I have reason to believe sean bielat is embezzling from his campaign. I don’t know for sure, but barney frank should ask the fec or doj to investigate. He has two large (4 digit) reimbursements to himself listed in his fec reports with no explanation but “expenses”. Another, supposedly for the at&t phone bill, also makes no sense. It is much larger than his campaign’s direct payments to at&t. And by the way, why is the campaign paying 3 different phone service providers (sprint, at&t and “the prosper group”)? Is it paying his personal phone bills? One last thing that I know is illegal: he’s paying his staff as consultants to evade payroll taxes. How do I know? Not a single person gets the odd numbered payments you see in your paycheck, which result from money going to pay for payroll taxes. And there are no payments to the gubmint for the employer share of those taxes.
A consultant is a business person in their own right. There is a thing called ‘self-employed’ where you pay your own taxes, you see. Not EVERYBODY in the world is a W-21 wage slave.
<
p>Cell phone(s), land line(s), internet – right there are three ‘phone bills’.
<
p>’Embezzling’ is a very strong word the day before an election. But you have ZERO eveidnce or citation, don’t you?
While Republican candidates do not want to pay taxes or offer benefits to people who work in their campaign, like Scott Brown, it’s not illegal.
<
p>Bielat is not even close to Frank, the last thing Frank wants to do is bring any kind of attention to him or negative attention to himself. If there is any kind of wrong doing it will be reviewed after the election.
What you have written here is little better (you should hope) than libelous, paranoid ranting.
<
p>”Large” reimbursements to candidates is common. Here the two total about $8,000. Hardly huge in the context of a more than $1 million campaign.
<
p>More tellingly, these are reported expenditures. Pretty rare, don’t you think, that an embezzler would publicly report his own embezzlement?
<
p>The phone bill stuff is ridiculous. Yes, the candidate’s own cell phone bill, I would guess, is larger than the other AT&T bills. And, yes, a couple of the other staffers happen to have Sprint. And, no way!, some parts of the campaign use VOIP services provided by the Republican-leaning Prosper Group (no “air quotes” needed if you have Google: http://www.prospergroupcorp.com/ )
<
p>The consultant versus staff issue is somewhat interesting but certainly not an illegal decision in most cases.
<
p>P.S. I support Barney Frank anyway.
If the reimbursements were explained I might trust them. But there is no explanation. That in itself is illegal, and hints at a coverup. The staff vs consultant decision is not an area where you have leeway. A field organizer, finance assistant, or other lowranking person does not under any circumstance qualify as an independent contractor. They are entirely subject to the candidate’s direction and control in how they go about their duties. A campaign manager might. The scott brown reference is apt, but not for the reason you think. In his case it was totally illegal, and he paid the payroll taxes a few days after the issue hit the news. Would have been a big deal if coakley had been competent. Pp, its all in his fec reports. If you’re too lazy to type in fec.gov, I can’t really help you there.
sells VOIP phone service with data acquisition. Most GOP candidates and the RNC use them now. This is different than an internet provider or a telephony company who sells the bandwith.