(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) California’s mask and vaccination mandates will be expiring at the beginning of April, including all healthcare facilities, but that doesn’t mean the Left Coast lunacy is stopping.
In response to the expiration, San Francisco Health Officer Susan Philip is implementing an order that makes it a crime to enter 15 types of facilities, including prisons, long-term care facilities or any healthcare building, without a “well-fitted face mask.”
Violators will be punished with fines, imprisonment or both, according to media outlet Hot Air. This announcement comes shortly after several scientists, and even the New York Times, came out saying that masks make no difference.
“Mask mandates were a fool’s errand from the start,” wrote NYT journalist Bret Stephens. “They may have created a false sense of safety — and thus permission to resume semi-normal life. They did almost nothing to advance safety itself.”
Researchers at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center wrote a report drawing similar conclusions.
“These mandates imposed severe restrictions on the lives of many citizens and business owners,” the report read. “Yet, we find no evidence that the mandates were effective in their intended goals of reducing COVID-19 cases and deaths.”
Twitter users were astounded by the draconian mandate news coming out of San Francisco.
“Remember when you had to do something really crazy, like taking your kid to the playground, to risk imprisonment?” one user quipped.
“Where are the class action lawsuits for these mandates that ruined the careers/pensions/lives of our first responders and others?” another asked. “There must be accountability.”
In San Francisco, if you don’t wear a mask, they can put you in prison
The good news is that after they put you in prison, you aren’t required to wear a mask.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that masks are ineffectual, the Biden administration is still in court fighting to re-impose mandates for travel.
California landlords are still struggling to make ends meet, as the eviction moratorium continues to protect tenants from being kicked out of their rentals until the ending of the state of emergency.
(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Embattled Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg threw a tantrum over people being critical about his handling of the disastrous train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
The rant involved swearing and accusations of elitism at his aggressors, all in defense of himself wearing designer boots to the tour of the train wreckage.
According to the Gateway Pundit, Buttigieg even called out former President Donald Trump and Fox News Host Tucker Carlson.
“It’s really rich to see some of these folks – the former president, these Fox hosts – who are literally lifelong card-carrying members of the East Coast elite, whose top economic policy priority has always been tax cuts for the wealthy, and who wouldn’t know their way around a T.J. Maxx if their life depended on it, to be presenting themselves as if they genuinely care about the forgotten middle of the country,” Buttigieg said. “You think Tucker Carlson knows the difference between a T.J. Maxx and a Kohl’s?”
Dress Boots Pete really fits in, huh? What an out of touch, elitist, FRAUD Pete Buttigieg is! Trump bought everyone cleaning supplies, water & McDonalds. Then this @PeteButtigieg clown shows looking like the clueless little dork he is & practically gets run outta East Palestine. pic.twitter.com/yz3MhJQWba
“This is what happens when you promote someone who has no skills to a position of importance,” one commenter tweeted. “It’s not just a photo op job.”
Buttigieg visited the toxic spill wreckage a day after Trump did, when the former president called out the Biden administration for their lack of action.
“I sincerely hope that when your representatives and all of the politicians get here, including Biden, they get back from touring Ukraine, that he’s got some money left over,” Trump told East Palestine residents, who greeted him with cheers during his visit.
Buttigieg called Trump’s preemptive visit “somewhat maddening,” claiming that by disbanding the EPA, Norfolk Southern would be completely without accountability for the derailment.
When asked if Trump’s visit pressured him into going, the secretary swore in response.
“That’s bull***t,” Buttigieg said “We were already going to go.”
When the topic of his boots came up, Buttigieg got emotional, also calling it “maddening.”
“Who cares what shoes I was wearing, when I was there to draw attention to an agenda that will save lives on our railroads?” Buttigieg said.
A wave of demands for Buttigieg’s resignation closely followed the toxic train derailment, led by Carlson, but the Biden admin is standing by him.
“Buttigieg doesn’t have to worry about getting fired… whether it’s sickening attacks on his family or disrespecting a community’s pain with failed attempts at exploitation as a political prop, nothing saps credibility like following debunked smears with even more debunked smears,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates.
(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Bloomberg has published an inside look of Donald Trump’s early 2024 presidential aspirations, revealing that Trump is workshopping potential new nicknames for his perceived main rival in the GOP primaries, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Based on anonymous sources close to Trump, Bloomberg reported Friday that the former president “spends many mornings golfing and then, in the afternoons, plots his political comeback.”
Trump’s plotting consists of brainstorming new nicknames for DeSantis, according to Bloomberg.
