WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER SETS RECORD VISITS FOR YEAR 7,017,658 VISITS! 2,098,003 VISITORS MADE 6 VISITS A DAY EVERY DAY. 63,330 UNIQUE VISITORS MADE 133,730 VISITS IN DECEMBER. WPCNR AVERAGED 17,284 VISITORS A WEEK, VISITING 31,270 TIMES.

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Indictment Alleges Scheme to DEFRAUD Hundreds of Thousands of Mobile Phone Customers for Text-Messaging Services Without Their Knowledge or Consent. “Auto-subscribing” scheme charged for Gossip, Horoscopes, Trivia “alerts.”

WPCNR FBI WIRE. From the Federal Bureau of Investigation. January 31, 2022:

Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Joleen D. Simpson, the Special Agent-in-Charge of the Boston Field Office of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (“IRS-CI”), and Michael J. Driscoll, Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced today that–

EUGENI TSVETNENKO, a/k/a “Zhenya,” a dual citizen of Australia and Russia, was extradited from Australia and arrived in the United States this morning.  TSVETNENKO was extradited on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, stemming from the defendant’s alleged participation in a scheme to charge mobile phone customers millions of dollars in monthly fees for unsolicited, recurring text messages about topics such as horoscopes, celebrity gossip, and trivia facts, without the customers’ knowledge or consent—a practice referred to as “auto-subscribing.” 

The portion of the fraudulent scheme that TSVETNENKO and his co-conspirators orchestrated defrauded mobile phone users of approximately $41,389,725, and netted TSVETNENKO and his co-conspirators more than $20 million in proceeds.  TSVETNENKO will be presented today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ona T. Wang.  The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “Eugeni Tsvetnenko is alleged to have surreptitiously subscribed hundreds of thousands of cell phone users to a $9.99 per-month charge for recurring text messages they did not approve or want. As a result of their auto-subscribing scheme, Tsvetnenko and his co-conspirators are alleged to have silently drained over $41 million in illegal proceeds from their unknowing victims. Thanks to the continued efforts and coordination with our Australian law enforcement counterparts, Tsvetnenko, an Australian national, has now been extradited to the U.S. to answer the call of American justice.”

IRS-CI Special Agent in Charge Joleen D. Simpson said: “Today’s extradition is clear proof that Mr. Tsvetnenko’s vast fortune and residence on another continent did little to shield him from answering the charges brought against him by American authorities. The defendants in this case have learned the hard way that the reach of Federal law enforcement extends far beyond the borders of the United States.” 

FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Michael J. Driscoll said: “Tsvetnenko and his co-conspirators concocted a scheme that turned thousands of mobile phone customers into unwitting subscription service participants, as alleged.

These customers incurred monthly charges for services they never subscribed to and, in many cases, disregarded as spam until the charges turned up on their monthly statements. Ultimately, as we allege, the defendants were able to steal more than $40 million and realize more than $20 million in profits. Today’s case is a reminder for all of us to maintain awareness of the charges we incur on our financial statements. No matter how insignificant a fraudulent charge may seem, the bigger picture often tells a different story.”

According to allegations in the Superseding Indictment against TSVETNENKO, evidence presented at the trial of co-conspirators Darcy Wedd (Wedd) and Fraser Thompson (Thompson), and other public filings:

From at least in or about 2012 through in or about 2013, TSVETNENKO, Wedd, Thompson, and others engaged in a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud consumers by placing unauthorized charges for premium text messaging services on consumers’ cellular phone bills through a practice known as auto-subscribing. 

TSVETNENKO owned and operated several content provider companies and mobile industry companies in Australia that, among other things, created and sold premium text messaging content to consumers.

 Wedd operated Mobile Messenger, a U.S. aggregation company in the mobile phone industry that served as a middleman between content providers (such as some of TSVETNENKO’s companies) and mobile phone carriers. 

Mobile Messenger was responsible for assembling monthly charges incurred by a particular mobile phone customer for premium text-messaging services and placing those charges on that customer’s cellular phone bill.     

Beginning in or about early 2012, Wedd, Thompson, who was the Senior Vice President of Strategic Operations for Mobile Messenger, and two other senior executives of Mobile Messenger (CC-3 and CC-4) recruited TSVETNENKO to their auto-subscribing scheme to increase revenues at Mobile Messenger. 

TSVETNENKO agreed and established two new content providers based in Australia, CF Enterprises and DigiMobi, to auto-subscribe on Mobile

Messenger’s aggregation platform.  CC-3 furnished lists of phone numbers to TSVETNENKO, along with an auto-subscribing  “playbook,” which provided TSVETNENKO with guidance on how to auto-subscribe without being caught.  The “playbook” described how to conceal the fraud scheme by making it appear as if the customers had, in fact, elected to purchase the text-messaging services, when in truth they had not.

