mr. Archer received a BS in Accounting from Minnesota State College, and has attended a number of graduate programs, including post graduate courses in statistics and government accounting at the USDA Graduate School; the Litton Executive Education Program in Finance at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School; the University of Maryland School of Business's program on international marketing strategies, and business development and execution at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration.
Mr. James A. Abrahamson, USAF serves as Chief Technology Officer of Crescent Technology Ventures Plc. Mr. Abrahamson serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Air Safety Consultants StratCom, LLC, SkySpectrum LLC, and Sky Sentry LLC. Mr. Abrahamson served as President of ORBIMAGE Holdings Inc. He served as Executive Vice President for Corporate Development for Hughes Aircraft Company from October 1989 to April 1992 and President of the Transportation Sector for Hughes Aircraft Company from April 1992 to September 1992. He also directed the development of the F-16 Multi-National Fighter and served as NASA Associate Administrator for Space Flight, managing NASA's space shuttle from its first flight through ten safe and successful missions. He directed the Strategic Defense Initiative from April 1984 until he retired from the Air Force in January 1989 at the rank of Lieutenant General. He serves as Chairman of StratCom, LLC, SkySpectrum LLC, Sky Sentry LLC and Air Safety Consultants. He has been Chairman of ORBIMAGE Holdings Inc., (formerly Orbital Imaging Corp.) since November 2001. From 1992 to 1995, he served as Chairman of Oracle Corporation. He has been a Member of the Board of ORBIMAGE Holdings Inc., since April 1998. He served as Chairman of DigitalGlobe, Inc., since November 2001 and its Director from April 1998 to May 13, 2013. He has been Vice Chairman of MSGI Technology Solutions, Inc. since July 2010. Mr. Abrahamson serves as a Director of Western Digital Corporation. He has been a Director of Stratesec Incorporated since December 1997. He served as Chairman of GeoEye, LLC. Lt. Gen. Abrahamson earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955 and a Master of Science degree in the same field through the Air Force Institute of Technology program at the University of Oklahoma in 1961. He completed Squadron Officer School in 1958, Air Command and Staff College in 1966, the Air Force Test Pilot School in 1967, and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in 1973. He served in the Air Force as a Test Pilot, Fighter Pilot, and Program Manager for 33 years, prior to moving to senior positions in civil industry.
Marvin Bush[]
The public rarely sees Marvin P. Bush, brother of President Bush II.
Marvin P. Bush is the founder (1993) and Managing Partner of Winston Partners Group of Vienna, Virginia. It's a private investment company. He is also the Managing General Partner of Winston Growth Fund, LLP; Winston International Growth Fund, LP; Winston Small Cap Growth Fund, LP; all related companies.
Before this, he spent 12 years in the investment business with the firms of Mosley, Hallgarten, Estabrook and Weeden, Shearson Lehman Brothers, and John Stewart Darrel & Company.
In January, 1998, Marvin Bush was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Fresh Del Monte Produce company, the giant fruit company (major product bananas) that makes the canned goods we buy in our markets. Del Monte is owned by a very wealthy family from Kuwait, the Abu-Ghazaleh family. Mohammed Abu-Ghazaleh is the CEO and he has several family members on the Board alongside Marvin Bush. Another member of the Fresh Del Monte Board of Directors is Stephen Way, who is a major Bush fundraiser. Way is the head of the Houston-based HCC Insurance Holdings Company. In early 2000, Stephen Way acquired the appointment of Marvin Bush to the Board of Directors of HCC. In that transaction, Bush not only landed a very large salary, but a sweet stock option deal. He purchased about $130,000 worth of HCC stock which is now valued at close to $600,000, not even one year later.
Marvin Bush is also on the Board of Directors of something called the Kerrco Company.
