In late February, I received an email from a Port Townsend friend about her 85-year-old aunt’s rapid decline following her first shot of Pfizer’s experimental mRNA vaccine.
“My mom and I have been taking care of my aunt. When she got the shot [on February 15], she had just graduated from physical therapy because she was so strong and able to get up from being seated without using her hands for help, walk with a cane for an hour slowly, feed herself no problem, talk about memories. Since the 15th she has been dramatically declining, especially in the last five days… to where she now cannot walk at all, she can’t really control movement of her torso, cannot feed herself, cannot discern reality from hallucinations, and is incontinent and can get very angry. We had to make the difficult decision to have emts come yesterday morning to take her to the hospital (she had slithered to the floor and we could not get her up) and we insisted they admit her because we cannot care for her safely in this condition.”
A week later, her aunt was dead. What my friend witnessed mirrors reports of devastating injury and death around the world from these injections, particularly among the fragile elderly.
The photo above shows carloads of people lined up outside Jefferson Healthcare to receive experimental vaccines. The picture is different outside Jefferson County. Half of America–including healthcare professionals–is refusing the jabs.
Is my friend’s aunt the first Jefferson County fatality from this global experiment? Or has our county already seen, in a matter of weeks, more death by injection—which you are not hearing about—than the virus itself caused here in more than a year?
Stories like my friend’s are being ignored, downplayed, or denied by the mainstream media. But for anyone who looks beyond the incessant propaganda from the pharma-controlled narrative that the new Covid-19 vaccines are “safe and effective,” a far different story has emerged about this unprecedented medical experiment.
The prevailing narrative tells us that injuries following the jab are exceedingly rare and deaths are coincidental. But thousands of doctors, scientists and other experts have been sounding the alarm about this reckless experiment, often at great personal risk. Despite heavy censorship, vicious attacks, shaming and shunning, truth is increasingly coming to light.
This article will examine the counter-narrative urgently calling for a halt to all mass experimental injections.
Ignored and denied by mainstream media, global death and injury abound.
Just a sampling of reports you will not see on mainstream news:
“While in January a group of independent doctors concluded that experimental COVID-19 vaccines are ‘not safer‘ than the virus itself, a new analysis of vaccine-related death rates in Israel demonstrates that this may indeed be the case to dramatic levels.” An analysis of data from the Israeli Health Ministry determined that “the mRNA experimental vaccine from Pfizer killed ‘about 40 times more (elderly) people than the disease itself would have killed during a recent five-week vaccination period’, and 260 times more of the young than what the COVID-19 virus would have claimed in the given time frame.”
Disturbed by a facility-wide vaccination drive with military soldiers present, and the distressing patient deaths that followed, a Berlin nursing home caregiver came forward to provide testimony to attorneys from the German Corona Investigative Committee. The whistleblower describes how rather than peacefully slipping away as was normally seen with elderly patients he cared for, after their first dose of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, seven of 31 residents with dementia died “as if they were tortured.” An eighth resident was near death at the time of the interview and died a few days later.
The long-time caregiver, sharing footage taken by a co-worker, says that reactions following the shot—“changes in behavior, strong fatigue, weakness, sudden gasping for breath with heart racing”—and the manner of the residents’ deaths were unlike anything he and his colleagues had ever witnessed before.
“Typically death was always peaceful for old people… their breathing was relaxed and their eyes stayed closed. This is very different death. It’s as if they cannot let go… their eyes are open, they are agitated, this strong tremor is changing their breathing. The pallor of their face is quite different. They are highly unsettled with this violent gasping for breath… a constant shaking of the upper body, this creepy, fearful gaze… it’s more of a struggle and it is not dying with dignity.”
When a second shot was forced on the 23 surviving residents just weeks after their first injection, another died and 11 more were seriously injured. (39 minutes, subtitled)
Prior to the rollout of the injections, it is reported that over the preceding year only 17 people in total had died from Covid-19 in the small British Colony of Gibraltar (population 32,000). Within 10 days of starting Pfizer mRNA COVID injections, 53 were dead. “Tiny Gibraltar is like a petri dish; in no other place has there been such a brutally clear relationship between vaccine roll-out and increased ‘Covid deaths’.” Local media blamed the deaths on the virus, not the vaccine.
In Andalusia, Spain, 46 of 140 nursing home residents died in the wake of a Pfizer vaccination campaign. As in Gibraltar, their deaths were blamed on a “coincidental” outbreak of the virus, not the shots. In another nursing home in the same province, 22 elderly residents died following injections.
Similar alleged Covid outbreaks and death clusters following vaccination in Norway, Germany, England, Sweden. Scotland, Canada, and the U.S. are described here.
Vaccine injuries and deaths in the United States have followed the same pattern being observed around the world.
Closer to home
Knowing he was risking his career, Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) James Develon could not remain silent after watching 14 of the nursing home residents he cared for die within two weeks after receiving the Pfizer experimental mRNA injections:
CNA Develon reports that in 2020 there were “zero deaths” from Covid the entire year at the U.S. nursing home where he works. Following the shots, not only was there a rash of fatalities, but many other residents were near death. He describes the same spiraling loss of function my friend saw her aunt experience:
“People who were once walking are no longer walking. People who were once talking can no longer talk. People who were once able to think, can no longer think properly… delirium, confused.”
