Oh no, not this shit again
Just when the CQG (Crooks for Quantity Growth) thought that they had an unbeatable slate of candidates ready to take back Venice and put the city squarely where it belongs -- in land development attorney Dan Boone's back pocket -- the candidates themselves blow into full panic mode.

Holic panics, denies existence of air, gravity, and the fraudster that he supervised at A.G. Edwards
In a somewhat crazed and fragmented email sent out to political supporters, mayoral candidate John Holic (CQG) denied being backed by the CQG and denied that a rogue investment broker operated out of A.G. Edwards under his supervision (for background, see our discussion of Holic's involvement in the scams of Brian Christensen in our mayoral endorsement for this year).

Holic also denied that the Boone Law Firm had anything to do with the formation of the CQG, a statement that makes me want to tell Holic to stop sniffing airplane glue as there are much better drugs available from local pain management clinics.

Here's part of that email from Holic:

Lies and Innuendo from Mr. Harry Walia
Accusation: that as manager at A.G. Edwards, was supervisor of a scam artist who defrauded elderly people.
Fact: the scam referred to operated almost exclusively outside the office environment and beyond my area of supervision. My work record is publically available on the FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) web site, my CRD# is 1050307

Accusation: Backed by pro-extreme development law firm in Venice and CQG group.
Fact: I have received contributions from at least 75 individuals and businesses in Venice and requests from many more to be listed on my web site as a supporter.

I'll get to Holic's denial of CQG backing in a moment, but first I want to address what Holic wrote about the scam artist.

Holic fired Brian Christensen in 2004. Christensen was later convicted of various felony financial frauds. He's currently under the supervision of the Florida Department of Corrections.

According to court records, news reports, and this investigation report by FDLE (15 pages, PDF, pops in new window), Christensen ran his Ponzi scam on 21 investors under the guise of approved investments with A.G. Edwards. Herald-Trib reported that he gained the trust by being promoted by A.G. Edwards as their "Boy Scout" investment advisor. News reports and the court record indicate that A.G. Edwards (Office Manager John Holic) fired Christensen but let him take his scammed investors with him went he went out the door. Holic and Edwards never contacted the duped investors, and that total failure of ethical behavior caused a federal arbitration panel to levy a $1.2 million dollar judgment against Holic's operation, payable to one married couple of investors. The judgment included $250 thousand in punitive damages for "lack of honest dealings" by Holic's office.

The FDLE report notes that Christensen started his fraud in 2001 as an employee at A.G. Edwards (bottom of page 2), some three years before Holic figured out what his charge was actually up to.

Holic claims it all happened outside of his office. The FDLE investigation names all of the scammed victims and identifies Christensen as an A.G. Edwards' employee running the Ponzi scheme that started in 2001 -- again, three years before Holic fired Christensen.

So that's one big whopper of a tale that Holic is trying to peddle in his email.

The other? That he is not backed by the CQG. Funny, but nobody at the CQG seems to know about that as they keep mailing out massively expensive fliers supporting him and trashing his opponent.

Later in the same email, Holic claims that Dan Boone is not the founder of the CQG. That fib was so laughable that I addressed it in a totally separate article.

Jeanette Gates and hubby Jeffrey O. Gates currently being sued for $440,000 -- twice!! Jeff is on the hook for $43 million judgment; despite that, Jeanette is distressed about municipal lawsuits
It is getting increasingly hard to figure out where Jeffrey Orland Gates' legal troubles end and where his wife, council candidate Jeanette Gates (CQG), starts with her legal troubles.

Although both Jeff and Jeanette have gone on the record stating that council candidate Jeanette Gates is not being sued, we found two cases currently active against the pair of them. SunTrust has filed two lawsuits against Jeffrey O. Gates and "The Unknown Spouse of Jeffrey O. Gates." Each suit is over default of mortgage, and each lawsuit seeks $440,000 rather than a straight foreclosure. That's a total of $880,000 plus interest, attorney costs, etc., which brings the whole mess close to a cool $1 million. These two lawsuits are currently winding their way through the Sarasota County Court system.

Additionally, Jeffrey has a personal judgment against him, "jointly and severally," for $43 million plus interest in the judgment in Orion Bank vs. Villages of Manasota Beach, Jeff Gates, et. al. case (PDF, 10 pages, pops in new window). Granted, there's a lot of co-defendants, but most of them, like Sharkey's owner Mike Pachota, signed on through various business buffers, making them personally immune from the judgment. Jeffrey Gates inked into the deal agreeing to be personally responsible, meaning it is possible, indeed quite likely, for him to end up having to owe the entire bundle if everyone else bails. It's an interesting application of Darwin's concept of survival of the fittest applied to economics and law, as in a case like this, it is every man for himself.

The case is currently in appeals court. If Orion Bank wins at that level, Gates may well be doomed as many of the defendants with bigger pockets are buffered  by their corporate involvement.

That's not even the weird part, and this case does get very weird.

In Jeffrey Gates' deposition (PDF, 145 pages, pops in new window), we discover that Gates entered the deal by donating land to the project. Actually, he only owned 25% of the portion of land that was donated.

What happened to the rest of the money? Roads and sewer lines were laid, two houses were built as spec (although those were paid for by SunTrust, which are the other two lawsuits against Jeff Gates and his wife), and that's about it. Orion eventually did get a court order to seize the leftover cash, thus allowing the bank to clean out the Villages of Manasota Beach's bank accounts, but that still left millions unaccounted for. Gates was writing the checks and he is at a total loss to account for it all. So where's the money?

