Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The Llc. shuffle exposed


Bonnecarre gave what could prove to be crucial testimony when she said that NetMethods paid for a shipment by another St. Pierre firm to Dell on behalf of the New Orleans Police Department. The defense has always maintained that NetMethods could legitimately pay for Meffert and Mayor Ray Nagin to take various trips because it wasn't doing any business with the city and was completely separate from St. Pierre's other firm, Veracent, which did have the city account.

Oops. You screwed that one up guys.

They were throwing up Llc.'s in order to shield themselves from the appearance of inside dealing and kickbacks, but they apparently screwed the pooch on that one. Veracent was set up essentially as a billing shell company to shield/separate/hide their other companies from city contracts. Not that the multiple Llc. scheme would hold up in criminal court anyway, but in the civil case it may have had legs. Doesn't look like that anymore.

Remember, during Meffert's deposition, Glad Jones called the multiple company shield strategy (I just made that up, MCSS....like it?) out and told Randy Smith, "I know that's your defense strategy....good luck with that."

Apparently they didn't even get that strategy right and billed Dell through Netmethods instead of Veracent. Doh. They didn't even stick to their own plan...silly rabbits. That's going to make things all the more easier to enforce RICO in the criminal case. Things are definitely not looking good for Muppet and St. Pierre...but now I would say things are looking increasingly bad for the mayor.

Just my view from afar...wish it was up close. I would love to be in that courtroom blogging the whole thing.

11 comments:

GentillyGirl said...

Darlin', they would issue a 'cease & desist" order on you. *grins*

Anonymous said...

If you hadn't gotten slightly obsessed, this might not have come to light at all.

Thank you. We all owe you big time.

Clay said...

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2009/09/greg_meffert_spends_seven_hour.html

7 Hours of Testimony. Still lots of landmines still out there for him to step on. I'm sure the feds will be paying close attention.

He claims he took a pay cut to work
for the city. He claims he was making over $300,000 as an IBM RS 400 (really obsolete database system) admin. HA! You really think any sys admin makes mid-6 figures? No fucking way. He took that job in the middle of the tech bust as a lifeline. He would have been screwed without it.

And yet, certain people still refer to him as a "Whiz Kid"...

Anonymous said...

He did a lot of damage today to the plaintiffs. Meffert crushed Jim Garner as even the jurors were laughing at Garner not with him. It was a disasterous day for the plaintiffs. Garner should be sitting in the stands as its evident the jurors don't like him at all.

Anonymous said...

What amazes me is that people who have done illegal and/or unethical things, who have padded their resumes and ripped off the people they were supposed to be serving, still think of themselves as Big Shots or special...

...while looking down on ordinary citizens and denizens, Charity Hospital patients, little old lady homeowners who happen to be black, renters, waitresses, kids (their own or the city kids whose lives they make harder)...

...and even bloggers, who are described as "disreputable" by people who don't seem to grock that they aren't better than other people, and that their nepotisitic self-dealing and missuse of public funds makes them much, much worse.

Anonymous said...

What Meffert and Netmethods have not explained, and I haven't seen discussed, is WHY would Netmethods agree/want to "supplement" Meffert's city salary?

Was this Netmethods' way of giving back to the city by allowing the Mayor to hire such a grand wizard of AS400 db administration to run the entire city IT infrastructure? (I doubt it)

And why is this ok?

Meffert appears to be trying to diminish this issue with the jury by acting like this is standard procedure. "Well, you know, Netmethods and I discussed this before I took the job.."

Well who the F cares!:

Would this work in court?: "Well, I did have an agreement with my brother that I would be the lookout in the bankrobbery. This was discussed WAY before we robbed the bank."

sheesh...

Anonymous said...

End of the day Nagin, Meffert, Drake, Fury-Jennings, St. Pierre, and others will end up in federal prison stripes. The more I listen to this case the more its evident this case would have been won by the plaintiffs had they brought in the real creator of the wireless system as a co-plaintiff.

Anonymous said...

@anonymous - "The more I listen to this case the more its evident this case would have been won by the plaintiffs had they..."

...uh, so youre, like, a legal expert of some kind, are you? and its your expert legal expertise that is already making excuses for why meffert may not lose?

give me a break dude. while its fun to say meffert was just an AS400 operator we all know that isnt true. like him or not he ran several successful startups which sold for bucks (thats more than most IT guys i know can say. how about you?). the guy was good at what he did.

now, maybe he got greedy and threw it all away for silly kickbacks. it certainly appears that way. wouldnt be the first and wont be the last, unfortunately.

but thats got little to do with THIS case, the case wherein Southern claims their precious "secret technology" (cough off-the-shelf-cough) was stolen by meffert.

get it?

Clay said...

http://theamericanzombie.blogspot.com/2007/03/garlandmeffert-interview.html

Meffert said he was a Sys Admin prior to working for the city during the WWL interview. He was not some whoopdy-do entrepreneur.

Meffert has a liberal arts degree, not computer science or engineering. Now, there are plenty of good programmers out there that don't have a degree, but that's one more factor not in his favor.

Meffert is a boldface liar. Plain and simple. There's a set of perjury charges with his name on it in the near future.

Anonymous said...

To the Mister who wrote about Meffert being good at what he did:

What he was good at was that old sideshow shell game, only with companies, not with the cups and the balls.

Though it does take a pair to be so brazen.

Anonymous said...

@clay - not defending his actions but do yer homework. meffert started a 'certified email' startup that he sold and made a lot of money from. the dude is/was loaded. there were a shit-ton of articles about his companies in City Business and other rags.

all im sayin is while its easy to bash now, at the time he seemed like the right guy for the job -- successful IT biz manager. hell he WAS the right guy for the job. then he blew it.

if ya could see the level of ineptitude running the city's IT now, youd understand the sentiment. the city needs capable, experienced (AND uncorruptable) IT leadership. unfortunately meffert was the closest thing its had to that.

ya grok?