The deaths were explained away as resulting from the Covid virus—not the shots—from an unidentified “superspreader”. But that story didn’t add up, Develon said. Residents who had refused the injections were not sick; only the vaccinated were injured and dying. (5 minute clip at above link; full 47-minute video here).
As described in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr,’s article, Death by Coincidence?, “An Auburn, New York nursing home reported, without any apparent irony, that 32 of 193 residents have died since the facility began administering the Pfizer vaccine on Dec. 21. The company claims that its clients are dying of COVID-19 infections, not the vaccine.”
“Coincidence is turning out to be quite lethal to COVID vaccine recipients,” says Kennedy.
That is true not only among the high-risk elderly following vaccination, but in cases of healthy younger people dying directly after their shots as well.
Sara Stickles, a 28-year-old healthcare worker from Wisconsin, broke out in rashes immediately after her second Pfizer shot. Five days later, severe headaches led to loss of consciousness, hospitalization, and an initial diagnosis of a ruptured brain aneurysm. A week after her injection she died when all brain activity ceased. [source]
A 28-year old nurse’s aide in Iowa received a Pfizer vaccine at 11 am. He initially called in to work with a report of headache and dizziness, but decided to come to work anyway. He “was found down in a patient bathroom during his shift in our facility while taking care of a patient,” wrote a co-worker. He was coded, dying that day. [source]
Most recently, an 18-year-old Illinois teen with no pre-existing conditions experienced headaches, body ache and fatigue the day after receiving a Moderna Covid injection. Two hours after complaining of chest pain on day three, he was found unresponsive and pronounced dead. [source]
Miscarriages are also being reported following these injections. Among scores of reports are:
a 37-year-old woman in Washington state who lost her baby at 26 weeks the day after receiving her first Moderna shot; [source]
a 32-year-old New Mexican woman, 22 weeks pregnant, who began having abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding after a second Pfizer shot and miscarried the next day; [source]
a healthy Wisconsin woman, 29, just four weeks pregnant, who miscarried the same day she had her first Pfizer shot. [source]
None of these nameless statistics made the news. However, the miscarriage of Wisconsin doctor Sara Beltrán Ponce, did. Dr. Ponce’s high-profile tweets exclaiming that at 14 weeks pregnant she was fully vaccinated—and urging everyone else to do their part, get the shot, protect the community—caused a stir on social media: “I got the #CovidVaccine to protect myself, my baby, my family, my patients, and my community! When it’s available to you, I encourage you to do the same!”
Just days later Dr. Ponce tweeted: “it’s with a heavy heart that I tell my #MedTwitter family that I’ve suffered a miscarriage at 14 1/2 weeks. My husband and I are devastated… Rest in Peace, angel… This is truly a sadness I didn’t know was possible to feel.”
Fauci: over 90% vaccine efficacy is “just extraordinary”!
Pharma’s Warp Speed trials prior to being granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA)—not approval or licensure—were conducted on generally healthy people and were not transparent. The immune-compromised, those with co-morbidities, pregnant women, and children were excluded from the trials. Older adults and minorities, some of the hardest-hit populations, were significantly underrepresented, leaving many questions unanswered.
Investigators like British Medical Journal (BMJ) senior editor Peter Doshi are still asking for the raw trial data and challenging initial claims of efficacy based on the selective data hyped by the media.
“All attention has focused on the dramatic efficacy results: Pfizer reported 170 PCR confirmed covid-19 cases, split 8 to 162 between vaccine and placebo groups. But these numbers were dwarfed by a category of disease called “suspected covid-19”—those with symptomatic covid-19 that were not PCR confirmed. According to FDA’s report on Pfizer’s vaccine, there were ‘3410 total cases of suspected, but unconfirmed covid-19 in the overall study population, 1594 occurred in the vaccine group vs. 1816 in the placebo group’.”
Of the 43,448 low-risk trial participants who received injections, Pfizer used the minuscule subset of 170 symptomatic vacinees who were PCR confirmed to generate a media frenzy of headlines trumpeting an “extraordinary” 95% efficacy rate. Other vaccine developers followed their lead. Based on the far larger symptomatic Covid group that was revealed in the FDA report, Doshi calculates that there was an actual “relative risk reduction of 19%—far below the 50% effectiveness threshold for authorization set by regulators.”
He notes, “With 20 times more suspected covid-19 than confirmed covid-19, and trials not designed to assess whether the vaccines can interrupt viral transmission, an analysis of severe disease irrespective of etiologic agent—namely, rates of hospitalizations, ICU cases, and deaths amongst trial participants—seems warranted, and is the only way to assess the vaccines’ real ability to take the edge off the pandemic.”
