Scoundrel Watch--Who Put a Little Money in Their Pockets?

By Lee Russ

Sunday, December 04, 2005 at 09:38 AM

Having trouble keeping up with the list of scoundrels who populate the upper tiers of our democracy's political and business worlds?

Here's a handy list of current and recent past folks who never saw the need to follow any rules if circumventing them could "put a little money in your pocket."  I was tempted to call this "Republican Scoundrels," but that seemed unfair, and now it seems that Dem. Byron Dorgan has gotten pulled into the Abramoff mess.

If I missed any of your favorites, drop a comment and I'll add them.

POLITICALLY-RELATED SCANDALS ; Scoundrel names (Relevant scandal):
Jack Abramoff (self-explanatory)

Roy Blunt (Abramoff)

Philip Bloom (U.S. businessman who bribed Stein, below)

Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) (Abramoff scandal)

Randy "Duke" Cunnigham (indicted on charges of accepting at least 2.4 million $$ in bribes as House Representative from Calif.)

Tom DeLay (Abramoff; separate Texas fundraising/financing)

Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.) (Abramoff scandal)

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D. N. Dak) (Abramoff)

Italia Federici (Abramoff)

Bill Frist (Stock investigation)

Steven Griles (Interior;  Abramoff)

Bob Ney (Abramoff; others)

Tom Noe (Ohio's Coingate)

Grover Norquist (Abramoff)

Gail Norton (Interior; Abramoff)

Ralph Reed ( Abramoff)

David Safavian (Abramoff)

Michael Scanlon (Abramoff)

Robert Stein Jr, (a comptroller in charge of disbursing $82 million in rebuilding funds in the region south of Baghdad, charged with accepting $546,000 in illegal payments for steering more than $13 million in contracts to U.S. businessman Philip Bloom; Stein had previously done time for fraud and was fired from his first post-prison job for financial improprieties)

Ken Tomlinson (CPB)

Michael Brian Wheeler (Army Reserve lieutenant colonel was charged with laundering money, conspiring to take bribes and violating firearms laws while on active duty (smuggled hundreds of thousands in cash out of Iraq)

BUSINESS/CORPORATE SCANDALS
Bernard Ebbers (WorldCom)

Dennis Kozlowski (Tyco)

Ken Lay (Enron)

Alfreda Taylor Langhorne (CEO of company [Family Preservation Center, Inc.] that managed Medicaid services for the developmentally disabled; convicted of  stealing more than $500,000 from taxpayers through the Medicaid program)

James A. Mitchell (CEO of Alex's Academy of Excellence, a voucher school that opened in Milwaukee in 2000; formerly convicted of  rape and later of tax fraud).

Guy Roland Seaton, CEO of  St. Luke's Subacute Hospital and Nursing Center Inc., of San Leandro, CA (convicted by a federal jury on six counts of Medicare fraud involving  the inflation of nursing costs by a total of nearly $3 million)

Jeff Skilling (Enron)

Morris "Mickey" Weissman (CEO of American Banknote convicted of fraud in 2003; artificially pumped up company's earnings so a 1998 IPO would succeed;  based on false 1996 and 1997 numbers, the 1998 public offering of the company's subsidiary, American Banknote Holographics, was a success, netting the company $115 million. When the accounting fraud was uncovered in early 1999, the spinoff's shares dropped from about $16 a share to $1.80 a share. The stock was delisted in August 1999.)

Gary Winnick (Global Crossing)

And what list of scoundrels could possibly be complete without:

Michael Brown (FEMA)