The consumers who received the unsolicited text messages typically ignored or deleted the messages, often believing them to be spam. 

Regardless, the consumers were billed for the receipt of the messages, at a rate of $9.99 per month, through charges that typically appeared on the consumers’ cellular telephone bills in an abbreviated and confusing form, such as with nonsensical billing descriptors that often consisted of random letter and numbers.  The $9.99 charges recurred each month unless and until consumers noticed the charges and took action to unsubscribe.  Even then, consumers’ attempts to dispute the charges and obtain refunds from CF Enterprises or DigiMobi were often unsuccessful.  Wedd, to whom CC-3, CC-4, and Thompson all reported, oversaw the scheme at Mobile Messenger.

TSVETNENKO, with the assistance of Wedd, Thompson, CC-3, and CC-4, started auto-subscribing co nsumers in approximately April of 2012.  TSVETNENKO’s auto-subscribing activities, which continued into 2013, victimized hundreds of thousands of mobile phone customers, who were auto-subscribed through Mobile Messenger and charged a total of approximately $41,389,725 for unwanted text messaging services.  Wedd, Thompson, CC-3, and CC-4 agreed that TSVETNENKO would keep approximately 70% of the auto-subscribing proceeds generated by CF Enterprises and DigiMobi, and that the remaining 30% of the auto-subscribing proceeds would be divided evenly among Wedd, Thompson, CC-3, and CC-4.

After obtaining proceeds of the fraud scheme, TSVETNENKO worked with other co-conspirators to launder the proceeds.  TSVETNENKO and his co-conspirators distributed the proceeds of the fraud scheme among themselves and others involved in the scheme by, among other things, causing funds to be transferred through the bank accounts of a series of shell companies and companies held in the names of third parties.  This was done to conceal the nature and source of the payments and TSVETNENKO and his co-conspirators’ participation in the fraud.

Through their successful orchestration of this fraud scheme, TSVETNENKO and his co-conspirators generated more than $20 million in fraud proceeds for themselves.  TSVETNENKO personally retained approximately $15.4 million in fraud proceeds for his role in the scheme.

*                *                *

TSVETNENKO 41, of Perth, Australia, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison; one count of wire fraud, which also carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison; one count of aggravated identity theft, which carries a mandatory sentence of two years in prison, consecutive to any other sentence imposed; and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.  The maximum potential sentences in this case are prescribed by Congress and are provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the judge.

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4^TH STRAIGHT WEEK OF DECLINE IN NEW CASES: FROM 25,294  JAN 2-9  TO 3,423 THE WEEK OF JAN 23-29. EXCELSIOR!

WPCNR CORONAVIRUS MONITOR. From the New York Covid Tracker. Commentary by John F. Bailey January 31, 2021:

The 321 new persons testing positive  of 8,130 tested for covid Saturday throughout Westchester County brought the total new positives for the 7 days Sunday through Saturday to 3,423.

The combination of vaccine protection, extreme cold temperatures all week and the Friday-Saturday snow event all contributed to lowering the county daily positive case findings to  an average of 489 new cases a day.

The ratio of the 16, 782  persons infected two weeks ago  infecting other persons over 14 days was one person of those infected two weeks ago infecting .20 (point two zero) persons, well below the 1 to 1 sustained level of infections.

Westchester citizens with the misfortune of testing positive are not spreading it at a rate that increases the disease exponentially at this time. 

The average percentage of Westchester residents testing positive daily for the week was 6.6%. The positive ratio of 3,423 positives found over 52,002 tests administered the 7 days from January 23 to 29 was 6.5%

The positives Saturday were the lowest levels since December 13, 2021 (292) , the beginning of the fourth wave or the start of the ‘Holiday Wave” from Thanksgiving through New Years Weekend, which began December 1, 2021 when there were 311.

The trend in covid is good.

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WPCNR THE SUNDAY BAILEY.  News & Comment By John F. Bailey. January 30, 2021:

The best league of all is not any of the professional leagues.

It is the Hot Stove League,  the league where every team and your team wins.

Because you talk about the coming season.

The Lords and Gods of Major League Baseball now are in lock out, arguing over money and tinkering with the rules of the greatest game, so the Old Hot Stove League has a limited schedule this year

The Hot Stove League refers to the decades when baseball was the National Pastime. It no longer is, you rarely see pickup games around town anymore. Now they play  football and basketball, and if they play baseball they are in organized rec leagues, or little league which still places emphasis on playing the best players.

( Full Disclosure: I was 0 for 3 in Little League and struck out three times, and never caught a flyball in rightfield where I was played in the 1957 season. Why? Because the coaches never spent time to teach me how to catch a fly ball. Instruction is sadly lacking, still.)

  But then neither is any professional sport really a national pastime.

They are television entertainment, and as we learn more and more they do not have the health and well-being of players or fans as one of their first concerns.