“Trump, allies say, seems set on ‘Ron DeSanctimonious,’ even though others around him don’t think it’s a bullseye,” Bloomberg reported. “Some of the new ideas the former president’s entertained: ‘Ron DisHonest.’ ‘Ron DeEstablishment.’ Or even, ‘Tiny D.’”
The Bloomberg article also reported that Trump’s team has spent “weeks” trying to dig up dirt on DeSantis’s record as governor and as a member of Congress, including his support for raising the U.S. retirement age and partly privatizing Medicare.
DeSantis, for his part, has yet to declare his candidacy for the 2024 elections, and he has largely remained silent in the face of increasingly nasty attacks from Trump.
For instance, Trump suggested on his Truth Social account last month that DeSantis is a “groomer.” He reposted a meme featuring what appears to be a young DeSantis with several young ladies drinking beer, with the caption: “Here is Ron DeSanctimonious grooming high school girls with alcohol as a teacher.”
“That’s not Ron, is it?” Trump commented. “He would never do such a thing!”
DeSantis took the high road in response, saying later that month that he’s more focused on “delivering results for the people of Florida and fighting against Joe Biden.
“I don’t spend my time trying to smear other Republicans,” he added.
The Bloomberg story said DeSantis allies are expected to soon unveil a super PAC to support his campaign, which will allow him to raise more money from donors before an official announcement.
“People close to DeSantis expect him to declare he’s running in late May or early June, after Florida’s state legislative session,” Bloomberg reported.
Bloomberg also said that support for DeSantis is growing among conservatives because many voters are seeking “Trump policies without the Trump baggage.”
But the one issue Trump has demonstrated a meaningful difference from all other presidential candidates is his push for peace with Russia. Trump is also the only U.S. president in this century to not entangle the country in war.
“World War 3 has never been closer than it is now. We need to clear house,” Trump correctly said last month. “A lot of people don’t see it, but I see it. And I’ve been right about a lot of things …
“They all say, ‘Trump’s been right about everything.’”
(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) In a recent piece published with the Daily Mail, former president and 2024 hopeful Donald Trump demanded that China pay reparations for the massive damage caused by the leak of the Coronavirus from a Wuhan lab.
According to Trump, “the cover-up of COVID-19’s origins is one of the greatest scandals in the history of the world. Millions of people all over the planet have died from the China Virus.”
The former president also noted that the world must collectively work to hold China accountable for the destruction that they unleashed.
“Now it’s time to hold China—and the corrupt forces who have facilitated this colossal suppression of facts—accountable for the damage they have inflicted upon all of humanity.”
He also reminded people that the work of spreading COVID was not the work of China alone. They were assisted by the rest of the globalist establishment, which was pushing for what they would call the “Great Reset.”
“The entire globalist establishment—from the World Health Organization, to the media, to Anthony Fauci and the public health authorities, to the corrupt Silicon Valley tech giants, to Joe Biden—worked relentlessly to silence, censor, and shut down any suggestion that the so-called ‘lab leak theory’ could be true.”
As such, “the World Health Organization must also be held to account” because it “did China’s bidding” and “covered up for China at every turn.”
But above all, according to the former president, we must hold China financially responsible for unleashing this plague upon the world.
“It is clear that the nations of the world are not just owed a massive apology; they are owed massive damages,” he wrote. “To collect this compensation, nothing should be off the table—tariffs, taxes, and a global summit on reparations.”
Some on the Right, however, did not let Trump entirely off the hook for COVID lock downs.
Hot Air, for example, published a piece noting that though he was not directly responsible for the most egregious aspects of the Coronavirus, many things still happened under his watch.
“Trump wasn’t directly responsible for these moves, and almost certainly didn’t even know about them, but they still happened on his watch,” they wrote.
“So did the cover-up; he allowed Fauci and Collins to run the pandemic after that as well, and reportedly Fauci used that time to try to cook a report that would shut down any inquiry into the lab leak.”
(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) A leaked memo revealed that the Biden administration is purposefully raising royalty fees for fossil fuel companies to drill, despite the fact that it would provide “greater energy security.”
In 2022, Amanda Lefton, former Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, recommended the royalty hike as part of the Department of the Interior’s climate agenda, Fox News reported. DOI opted to go with the greater royalty fees for the Cook Inlet off the coast of Alaska.
“If a Cook Inlet prospect would be developed, there would be additional government revenues and greater energy security for the State of Alaska, especially if development of natural gas resources in the Cook Inlet ameliorated the long-term supply challenges facing the Anchorage area,” Lefton wrote in the memo.