Marvin also was named to the Board of Directors of the Stratesec Company, another large publicly-traded firm. This company is very secretive and you can find virtually nothing about it. Their website does not allow entry to several links unless one has a password. Virginia-based Stratesec is a provider of high-tech security systems. Two of the major customers for which they provide security are the Dulles International Airport at Washington, D.C. and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Stratesec's revenues recently went up by 60%, due to what the company describes as "new customers" Prominent people at Stratesec also include former Reagan operatives including Barry McDaniel and Air Force General James A. Abrahamson (who was involved in the Reagan "Star Wars" project). Stratesec is a company is heavily inter-related with the Kuwam Corporation ("Kuw" = Kuwait; "am" = America). Kuwam is a major Kuwaiti Company into many, many activities including the aircraft business. Stratesec's Chief Executive is also the Managing Director of Kuwam Corporation and Kuwam's Chairman Mishal Yousef Saud Al Sabah sits on Stratesec's Board of Directors. Stratesec is providing the primary security for one of the most sensitive airports in the world. Dulles in D.C., has a heavy middle eastern airline connection.
Wirt D. Walker III[]
Wirt II
Wirt Two became a career officer in the Army Air Corps and then the US Air Force, serving until 1962. He flew combat missions with the Eighth Air Force while stationed in England during the war, and was later stationed in Germany. After the war he was assigned to “various government agencies involved in reconnaissance intelligence.” The Lockheed-made U2 reconnaissance aircraft was assigned to the Eighth Air Force, a part of Strategic Air Command, where U2 operations started in 1956 and involved flights over the Soviet Union and the Middle East. In May 1960, while Wirt Two was working on reconnaissance intelligence, an American U2 was shot down by the Soviets, initiating a worldwide controversy over espionage.
Wirt Two is also listed as an ex-employee of the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), an agency of the CIA that analyzed aerial spy photographs. The significance of the NPIC to major intelligence activities during the twentieth century cannot be overstated. NPIC was the agency that was responsible for the intelligence that originated the Cuban missile crisis. NPIC was also central to the analysis of the photographic evidence related to the Kennedy assassination, including the Zapruder film. Whether or not Wirt Two participated in these historic activities is not publicly known.
In his obituary, Wirt Two is listed as having been an employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), for which it is said he worked until 1977. He died of leukemia in 1997.
Wirt III
Wirt Three lives in McLean, Virginia, home of the CIA. He graduated from Lafayette College in 1968 and in 1971 he married Sally Gregg White, a Washington DC debutante. Sally is a descendant of architectural ironwork magnate George White, whose son “Doc” White was a World Series winning pitcher for the Chicago White Sox. “Doc” was actually a dentist but his brother, Charles Stanley White, was a famous Washington DC surgeon and grandfather to Sally. Sally’s father, Charles White Stanley Jr, was a surgeon too and, like Wirt Two, he was an officer in the Army Air Corps.
Wirt was fortunate to land a position, right out of college, as a broker for an “investment” firm called Glore Forgan. Originally a company called Field Glore, financed by Marshall Field III, Glore Forgan was renamed in 1937 for its new partner, James “Russ” Forgan. Russ was one of the most influential men in the history of US intelligence, having led the European division of the CIA’s predecessor organization, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). In the OSS, Forgan focused on infiltrating the German intelligence apparatus with the help of William J. Casey. Casey later became SEC chairman under Nixon and the director of CIA under Reagan. Before going back to work in the “investment” business, Forgan helped to write the documents that created the CIA.
While Wirt Three worked there, William Casey was House Counsel for Glore Forgan. It was at this time that the firm was at the center of a near collapse of Wall Street. In 1970, it began to be clear that Glore Forgan had somehow sold many millions of dollars more in securities than what its customers thought they owned. As a result, the company was expected to fail and, due to a cascading effect, its failure was projected to take down dozens of other firms causing a panic and huge losses on Wall Street. These projections compelled President Nixon to ask Ross Perot, through Treasury Secretary John Connally, to intervene and save Glore Forgan. Perot suffered dramatic losses in an attempt to save the company (the only business loss of his career) and Glore Forgan went bankrupt anyway. The US government created the Securities Investor Protection Corp (SIPC) in response.
A few years later, Wirt Three went from being a broker at Glore Forgan to running a series of other companies that went bankrupt. Yet somehow, Wirt Three always had cash flow. That could have been due to the fact that, by 1982, Wirt Three was a director of the Kuwaiti-American Company (or Kuwam).