When Orion Bank's attorney, Paul Friedman, asked what Gates' duties were, Gates replied "Basically approving work orders, approving payments, and writing checks."

Friedman then asked, "How come you haven't written any to my client?"

Gates replied, "We don't have any money."

That's about as close as you ever get to finding out what happened to it all.

At one point, Gates tells Friedman that Orion Bank should pay him (Gates) so that he can walk away from the deal. After asking a few questions to make sure that he is actually hearing what he thinks he is hearing from Gates, Friedman responds incredulously: "You have such alien thoughts."

The irony: Jeanette Gates is quick on the draw to fire accusations about lawsuits the city has been involved in, but only lawsuits from the past three years (ignoring the prior years when the FAA accused council of criminal diversion of revenue or the EPA going after Venice utilities for dumping raw sewage into storm drains that lead to the Gulf of Mexico, e.g.). Yet Gates and her husband are currently involved in three lawsuits that dwarf the total dollars of the city's liability over the last decade or more -- three times as much, in fact.

When I asked Gates about the lawsuits, one of which arguably contributed to the collapse of Orion Bank, her response was nothing short of astonishing: "Yeah, but who got hurt?"

Well, let's see: Sharkey's restaurant is in chaos mode trying to figure out how to fund the restaurant expansion that they already have approved but apparently now cannot afford. Orion Bank went belly up, causing all of their workers to get fired (although members of their board were later indicted on a variety of charges unrelated to Gates' legal woes). Collectively with every other land speculator and flipper, it was behavior like this that brought Florida, and later the nation, to its economic knees.

Who got hurt? Jeanette, are you f**king kidding me?

Bob Daniels -- hanging with disgraced politicos Dean Calamaras and Earl Midlam, plus Daniels' best buddy and neighbor, Isaac Turner
(pic: land development attorney Dan Boone's front yard -- click on pic for bigger view)
While council candidate Bob Daniels (CQG) is pounding on his opponent, Ernie Zavodnyik, over the Sunshine Law lawsuit, he's been taking his cues from Dan Boone as well as disgraced ex-mayor Dean Calamaras and disgraced ex-councilman Earl Midlam.

Calamaras resigned abruptly in 2006, sold his house, and bolted across the Florida border to Georgia, ostensibly to be close to his daughter, but curiously timed to miss out on a lawsuit judgment against him for the false arrest of then Taxpayers League President Herb Levine, this having taken place at a city council budget meeting a few years prior.

When Calamaras finally did get nailed in the lawsuit, the city's insurance picked up the tab for him, which predictably caused a rise in insurance rates, but that's OK -- he's not Sue Lang or Ed Martin, so Daniels doesn't mind the payout or the false arrest of a senior citizen at a city council meeting. It just didn't happen if we ignore it long enough.

Midlam resigned after being arrested for secretly tape recording other council members, ostensibly to use for his own political gain (the tapes never publicly surfaced and Midlam still insists he threw the cassettes in a fire).

Meanwhile Ernie is getting a bit drowned out as he tries to explain that he had nothing to do with the Sunshine Law lawsuit -- he wasn't a party to the suit and wasn't a named defendant. At last night's candidate forum at Harbor Lights 'manufactured home' park, Daniels stated that Zavodnyik had admitted that he violated the law and had apologized for it.

Wait. What? Other than being a council member at the time, Zavodnyik wasn't a party to the lawsuit -- he was never accused of anything.

Oh well. Pulling tales out of one's ass and trying to peddle them off as fact is the new politics, SOP for Tea Partiers and CQG meat puppets.

At last night's forums, Daniels, apparently unaware of how insidious the CQG appears to be to most citizens, bellowed (I mean really yelled, angrily, it was like he was channeling Nikita Kruschev) that he was furious that people kept accusing him of taking money and support from the PAC: "I don't want to hear about it again! It's not important. There are no strings!"

Yeah, because Dan Boone just gives money away for no reason at all and he would never expect a return on his investment, right? Oh, by the way, Mars invades earth, film at eleven.

As he went on and on with this loud, bellicose tirade, I kept waiting for him to pull off his shoe and start banging it on the table. It was an incredibly awesome impersonation of the late Russian leader.

On a somewhat related note, Isaac Turner made this bizarre non sequitur comment to me a few weeks back when I was asking him about Police Chief Julie Williams' future with the police department: "Bob Daniels is a very good friend and neighbor of mine, and we'll get along fine. Not that Ernie isn't a good friend. Yeah, I guess I'm friends with Ernie, too."

Great. Turner is turning out to be less than useless of late in steering this ship -- all we need is someone on council who is going to stick by Turner through future political disasters.

Maybe I am not being fair. I don't know what Daniels will be like as a councilman, but I'm not very hopeful. I say that I don't know because on the three occasions that I've tried to talk with him or shake his hand, he has abruptly turned and walked away, saying nothing, although during last night's forum, he singled me out, pointed at me, and announced that if I gave him money for his campaign, he wouldn't accept any strings along with it.

Hey Sparky, you're a little slow on the uptake there, ain'tcha? You have about as much chance of getting a donation from me as I have had of getting a simple handshake from you. The fact that I was wearing a Zavodnyik button should have been a big clue, but maybe you don't read so well.

Hell, even Holic shook my hand last night, and I've got a sneaking feeling he would rather shoot me.

John Patten is the editor and publisher of Venice Florida! dot com and had previously worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.