Lefton continued, arguing against the prospecting of the land due to climate change concerns.
“Nevertheless, because of the serious challenges facing the Nation from climate change and the impact of [greenhouse gasses] from fossil fuels, BOEM is not recommending this option since it would not include an appropriate surcharge to account for those impacts,” she added.
The royalties were raised from 16.67% to 18.75%, which Lefton also argued would bring in more bids and “be more likely to facilitate expeditious and orderly development of [offshore] resources.”
DOI Assistant Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis signed off on the recommendation, agreeing that the spike “constitutes the most reasonable balancing of environmental and economic factors for the American public.”
The auction took place on Dec 30, and garnered one bid of $63,983 for 2,304 acres. The bid was later cancelled, despite the bid being mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act.
“I am appalled by its contents, which make crystal clear that this administration is literally putting their radical climate agenda ahead of the needs of the people of Alaska and the United States,” he said. “I will not support anyone who agrees with this type of misguided reasoning.”
It was just the latest in an endless parade of things that the Left was for before it was against, to borrow a catchphrase from consummate waffler John Kerry.
It is hard, in fact, to come up with a position on their current platform where Democrats have not flip-flopped when political opportunism or necessity struck.
And so it was that the only party ever to have seceded from the Union found itself comparing Greene to its own former leader, Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Jefferson Davis Greene wants a “national divorce” she is a traitor and needs to go to jail for sedition….why isn’t anybody doing anything…. pic.twitter.com/CFnXxkYiV3
But in fairness to Democrats of yore, while one could armchair-quarterback whether the ends justified the means in eradicating slavery, the provocative actions of radical Republican abolitionists like John Brown—who murdered innocent families, and raped women and children—offered at least some justification to antebellum Southern Democrats.
Their own elected leaders, Democrat presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, had failed to fix the problem of how to phase out the barbaric practice, and the prospect of Republican President Abraham Lincoln effecting a peaceable solution that did not threaten their lives and livelihoods seemed grim, even to the vast majority of Southern families who owned few or no slaves.
The impasse was a lot like the current one that America faces under an extreme Left that, like John Brown, would rather destroy every last shred of civility and compromise than to coexist with the “evil” customs of the status quo.
Instead of slavery, though, the great evil of the modern era is democracy itself.
NO ALTERNATIVES
A system that gives everybody one voice and one vote is, after all, inherently unfair to a party that regards itself as perpetually oppressed and marginalized by the cultural (and political) majority.
That leaves only a limited range of solutions, not unlike those in the classic 1996 movie Independence Day.
Indeed, Greene’s call for a brokered settlement—a conscious uncoupling, if you will, of red- and blue-majority states—may be the only realistic solution that will avert a national strife so horrific that it will make the bloody and violent Civil War feel like the leisurely, guided tours of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by comparison.
Already, President Joe Biden has raised the stakes by warning would-be freedom fighters that it will take more than a few hunting rifles to secure their God-given right to liberty.
If the only glue binding together the union is a threat of military force and unthinkable bloodshed, then it is already lost.
Nonetheless, not everyone is on board yet with the formal terms of Greene’s divorce proposal.
Shockingly, while Democrats would get prime territory from the bargain—including America’s three most populous cities, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as its most desirable coastal real estate—some have scoffed at the idea.
What, after all, is the point of their unrelenting pursuit of wealth and power through Leninist social revolution if, in the end, there is nobody of consequence for them to exert their dominion over?
Or, more cynically, perhaps, maybe their kneejerk aversion to the idea comes by virtue of the fact that Greene said what they, themselves, had secretly been thinking.
And in some cases, as with the unabashedly leftist New York Review, those thoughts were not so secret.
UNITED IN DISUNITY
Just weeks before the 2022 election, as the idea of a red-wave reckoning against the Biden administration was at its fever pitch, leftist academes Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson offered up the very same idea as Greene but seemed to draw none of the performative objections that she did.
“Several commentators have suggested that, historically, radical swings in domestic politics and virulent strains of racism and fascism have in fact been normal in the United States, and that talk of prospective large-scale political violence is therefore overblown,” said the stochastic terrorist duo in their Sept. 22 screed titled “These Disunited States.”
“But the breadth and depth of the present threat to the country seems unprecedented in post–Civil War America,” they continued. “… The US now appears to be in a state of ‘unstable equilibrium’—a term originating in physics to describe a body whose slight displacement will cause other forces to move it even further [sic] away from its original position.”