Stratesec started off in 1987 as Burns & Roe Securacom, founded by Nelson Rockefeller assistant, Sebastian Cassetta. The company changed its name to Securacom when it was taken over by Kuwam in 1992, at which time Wirt Three became CEO. When Wirt Three was sued by the president of an existing company with an identical name, Wirt became abusive and told the other businessman that he “would bury him financially and take everything he had “ by “filing a barrage of frivolous arguments...in multiple jurisdictions." Wirt lost the case and had to change his company’s name to Stratesec. While this incident suggested that Wirt Three was abusive, it also indicated that he had the kind of deep pockets that allowed for frivolous lawsuits.
Kuwam also owned two companies called Commander Aircraft and Aviation General, both of which had Wirt Three as CEO, and both of which went bankrupt shortly after 9/11.
As CEO of Stratesec, Wirt Three did business with some shady characters. For example, Stratesec owed money to a company called Bankest Capital, which appeared to be a money-laundering operation or similar fraud. Wirt Three transferred seven million dollars in shares of his Stratesec stock to Bankest as a way to reduce that debt ($1.75 MM). Bankest ‘s owners, brothers Eduardo and Hector Orlansky, were later convicted of conspiracy and bank fraud when $185 million went missing due to "huge overadvances." Apparently $2 billion was "flowed through the Orlansky's two businesses from 1998 to 2003 to create the appearance they were healthy and growing."
A company called Hanifen Imhoff was the underwriter for Wirt’s company, Commander Aircraft. This gives further evidence that the companies Wirt Three was running were not only bound for bankruptcy, but were probably CIA fronts all along. Hanifen Imhoff was "nailed for Correspondent's fraud" in December 2000. Hanifen Imhoff also happens to be a division of Stifel Nicolaus & Company, whose long term chairman was George W. Bush’s first cousin, Yale Skull & Bones member George Herbert Walker III.
In any case, Wirt Three has a tendency to show up when airplanes crash into tall buildings. The only other such occurrence since 9/11 led to Wirt Three being interviewed because the plane that crashed was related to his company, Aviation General.
E S Bankest[]
Sep 29, 2003: Chantilly firm folds under factoring
What started as a helping hand has strangled a struggling local tech firm. Chantilly-based Stratesec abruptly shut its doors the week of Sept. 15 because of ongoing troubles with its majority shareholder and primary source of funding, according to documents filed Sept. 16 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm, which provided security technologies and services to government and commercial customers, was unable to continue operations after a federal judge forced Miami-based investment bank ES Bankest into receivership earlier this month. According to SEC documents, Stratesec was "dependent" on financing provided by ES Bankest as part of an October 2000 agreement in which ES Bankest agreed to buy Stratesec's accounts receivable at a discounted price to provide the local firm with cash flow -- an arrangement known as factoring. When Stratesec couldn't make its monthly payments to ES Bankest for the estimated $1.75 million it owed, the debt was converted into stock in January, documents say. Shares of Stratesec, which was delisted from the American Stock Exchange in July 2002 and moved to an over-the-counter exchange, traded at a penny apiece Sept. 18. ES Bankest owned about 7 million shares, or 45 percent, of Stratesec and was the company's only hope for ongoing funding, SEC documents say. ES Bankest had a "verbal agreement" with Stratesec to provide additional financing to keep the company afloat. Financial experts say selling accounts receivable is a viable option for companies concerned with funding ongoing operations. However, the practice isn't something older companies typically do. "It makes sense for young companies to secure funding this way," says Jim Oliver, a retired financial consultant in Annapolis. "Most established companies, outside of certain industries, don't need to sell accounts receivable for cash." Barry McDaniel, CEO of Stratesec, could not be reached for comment. Telephones at the company's headquarters were redirected to NetCom Solutions International, which leased space to Stratesec and owns 700,000 shares, or 8.4 percent, of the public company. Emmit McHenry, CEO of NetCom Solutions International and a director of Stratesec since March 2000, says he was surprised to hear the company shut down. "They left rather abruptly, only taking personal items," McHenry says of the employees who vacated the subleased space the week of Sept. 15 -- the same week the company disclosed it was closing in SEC documents. The closing comes after Stratesec, which only employed 13 people at the end, struggled with mounting debt and shrinking sales. The company reported a net loss of $687,264 for the quarter ended March 31, compared with a net loss of $1.35 million for the same quarter in 2002. Sales dropped to $473,830 for the three months, down from $646,922 a year earlier. Stratesec, which was founded as New Jersey-based Securacom in 1987 and raised more than $16 million when it went public in 1997, had seen better days. Annual sales fell to $1.47 million in 2002 from $12.13 million in 1997.