 In America more people still see baseball games than any other sport. It is still the sport you do not have to be big or tall to play. You have to develop instincts and situational awareness. And if your’re a girl, you can play fast pitch softball a really lightning like game.

When I was a kid we listened to the World Series on the radio in the afternoons during school. Sympathetic teachers occasionally announced the score. It was what you talked about if you were a boy.

We’d race home in Pleasntville (we walked to school then) to catch the last few innings on tv if we had one. Games started at.1 PM or sometimes 12 noon.

Now there are so many playoff games leading in to the World Series that the series is played at night in cold weather and the games end late in the evening when we kids in our 70s have to go to bed.

When I was growing up in the 1950s, baseball’s World Series concluded the first week of October (in glorious autumn  had low sun and fantastic endings.

Podres shutting out the Yankees in Game 7 in 1955; the Don Larsen no-hitter, saved by Mickey Mantle’s one-hand backhand robbery of a Gil Hodges drive in the left center gap, saving the no-hitter.

Lew Burdette winning three games in 1957; the White Sox playing the Dodgers in 1959; Willie Mays” Over-the-Shoulder robbery of Vic Wertz in 1954; If you saw those moments, or “saw them on the radio,” as Terry Cashman sang, you remembered them always.

When it is 10 degrees like it is right now on the 30^th of January, old-timers would gather around a hot stove in small town general stores across the great continent and talk baseball about the coming season.

Arguments would ensue on who was the best Mantle or Mays or The Duke (at least in NY). In Chicago the lament was the long-suffering Cubs who never had winning season. Until 1969 when the Mets overtook them.

The ‘Hot Stove League” is in lock-down too.

You aren’t having those discussions this year because nobody is making moves because of the lockout.

Baseball today, like baseball has always been does not care about the fans. The old owners would build teams and sell off their good players as Connie Mack did when he built three championship teams  1911 Philadelphia Athletics, the 1930s Philadelphia Athletics and the Philadelphia Athletics of the late 40s, poised to win, they even had a batting champion, Ferris Fain, but Mr. Mack  disbanded that team.

Calvin Grifith did that too with the Washington Senators of the mid-20s, and early 30s, they never contended after the mid-1930s.

Then we have the modern examples the owner of the Montreal Expos, who moved them to Miami. Nowadays in free agency days you never have a great player play a long time for team, or hardly ever. Fans hated it when the Mets traded away Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan. 

The Red Sox traded away Babe Ruth for cash and did not win again until 1946.

Are you getting the idea? This is what fans talked about in the cold dead of winter, the shoveling of snow.

At this time of year we could hardly wait for spring training which should start in three weeks. I loved listening to exhibition games on the radio hearing the Yankee play-by-plqy from St. Petersburg and eagerly hearing about Gordon Windhorn who was just tearing the Grapefruit League in Florida apart in 1959. He hit something like 400 in spring training. He made the team and went 0 for 11 in his first two weeks of games and the Yankees traded him. But Gordon gave young fans hope. He had, though a Topps baseball card.

The Hot Stove League warmed us until the ritual of the baseball season would return.

I was reminded of this when the best brother-in-law in America called me last week  while I was trying to put together this week’s White Plains Week.

He is a Giants fan, and he called to tell me about a website devoted to the Polo Grounds, the old home of the New York Giants before they moved to San Francisco, he called to share with me the views of the ghost ballpark, and how the pictures stirred his memory.

He recalled Willie Mays the Giants centerfielder, whom he mused could have become the all time home run leader had he not only played 34 games in 1952 and all of 1953 in  military service. Larry surmised that Willie could have hit 40 to 50 homers in those years of service, giving him 760 possible homers for his career, best Henry Aaron and possibly Barry Bonds, the current homerun all-time leader (762), despite his use of steroids.

I remembered that Mickey Mantle, the Yankee young star did not lose any years to military service.  Larry was surprised by that.

According to Major League Baseball and I quote, “ While playing high school football, Mantle was kicked in the left ankle. An infection developed which resulted in chronic osteomyelitis. Mantle was classified 4-F the first time he was examined, but his draft board decided to re-examine him and disqualifed him twice more. We mused that Mays may have very well hit over two hundred homers naturally. Based on his record.

This led  Larry to remember the winningest left-hander of all-time—Spahnie, Warren Spahn who won 363 games.

I said yeah, I saw him pitch in 1958 in the World Series shutting out the Yankees, 3-0, and then again in 1965, losing 2-1 in a game I think against the Giants in Shea Stadium. Even in his 40s, he went  8 innings. And he pitched every 4^th day. He was crafty, had a sweeping curve ball that sunk and was unafraid to use it. Spahn served in the Navy in World War II losing 4 seasons  serving his country in the Pacific.

