If you are someone interested in CalPERS (California Pension) FRAUD, this will be of interest to you. (The rest of you will have no idea what this is about, nor will you care. But investigators, reporters and other interested parties...here's what an insider sent in, today...and the person has had ENOUGH:
CalPERS STEPTOE REPORT
TRIPS-UP
PENSION-GATE CONTINUES
I recently had the comic relief of reading the March 2011 Steptoe Report which was a special review of CalPERS policies and procedures regards to placement agents. We have all come to know and love the comedy that comes from reading how the likes of disgraced Dan Weinstein of Wetherly Capital or disgraced Al Villalobos of ARVCO "steptoed" around unsuspecting CalPERS board members and consultants who were hired, and in most cases paid millions of dollars in fees, to ensure two-bit thugs like Weinstein and Villalobos are kept away from the hard earned benefits of the pensioners of our great state of California. When one reads the report, however, one only gets a glimpse into the culpability of the crimes.
Steptoe and Johnson,LLP and their vaudevillian partners at Navigant Consulting, Inc, the authors of the review, seem only to have scratched the obvious surface in rooting out and defining all the parties involved. It's as if they brought in a hack summer intern reporter from the Sacramento Bee and asked "you mind writing this report for us?". I'm not here to defend the likes of Weinstein and Villalobos, but the whole story must be told for the CalPERS board to finally clean house.
I absolutely do not buy into the premise that the consultants at places like CalPERS and LAFP were not complicit in the shenanigans that took place. One first needs to understand the process an investment goes through before a pension fund invests to realize that there were armies of consultants and lawyers paid by our taxpayer dollars to review investments on behalf of the board. The Steptoe Report would have us all believe that placement agents had the ultimate authority to write checks and make investments on behalf of CalPERS. It's as if former disgraced CalPERS CEO Fred Buenrostro had the checkbook and Weinstein and Villalobos were handing him the pen. That premise could not be further from the truth.
Each and every investment made by CalPERS and voted at the board level received review by an outside consultant. Yet besides disgraced scapegoat consultant Chris Bower of Pacific Corporate Group (PCG), I couldn't find another consultants name in the report. It was these consultants like Bower and his former partner Mike Moy at PCG and Allan Emkin at Pension Consulting Alliance (PCA) that made millions of dollars each year reviewing investments on behalf of the retired workers. Didn't these guys see what was going on? I thought we payed these guys to root out this type of chicanery? How is it that these guys are not heading to the same fate as Villalobos and Weinstein?
The report mentions that PCG under Chris Bower actually hired Villalobos to represent PCG! That's were the report stops and doesn't even mention the incestuous nature and history of all these guys living off the pension fund as parasite consultants advising the board. They all seem to be on eachothers payroll in one way or another or have worked together in government over the years. Matter if fact, and case in point, there are still consultants opining on investments for CalPERS who were at the center of the storm of all the chicanery and shenanigans that took place in the past.
An example of these continuing incestuous relationships is the present CalPERS consultant Pension Consulting Alliance (PCA) and it's managing directors Allan Emkin and yes..... Mike Moy. Mike Moy has jumped ship from disgraced PCG to disgraced PCA!!!!! Talk about incestuous! You probably remember PCA from the old days at LAFP when Emkin's name pops up on SEC requests demanded from former disgraced board members at LAFP where that board had the brains to rid themselves of Emkin's services as a consultant. Or maybe you remember Emkin from his days as a registered lobbyist or when he worked for the governor in the pension and investment group. This guy has made a living in one way or the other of taking shots around the hoop of peoples pensions and especially disgraced pension programs at that. How is anyone to feel comfortable that his lack of judgement and failed oversight isn't continuing?
Are you listening voters? He is still consulting CalPERS! Say whaaaaaat? PCA is briefly mentioned on pg 30 of the Steptoe Report as having partially stood up to the thugs on CalPERS former staff, but the deal still got done! PCA just didn't have the tenacity to draw a line and just say "NO" and yet they are still providing consult at CalPERS! Clearly the incestuous relationships that people like Emkin and Moy at PCA have has weakened their resolve. One would think that after considering Moy's former position as managing director and board member at disgraced PCG that he would not be allowed to come within a mile of any pension fund let alone the weakened and morally challenged ones in California! Yet Emkin and Moy and the likes of them are to this day on the payroll as consultants to CalPers and now Steptoe and Johnson, LLP and their partners on the flawed report Navigant Consulting, Inc are two more firms in the long line of failed consultants.
At what point will the people finally say enough is enough and finally rid CalPERS of the old guard?
Here is link to today's Pasadena Star News report on the Steptoe Report. Nothing new to LA City News readers. And this only scratches the surface of details.
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