E.S. Bankest LLC: 999 Brickell Avenue, Penthouse, Miami, Florida.
Sunday, December 7, 2003: Nine Men Charged In $170 Mil. Theft
Nine men were indicted on charges of stealing $170 million from a Portuguese bank branch in Florida through what prosecutors said was a sophisticated conspiracy that lasted nearly a decade.
It isn't clear where Espirito Santo Bank of Florida's money went, but the bank is trying to recover its funds through a separate civil lawsuit.
"This case is one of the largest bank and corporate fraud cases ever prosecuted in South Florida," said Marcos Jimenez, the local U.S. attorney. He announced the indictments Friday.
The indictments outline the theft allegedly carried out by officials at E.S. Bankest, a joint venture between Espirito Santo and brothers Eduardo and Hector Orlansky, both of Key Biscayne.
All defendants were employees or customers of E.S. Bankest. Except for the Orlansky brothers, all were granted bail Friday. Arraignment on charges of bank and wire fraud and conspiracy is set for Dec. 18. Lawyer information for the defendants was not available Saturday.
E.S. Bankest specialized in a business called factoring. It bought a company's outstanding bills at a discount. It then tried to collect the bill in full, pocketing the difference as profit.
The joint venture funded its purchases with loans from Espirito Santo, which raised the money by selling debt to its clients.
But prosecutors allege that E.S. Bankest was lying about its activities. It was inflating the value of the accounts it was purchasing, the indictments said. It would then use these fictitious estimates as collateral for loans from Espirito Santo.
The Orlansky brothers and two Bankest officers, Peter Stanham and Dominick Parlapiano, produced a steady stream of invoices showing Bankest's business was growing dramatically, the indictments said.
To aid the deception, Parlapiano contacted Howard Cantor, who owned a company called StrataSys, in October 2000 and asked him to prepare five invoices "in order to conceal a Bankest overadvance." Cantor complied, the indictment said.
By mid-2001, Bankest was claiming it had more than $152 million in assets. Among those assets were the accounts of a Georgia software company called Enterprise Network Applications. The problem, according to the indictment: ENA was barely in business. Its total accounts receivable were $129,500. Bankest officials reported the figure as $36.7 million.
To cover their tracks, Bankest officials began an elaborate deception, prosecutors allege.
For instance, they deposited Bankest money in ENA accounts. ENA could then send checks to Bankest to make it look like it was making good on its fictitious obligations.
Late last year, the Orlansky brothers bought out Espirito Santo's interest in Bankest.
Espirito Santo then repurchased Bankest debt from its clients, leaving the bank on the hook for $170 million, according to a recently filed lawsuit. Bankest failed to make payments on the debt, leading to this year's unraveling that produced the indictments.
"We're hopeful that justice will be done by the courts," said Mitchell Berger, a lawyer representing the bank in the lawsuit.
Lewis B Freeman was the Court-Appointed Officer for reorganising Bankest Capital Corporation and E.S. Bankest L.C. Freeman was convicted of fraud related to the ES Bankest case.