At times, their thought-piece turned into a farcical clown-show of projectionism, spuriously suggesting that Republicans alone were to blame for refusing to roll over to a radical agenda that the Biden administration lacks any mandate or authority to enact.
“Although Democrats occasionally reveal impulses toward reconciliation, Republicans largely do not,” they whined. “Most have put up implacable resistance to Biden’s efforts” in areas like the economy and the environment where Biden’s policies have proven to be abject failures.
But ultimately, their proposed solution proved that there is one area in which the radical Left and members of the conservative Right, such as Greene, can find common ground.
“The splits between the two halves of the nation—red and blue, right and left—increasingly appear irreconcilable,” they said.
“Today, new state legislation on abortion, LGBTQ rights, gun rights, free speech, and public health is making red and blue states radically different,” they continued—accurately, albeit from the wrong vantage point. “Many Americans have relegated their political adversaries to the category of ‘the other,’ an ominous prelude to the dehumanization that facilitates violence in civil conflict.”
Simon and Stevenson went on to suggest that the threat of right-wing violence just might lead to entirely justifiable left-wing violence, and that the danger of a radical Republican establishment assuming control through the democratic process would be a valid reason for leftists to want to secede, rather than allowing practices they disagree with to become further entrenched.
“Before civil strife acquires critical momentum, Democrats need to embrace a more radical political solution to stave it off,” they decided.
“Purposeful defederalization is one possibility,” they added. “There is a case to be made that the raison d’être for federalism has passed.”
SALVAGING A HOUSE DIVIDED
The ironic juxtaposition of this five-month-old treason treatise with the reaction to Greene’s tweet is, of course, a source for smug amusement for conservatives. But then, pointing out Democrat hypocrisy has grown a bit old and tiresome, like shooting fish in a barrel.
There is a more important point to be gleaned from it, which is that the idea of a separation may be the only way to save a country so dangerously divided that both parties agree a split is necessary.
Achieving such an end will not be easy—and it may take a bipartisan coalition of candidates who actively campaign on negotiating its terms in the same way that the country was forged.
That would allow us to establish a special relationship between the new nations—let’s call them Trumpland and Obamica—recognizing that there will still be more in common between them than any other two countries given their shared cultural history and, presumably, their roots in democratic principles.
Perhaps, at least for a time, there might even be an open-borders agreement to allow those caught in the wrong territory to resettle elsewhere.
Some might argue that dividing the nation in two would weaken its position as a global super-power to counter the occidental alliance of China and Russia.
However, those countries are already exploiting America’s intrinsic ideological differences in order to weaken and distract us. So, to remove the bickering from within should help sharpen our focus on the extrinsic threats.
While it is true, as Lincoln said, that a house divided against itself cannot stand, a house built on a seismic fault-line such as ours is better off relocating altogether.
(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A U.S. appeals court ruled Monday that Twitter is not allowed to legally disclose information about the FBI’s surveillance of users on the social media platform.
The appeals court’s decision comes as new Twitter CEO Elon Musk is releasing internal records about the company’s censorship’s decisions—dubbed the “Twitter Files.” This latest court ruling stems from a separate, though similar, dispute between Twitter and the U.S. government that dates back nearly 10 years, when whistleblower Edward Snowden released a trove of documents about the NSA’s mass surveillance.
Snowden’s disclosures led to ostensible transparency reforms within the U.S. government. In early 2014, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper declassified “certain data” about surveillance the U.S. government conducts on social media platforms, allowing tech companies to disclose that information to the public.
But when Twitter tried to publish a “transparency report” about the number of governmental surveillance requests it received between July and December 2013, the FBI moved to block the company from doing so.
Twitter sued the U.S. government in October 2014 over the matter, seeking court permission to disclose the number of national security letters and FISA orders it received. National security letters are FBI orders for “subscriber information and toll billing records information, or electronic communication transactional records.”
The FBI opposed Twitter from releasing such information, arguing that it would reveal incremental increases or decreases in surveillance over time, which would allow bad actors to determine how much of a presence the FBI has on Twitter or other platforms.
The FBI also argued that Twitter releasing surveillance data would “show whether and to what extent the Government is collecting certain types of information on that platform.”
Finally, the U.S. government argued that Twitter’s disclosures would show whether the platform received a particular type of surveillance request at all, which may reflect different collection capabilities, different types of information collected and locations of FBI targets.