 He returned to the Boston Braves in 1946 and in his first six years back from the Navy he won 21, 15,21,21,22 and 23 games with the old Braves.

If he had been pitching in his service years he possible could have won at least 15 or 20 a year in those 4 years giving him 423 wins lifetime.  We talked about his pitching motion, the high leg kick, and his pitching deep into games. (He went 10 innings against the Yankees in the sixth game of the 1958 World Series.)

In the cold 36 degree day Larry was experiencing that day last week in the south, and I was experiencing at 17 degrees in White Plains, the Hot Stove League of our own was keeping us warm, feeling the sunshine on our faces of early spring.

Larry remembered the first game he ever saw, in Yankee Stadium no less.

“I remember the thing most was how green the grass was as we walked into the lower box seats.’ I agreed with a huge smile over the miles of phone line, “Absolutely it hit me with its emerald majesty, the blasts of color from the billboards in the farflung bleacher adds “FYING A,’ “BALLENTINE BEER & ALE” ”.  Images of the Big ball Park were real again in our recall of our shared experience in a ballpark.

We warmed to the task. Talk turned to the Giants-Dodgers Playoff of 1951, and he wondered who had pitched for the Dodgers. I said I could not understand why Charlie Dressen the Dodger manager at the time called in Ralph Branca to face Bobby Thompson, who had homered off Branca earlier in the series.

Then I remembered Willie Mays was on deck. However I had to leave the phone to see what pitcher had Branca relieved. I was shocked to discover it was “Big Newk,” who had entered the 9^th inning after going 8 innings, handcuffing the Giants.

Dressen figured Newcombe was done after he coughed up three hits and Dressen took him out.

But Branca was not a regular reliever.  He won 1, lost 2, and saved 3 in relief in 1951. He came in fired two fastballs to Thompson and the second fastball landed in the left field stands winning the pennant. If Thompson knew the second fastball was coming he still had to hit it.

Just talking with Larry about that game brought me back from my January  bad news-17 degrees- covid funk.

This faded into conversation about pitching and baseball memories came rushing back.

Larry recalled when Juan Marichal , then 24 years old the great Giant righthander was locked in a late inning pitching duel with Warren Spahn. Alvin Dark, the Giant Manager, Larry remembered asked Marichal whether he wanted to come out. Marichal, “I ain’t coming out. As long as that old man is pitching. I’m pitching.’

Usually in the Hot Stove League, we’d be talking about the coming season, and in the Hot Stove League every team had made changes which would have them be contenders. Just anticipating the lazy atmosphere of spring training made you impatient if you were a fan in the ‘50s.

I loved that old ball park, the Polo Grounds. It had soul. I loved the old Yankee Stadium with its grand stand to the sky with original façade with a rake in the upper deck stands that hung over the box seats giving you God’s view of the game.

 In my last moments of life I will be thinking baseball, my daughter and my wife, my parents, the day in 1961 when my father took me to a Yankee-Tiger night game in sweltering 95 degree heat. (My Dad hated the heat, especially humid heat). 

The game goes 9 innings, 3 hours, with the Tigers putting ducks on the pond every inning. Casey changing pitchers every inning. Then the Yankees string 3 singles together in the bottom of the ninth with 2 out to win it. My father never even mentioned leaving the game early.

There was the first game he took me to in Yankee Stadium in 1956 when I was 11. It was Indians and the Yankees in a Wednesday afternoon game. The Yanks won 3-2 when Billy Martin kicked the ball out of the thirdbaseman’s bare hand as the third sacker was trying to tag him out. Martin was a dead duck, but he kicked the ball out of his hand and scored. My father in the only burst of fan interest I ever saw from him, said “Did you see that? He kicked the ball out of his hand.”

I see that play in my replay of memory perfectly to this day.

I miss that Hot Stove League, where there’s never a losing season, you can taste the crisp refresher and stretch in the middle of the 7th, and the great plays, the greats play and cavort on the endless green once more.

So thanks Larry for that call. It was like old times.

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TONIGHT: THE IMPACT OF THE NYPD POLICE PATROLMEN

THE ARRESTS OF 11 PERSONS IN WESTCHESTER AND PUTNUM ON ILLEGAL HAND GUN DISTRIBUTION CHARGES

THE FADE OF COVID: GEORGE LATIMER’S COVID BRIEFING

NASSAU COUNTY COURT DECISION DISRUPTS WHITE PLAINS SCHOOL DISTRICT AND SUPERINTENDENT RICCA “SORTS IT OUT”

THE 1133 SOLAR PANEL INSTALLATION HEARING IS ON FEBRUARY 7

GEORGE LATIMER ANALYZES THE CHANGES IN BEHAVIOR WE HAVE TO MAKE IN HOW WE TREAT EACH OTHER.

20TH YEAR OF WHITE PLAINS WEEK CELEBRATED TONIGHT

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