Aviation General[]
According to FBI summary documents, Mohamed Atta was also spotted at nearby Wiley Post Airport in Bethany, Oklahoma within six months of the 9/11 attacks. An employee at private aviation company Million Air witnessed Atta flying at Wiley Post Airport along with two other alleged 9/11 hijackers, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Waleed Al-Shehri. Other FBI summary documents indicate that Saeeed Al-Ghamdi was also seen flying in to Wiley Post Airport on an unspecified date and that Hani Hanjour had made inquiries to a company in The Netherlands that ran a flight school out of Wiley Post Airport.
The suburb of Bethany is just seven miles west of Oklahoma City and a little over 20 miles from Norman. Wiley Post, located in Bethany, is one of three airports owned and operated by the Oklahoma City Department of Airports. Westheimer Airport in Norman, run by the university, provides a fourth option for public airport access.
Hangar 8 of Wiley Post Airport was, until 2005, the home of Aviation General, the aircraft company owned by Kuwaiti-American Corporation (KuwAm) and run by Wirt Dexter Walker III. KuwAm and its WTC security company Stratesec had strong connections to the Kuwaiti royal family, which benefited from 9/11 through the ouster of Saddam Hussein. The companies were also strongly linked to the Bush family network and to people who came from deep-state U.S. intelligence backgrounds. Like his fellow KuwAm director Robert Dudley van Roijen, Walker is the son of a CIA officer. He is also a suspect in 9/11 insider trading.[18]
Aviation General was the parent of two wholly-owned subsidiaries: Commander Aircraft Company, which manufactured Commander-brand aircraft, and Strategic Jet Services, which provided aircraft brokerage and refurbishment services. Aviation General, Commander Aircraft, and Strategic Jet Services were all located in Hangar 8 of Wiley Post Airport.
Wiley Post Airport has approximately 24 hangars and Hangar 8 is set off away from the rest. Although Aviation General and its subsidiaries all went bankrupt or were sold off in the few years after 9/11, Hangar 8 still houses three businesses. These include Jim Clark & Associates, Valair Aviation, and Oklahoma Aviation.
Jim Clark & Associates is an aircraft sales and brokerage firm, similar to Strategic Jet Services, and is located in Hangar 8. The company shared a phone number (405-787-6222) with another aircraft company called Sundancer Enterprises, out of Norman, OK.
Valair Aviation is an aircraft service company also located in Hangar 8. This is a service center that works on Commander-brand aircraft, the kind that Wirt Walker’s Commander Aircraft Company had manufactured there. Valair started as a division of Aero Commander, which was a subsidiary of Rockwell International and Gulfstream. By the year 2000, Valair (called the Service Center) had also become specialized in servicing Raytheon aircraft.
At first glance, the most interesting of these new Hangar 8 companies is the flight school called Oklahoma Aviation. This is due to an incredible coincidence regarding the young man who now runs the company, Shohaib Nazir Kassam.
Oklahoma Aviation first appeared on the internet in March, 2001 although the website was only one page with the company name for the first year. The company was officially founded in February 2004 by Tom Kilpatrick, the son of famous Oklahoman John Kilpatrick Jr., who had been president of the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce.
Tom Kilpatrick didn’t know anything about aviation, so he hired Shoiam Kassam to be the Chief Flight Instructor and Rob Rothman as Assistant Chief Flight Instructor. Rothman was a recent graduate of the University of Oklahoma and member of the Civil Air Patrol. Rothman is now an officer in the U.S. Air Force stationed in Pensacola, Florida. The Air Force base is located at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola which, coincidentally, was the address used by several alleged 9/11 hijackers on their driver’s licenses.
In March 2007, Oklahoma Aviation was purchased by another famous son of Oklahoma, Clayton Healey. Clay had just come off the ranch as a cowboy in 2003 and started AIC Title Service, which focused on aircraft company closures. Clay’s father was Skip Healey, a well known Republican National Committee member and oil company executive. The Healey’s were grandnephews of Lew Wentz, who had opened Oklahoma up to the oil industry.