Instead of releasing the number of surveillance requests, the FBI said Twitter should instead seek “to place the numbers in context” by informing users that, for instance, “only an infinitesimally small percentage of its total number of active users was affected” by government surveillance requests,” the government argued.
Twitter would thus be “permitted to qualify its description of the total number of accounts affected by all national security legal process it has received but it cannot quantify that description with the specific detail,” the appeals court noted in its decision.
Twitter’s lawsuit dragged through the courts for years, delayed in part by Congress passing the FREEDOM Act in 2015, which made further reforms to the FISA transparency process.
Twitter’s attempts to challenge the FBI’s secrecy were further frustrated by the fact that the U.S. government refused to provide the company classified information that was relevant to the litigation. Even when one of Twitter’s lawyers obtained a security clearance so that he could review the classified information, the FBI still refused to divulge such info—which Twitter argued violated its right to due process.
A district court ruled in the FBI’s favor in April 2020, and Twitter appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
On Monday, the Ninth Circuit upheld the lower court’s decision.
“The government may not fend off every First Amendment challenge by invoking national security. But we must apply the First Amendment with due regard for the government’s compelling interest in securing the safety of our country and its people,” the appeals court ruled. “We hold here that, both as a matter of substance and procedure, the government’s restriction on Twitter’s speech did not violate the First Amendment.”
The Ninth Circuit also shot down Twitter’s argument that it’s lack of access to classified documents related to the litigation violated due process.
“The process afforded to Twitter was constitutionally sufficient, even without its having received classified materials,” the appeals court ruled, adding, “In a case such as this, requiring courts to evaluate the perceived trustworthiness of individual litigants in their receipt of classified information would invite a weighing of interests that is beyond our role.”
The House Weaponization Subcommittee is set to hold its second hearing on the Twitter Files on Thursday. This hearing will feature reporter Matt Taibbi, who has broken many of the stories related to the Twitter Files.
(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Two illegal immigrants who reportedly shot and killed a bald eagle to eat for dinner have been let off the hook by federal authorities.
The incident took place in Stanton County, Nebraska, where authorities have allowed the illegal immigrants to go free despite their criminal activity. Both will be charged with misdemeanors, and will go to court on March 28, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Officials discovered the two Hondurans at the Wood Duck State Wildlife Management area on Feb. 28, carrying a dead bald eagle with them, which they reportedly wanted to cook for dinner.
They spoke no English and carried no documentation.
County sheriff Mike Unger noted that, though he would like to have held them longer, state law forced him to let the illegals walk. Only the federal government could have held them.
According to the report, “killing a bald eagle is a violation of the1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, a federal law that carries a punishment of up to one year in prison.”
Charges can only be brought by federal authorities at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which did not respond to Unger.
“I’m very frustrated with the federal government,” Unger said, noting that the incident has left residents “disturbed” and “offended.”
He also noted that their killing of the protected species was particularly brutal.
“I’m trying to be as politically correct as possible when I say this but I don’t know what kind of third-world life they’re coming from, but it must have been pretty bad,” Unger said.
The illegal immigrants allegedly killed the bird with an air rifle.
The story is just the latest incident of illegal immigrants getting special treatment while Americans suffer the full force of the law at every turn.
Last summer a 79-year-old Ohio man was fined $10,000 for killing a bald eagle. He was also barred from hunting for five years. In 2017 a 62-year-old Virginia shot a bald eagle and ran over the bird with his all-terrain vehicle because he was “upset it had been hunting and taking fish from a pond located on his property.”
He was sentenced to a month of house arrest, $2,000 in fines and 100 hours of community service.
(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) First lady and renowned academic Dr. Jill Biden dismissed the idea of a mental competency test for elderly politicians, including her husband, President Joe Biden.
When asked about the idea of a test, which has been floated in recent weeks, Dr. Jill responded unfavorably, CNN reported.
“Ridiculous,” the first lady said, responding to Nikki Haley’s proposal that there be a mental competency test for older politicians. She also cited her husband’s track record of travelling the world as proof of his mental capacity.
“How many 30-year-olds could travel to Poland, get on the train? Go nine more hours, go to Ukraine, meet with President (Volodymyr) Zelensky?” she said. “So, look at the man. Look what he’s doing. Look what he continues to do each and every day.”
Biden was also backed by fellow geriatric Democrat, Sen. Bernie Sanders of New Hampshire, who called Haley’s comments another instance of the ageism that allegedly plagues our nation.
“We are fighting racism. We’re fighting sexism. We’re fighting homophobia. I think we should also be fighting ageism,” the melodramatic senator said.
