On Q Professional Investigations

A dispute about parking at a Near North Side nightclub early Friday ended with security guards detaining a man who they said threatened them with a gun.

The guards told police that they asked Van M. Johnson, 30, to move his Chevrolet Camaro out of the valet parking lot in the 800 block of North Orleans Street. Johnson argued, police said, and the guards eventually told the Near West Side man that he wouldn’t be allowed back inside the nightclub but that he still needed to move the car.

At that point, prosecutors said, Johnson retrieved a revolver from the car’s glove box and threatened the security guards. When the guards drew their own weapons, Johnson complied and was detained until police arrived at around 2:25 a.m., his arrest report said. Officers recovered a .32-caliber revolver loaded with four live rounds from his car.

Johnson, of the 2200 block of West Monroe Street, was charged with three felony counts of aggravated assault on a peace officer with a weapon, as well as a single felony count of aggravated unauthorized use of a weapon.

In bond court Saturday, Judge Laura Marie Sullivan ordered him held on $25,000 bail.

Court records didn’t name the nightclub.

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At the height of the tax season, federal agents on Thursday rounded up about 25 South Florida suspects charged with stealing Social Security numbers and other personal information from unwitting victims to file fraudulent income-tax returns in their names.

The takedown, carried out at the crack of dawn, is the latest in a series of sweeps through South Florida to combat the ever-spreading crimes of ID theft and tax-refund fraud that are costing the U.S. government billions of dollars a year.

U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer, who has launched the only task force in the nation to crack down on the dual crimes, plans to hold a news conference Thursday morning to spotlight the latest arrests before the April 15 tax filing deadline and South Florida’s dubious reputation as the capital of these twin crimes.

Since 2012, his office has prosecuted upwards of 200 defendants who have filed hundreds of millions of dollars in false refund claims with the Internal Revenue Service.

Thursday’s takedown was carried out by dozens of agents with the FBI, IRS, Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies.

Critics say the IRS is partly to blame for the escalating crisis because the agency issues refunds so rapidly in the digital age without checking the accuracy of the information on tax returns, including failing to investigate suspicious claims with stolen names, birthdates and Social Security numbers along with totally fabricated employment and income information.

The IRS has admitted that it rarely checks tax documents such as W-2 income forms in real time to see if employees’ returns match information provided by their employers. That has given tax-fraud offenders ample time early in the tax season to use stolen identities, swiped from hospitals, police stations and other places, to beat legitimate tax filers to the punch.

The problem has spiraled so out of control that some South Florida perpetrators haven’t even bothered with stealing people’s identities to commit tax fraud. They have simply filed phony refund claims for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in their own names and the IRS has issued them the massive refunds in the form of checks or debit cards.

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Washington DC April 2 2014

Take a company called “Landshark,” bogus bank officials and telemarketers who literally will not take “no” for an answer and how can that ever end well?

Five Canadian and American companies worked together to trick American senior citizens into buying about $20 million in bogus services, the Federal Trade Commission said Monday as it announced a lawsuit and a court order shutting the companies down pending trial.

In some cases, the telemarketers didn’t bother getting approval for a sale, the FTC charged: They just took the money from consumers’ accounts without their knowledge.

Callers tricked seniors into revealing bank account and routing numbers during calls in which telemarketers posed as government, bank or insurance officials.

Callers sometimes got consumers to agree to purchase products like fraud protection by scaring them into thinking their accounts were under threat.

But whether they were selling fraud protection or medical discount plans, the FTC said, the prices quoted were often substantially lower than the $187 to $397 payments the companies took from consumers’ accounts between May 2011 and December 2013.

Telemarketing companies are required to keep recordings of calls that show a purchase was authorized, but the FTC says the companies got around that by leading consumers through a series of questions designed to have them answer “yes.” Callers went so far as to instruct consumers they were required to answer with a yes.

Not surprisingly, some consumers only realized they’d made a purchase when they saw the debits on their bank statements.

The suit said the defendants created a “labyrinth” of shell companies to avoid detection by banks and payment processors, which often terminate agreements with companies that have high dispute rates.

Companies named in the FTC suit are First Consumers in Pennsylvania; Standard American Marketing, dba Trust One Services, in Arizona; PowerPlay Industries in Florida; and two Quebec companies, Landshark Holdings and Madicom. A federal court in Pennsylvania issued the preliminary injunction closing the operations.

The suit also names Ari Tietolman, a Quebec man the FTC says played key roles in all the companies.

There are plenty of lessons consumers can draw from this one:

• Never reveal a bank account or routing number to anyone who calls you. Your bank already knows your account number, and no one from the government will call you to ask.

• Check your bank statements carefully every month. It’s easier to get fraudulent payment back – and head off additional payments – if you report the problem right away.

• If you suspect a call isn’t on the level, or spot a fraudulent debit or charge, report the scheme to the FTC right away at ftc.gov or 1-877-382-4357.

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Dozens of stolen vehicles discovered in a Far South Side salvage yard Monday may have been part of a scheme that involved scrapping cars and trucks for parts, a source familiar with the investigation said.

Police in the South Chicago District, where the salvage yard is located, have seen a dramatic jump in the number of vehicle thefts in recent months, according to the source, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation.

After one theft that occurred late Sunday or early Monday, a group of relatives scoured the area for the missing vehicle, according to the source. The group spotted the stolen vehicle in the salvage yard, which is located in the 3000 block of East 106th Street, the source said.

Police arrived at the lot about 11 a.m. for a report of a stolen vehicle, Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Thomas Sweeney said Monday. When officers arrived, they found the vehicle in a business parking and storage area, and on further investigation, determined there were a number of other vehicles parked at the lot that had been reported stolen, Sweeney said.

Because of the “volume and complexity” of the investigation, “disposition is expected to take some time,” Sweeney said.

Between 70 and 100 stolen vehicles were believed to have been in the salvage yard at the time, according to the source familiar with the investigation. Many of the vehicles were commercial vehicles, from businesses such as plumbing companies, the source said.

Police believe a group of people affiliated with a towing company had been stealing vehicles for six months, the source said.

“It could be scores and scores, dozens and dozens of people” who were involved, the source said.

A man connected with the business at the property is in police custody and has admitted to knowing about an operation involving the stolen vehicles, another official said. Police were preparing a search warrant to more thoroughly search the property and connections to any possible illegal activity.

The News Affairs office has not confirmed an estimate of the number of vehicles involved.

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