By 2008, Oklahoma Aviation had the best airplanes around. And somehow young Shoaib Kassam came to be listed as the owner of the company. The Chief Flight Instructor today is Marcus Buchanan, who in 1998 was a student at the Airline Training Academy (ATA) in Orlando, Florida. This is the same ATA that went bankrupt while robbing its students and was then found to have financial connections to Wally Hilliard, who owned Huffman Aviation, where Atta and friends went after deciding not to train in Oklahoma. Buchanan went from ATA to be a flight instructor at the University of Oklahoma’s Department of Aviation before moving to his current job in Hangar 8.
The part of this story that seems more incredible is that Kassam was, in March 2006, a government witness against Zacarias Moussaoui. He was actually Moussaoui’s flight instructor. To emphasize, the guy who is now occupying Wirt Walker’s offices in Hangar 8 at Wiley Post Airport not only knew Zacarias Moussaoui, he was the primary flight instructor of the “20th hijacker” at Airman Flight School.
Kassam moved to Norman in 1998, at the age of 18, coming from Mombassa, Kenya. He was originally from Pakistan. Two years after he arrived in Norman, he completed his training to become a flight instructor. He was only 21 years of age when he spent 57 hours (unsuccessfully) trying to train Zacarias Moussaoui to fly.
During his testimony and cross-examination in the Moussaoui trial, Kassam was asked many times about Moussaoui’s religion. Both the prosecutor and the defense attorney were very interested in whether Moussaoui was a devout Muslim. After repeated questioning, Kassam said that yes, he thought that Moussaoui considered himself a Muslim.
“Q. And you mentioned that he was trying to get you back into the faith?
A. No. He just talked about, you know, church, I mean, sorry, mosques and going to pray and fasting, and just things like that.”
There seemed to be some confusion on this issue in the courtroom. But Kassam was useful to the prosecution in that he confirmed that Moussaoui also called himself Zuluman Tangotango. This allowed prosecutors to introduce a mountain of emails from the address “pilotz123@hotmail,” purportedly belonging to Zuluman Tangtango. The email evidence played a significant role in Moussaoui’s conviction.
Kassam also remembered seeing Atta and Al-Shehhi at Airman. A student at the time of Atta and Alshehhi’s visit, Kassam recalled bumping into them when they were being given a tour of the Airman facility.
The history of Aviation General was, like that of Stratesec and the other companies that Wirt Walker ran, a record of well-financed business failure. As of 1998, Aviation General was losing millions of dollars every year. With very humble positive returns, the year 2000 results were the best in the company’s history, according to Walker.
In September 2000, John DeHavilland of British Aerocraft joined as CEO of Strategic Jet Services. Three months later, Walker’s president at Aviation General, Dean N. Thomas, died suddenly at a young age. And by August 2001, Aviation General was reporting million-dollar losses again.
In late 2002, Strategic Jet Services “discontinued its operations and began the process of dissolving the company.” Commander Aircraft Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy at the same time, and that was changed to Chapter 7 in January 2005. Commander Aircraft left Oklahoma in September 2005 to move to an “undisclosed location.” In an odd shell game reminiscent of the Stratesec dealings, what was left of Aviation General was sold to Tiger Aircraft, a small company with Taiwanese investors that went bankrupt in 2006.
Oklahoma Aviation was a flight school that was just getting off the ground in 2005, as it took over Hangar 8 from Aviation General and soon had the best planes. This was the opposite of the apparent financial fortunes of the Aviation General companies that all went belly up that year. And it was also unlike Airman Flight School which, although it was in the same area and same business as Oklahoma Aviation, shut down in 2005 because it could not pay the rent.
Kuwam[]
Hamzah M. Behbehani was a director and partner at KuwAm from 1995 to 1997
Before that he worked at Cresvale:
September 28, 1999: The Tokyo branch of Cresvale International filed a criminal complaint against executives and employees at Princeton Economics International Inc. and its custody agent for suspected fraud. Cresvale, which sold funds run by Princeton to Japanese corporations, filed suit against its parent and Republic National Securities. Akira Setogawa, above, chairman of Cresvale in Tokyo, told 37 Japanese investors that about 109 billion yen ($1 billion) of their money was missing. Earlier, Martin A. Armstrong, chairman of Princeton, was charged in the United States with defrauding Japanese investors of about $1 billion.