“Trust people, look at people, and say, ‘You know, this person is competent. This person’s incompetent.’ There are a lot of 40-year-olds out there who ain’t particularly competent,” Sanders added.
Biden’s tenure as President so far, however, has been nothing but a longseries of gaffes.
Most recently, Biden nearly took a tumble once again while trying to climb the steps of Air Force One just weeks after he had previously stumbled up those steps.
Biden’s latest stumble and fall on Air Force One departing Poland.
Maybe it’s time to install one of those nursing home chair lifts and be done with it? pic.twitter.com/oef4XNTOSn
Biden stumbles on the stairs of Air Force One again in Alabama https://t.co/L5KPsF8hMG via @MailOnline When is Biden going to stumble into East Palestine Ohio???
(Bethany Blankley, The Center Square) The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned eight Mexican companies and three members of the violent Mexican cartel, Cartel de Jaslisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG), for targeting Americans and others in a timeshare fraud scam in and near Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico.
Scam proceeds were used to finance trafficking of fentanyl and other drugs into the U.S.
Three violent senior CJNG members were designated: Carlos Andres Rivera Varela (“La Firma”), Francisco Javier Gudino Haro (“La Gallina”) and Julio Cesar Montero Pinzon (“El Tarjetas”). They were CJNG enforcers based in Puerto Vallarta responsible for orchestrating “assassinations of rivals and politicians using high-powered weaponry,” OFAC said.
“As CJNG has consolidated territory over the past decade, it has added other crimes to its core activity of drug trafficking,” OFAC Director Andrea Gacki said. “In tourist destinations such as Puerto Vallarta, CJNG has become heavily engaged in timeshare fraud, which often targets U.S. citizens. This crime, which can defraud victims of their life savings, results in another significant revenue stream for the cartel and strengthens its overall criminal enterprise. Today’s action exposes this CJNG scheme and also serves as a warning to potential victims, many of whom are elderly.”
In 2015, OFAC first sanctioned CJNG under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act “for playing a significant role in international narcotics trafficking.” Since then, it’s “designated numerous CJNG-linked companies engaging in various commercial activities and multiple individuals who played critical roles in CJNG’s drug trafficking, money laundering, and corruption,” it says.
The Treasury Department made the announcement after it sanctioned several Mexican nationals, Sinaloa Cartel members and six Mexico-based entities last month for their involvement in the illicit methamphetamine and fentanyl trade.
Mexican timeshare fraud schemes often involve third-party scammers, OFAC said, where companies claim to have ready buyers and make unsolicited purchase offers to timeshare owners. If their offers are accepted, potential timeshare owners are asked to pay fees and taxes in advance to “facilitate or expedite the sale with assurances of reimbursement upon closing.” Once multiple payments are made it’s too late; timeshare owners realize the offers were fake, there were no buyers, and their money was stolen.
Eight companies OFAC designated are directly or indirectly linked to CJNG’s timeshare fraud activities, which claimed to be financial services or real estate companies. Five were in Puerto Vallerta: Servicios Administrativos Fordtwoo, S.A. de C.V., Integracion Badeva, S.A. de C.V., JM Providers Office, S.A. de C.V., Promotora Vallarta One, S.A. de C.V., and Recservi, S.A. de C.V. Servicios Administrativos Fordtwoo, S.A. de C.V. also made direct payments to CJNG members, OFAC said.
Three were in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico: Corporativo Title I, S.A. de C.V., Corporativo TS Business Inc, S.A. de C.V., and TS Business Corporativo, S.A. de C.V.
Once sanctioned, all designated entities and individuals’ properties and interests in properties are blocked and must be reported to OFAC. All transactions by U.S. citizens and residents with designated entities and individuals are also prohibited.
In 2020, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Securities and Exchange Commission issued a joint warning to Americans about Mexican timeshare scams. Anyone victimized by Mexican timeshare scams can file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
OFAC also issued an alert about timeshare scams on Wednesday, warning that perpetrators were engaging in telephone, email, and letter scams falsely claiming to represent OFAC and requesting payments.
“These scammers often demand payments, occasionally described as ‘fees’ or ‘taxes,’ necessary for OFAC to release funds or pay some form of restitution,” it warned. “These communications are fraudulent and are not initiated by OFAC. OFAC does not collect, demand, or request this type of payment from members of the public.”
It warns Americans not to share any personal or confidential information with, or make any payments to, anyone purporting to represent OFAC. Scams can also be reported here.