Pharma’s trials, which were not designed to prove that the vaccines prevent infection, interrupt transmission, or reduce serious outcomes, appear to be an exercise in industry spin. The years of surveillance standard for licensing a vaccine have barely begun. An average approval process for any vaccine or biologic is normally between 7 and 10 years. The global campaigns underway, injecting nanotechnology never before deployed on human populations, are the true trials.
So how is post-vaccination damage from this giant experiment being monitored in the US?
Simple answer: it is not.
VAERS: Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System
In the first days of America’s Covid vaccine rollout, December 14-18, 2020, the CDC conducted “V-safe Active Surveillance for COVID-19 Vaccines.” According to the CDC’s website, V-safe is “a smartphone-based tool that uses text messaging and web surveys to… tell CDC about any side effects after getting the COVID-19 vaccine.”
Over those five days, more than 5,000 “Health Impact Events” immediately following injections were identified. On December 18 alone, 2.79% of people who received first dose shots—3,150 out of 112,807—used this smartphone app to report reactions so severe that they were “unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, [and/or] required care from a doctor or other health professional.”
More than 60 million Americans do not own smartphones, and roughly half of senior citizens don’t use them. V-safe also excludes 25 million people in the U.S. with limited English proficiency; the app is only in English. Once again, two of the groups inadequately represented in pharma’s trials but being marketed to most aggressively—senior citizens and minorities—are also the most likely to not be able to use this reporting system.
So how many adverse reactions were NOT captured by this app-only surveillance?
Given the CDC’s reliance on a smartphone app for reporting vaccine side effects and injuries, the actual number of severe reactions might have been significantly higher. But the data gap gets even wider.
Despite being assured that this experiment would be closely monitored, our primary source of data since Dec. 18 has not come from V-safe Active Surveillance, but from VAERS—the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System.
VAERS is a voluntary passive system, with no regulatory oversight, no requirement or incentive to report vaccine adverse events. The system is so flawed that in 2010, a Harvard study commissioned by Health and Human Services (HHS) determined that less than 1% of vaccine injuries and deaths are captured. Only a small percentage of the public, including those working in health care, even know it exists. And because adverse events are regularly attributed to coincidence or denied outright, even when medical personnel do know about the system, vaccine reactions regularly go unreported. Not only is there no incentive for health professionals to report to VAERS, it is notoriously difficult to use.
With the new, experimental Covid injections, there are further disincentives to attribute death or injury to vaccination and to file reports with VAERS. Families may not be able to collect on life insurance policies if a loved one dies by injection, or use their health insurance if injured. Not only is there complete liability protection from damages for vaccine manufacturers, health departments, hospitals and retail establishments, personnel who administer the shots, and policy makers, but many private insurers exclude coverage of these vaccines as well. Medical insurers have clauses such as “side effects arising from the COVID-19 vaccine are not covered under our exclusion for… experimental treatment.”
Among doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers, there is tremendous pressure to deny any damage from the shot. As described by Bernadette Pajer of Informed Choice Washington, “A lot of the medical community are afraid that if it [an adverse reaction] happened to them, to speak out and report—because they have to be part of the system that pushes the vaccines.” And when Missouri Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer questioned CDC Director Robert Redfield during a House Oversight and Reform subcommittee hearing on coronavirus containment, Redfield confirmed there were financial incentives to classify deaths as resulting from the virus, not other causes. Was there a “perverse incentive” monetary gain for hospitals to classify deaths as being coronavirus-related when the virus was not the actual cause of death?, asked Luetkemeyer. Redfield responded, “I think you’re correct in that.”
In my friend’s case, “This hospital [Jefferson Healthcare] has no way set up to document concerns and is not too interested from what I can tell.” She made the effort to report her aunt’s vaccine death to VAERS, but says the system was so difficult to navigate, “I couldn’t figure it out.”
She also asked her aunt’s attending doctor to report to VAERS and he said he would. If he did, she has received no follow-up. And it clearly was not reported as a Covid vaccine death—there is no mention of the vaccine as a causative factor on the death certificate or of the shot even being administered prior to her death. Her aunt’s cause of death is listed as “renal failure.” Our hospital and health department have not acknowledged it as a vaccine death, and the CDC has no record of it.… another vaccine casualty attributed to other causes, not captured by the system that we are relying on to assess safety of this new technology.
My friend’s experience is so common that organizations like Children’s Health Defense are offering additional resources to help people document vaccine injuries and deaths.
Even with the many disincentives and obstacles, as of March 19, VAERS data shows 44,606 reports of adverse events following Covid vaccines, including 7,095 serious injuries, and 2,050 deaths.
With 118.3 million vaccines administered, that is a 0.037% adverse event rate. Given that the initial V-safe Active Surveillance showed a “serious adverse reaction” rate nearly 100 times that—almost 3% (and that missed people who didn’t have the smartphone app)—the 1% capture rate found by the Harvard study would appear to be accurate. That would mean that in the past three months there may have been more than 4 million (4,460,600) actual adverse events, 709,500 serious injuries, and 205,000 deaths from Covid injections.
Like the death of my friend’s aunt, the vast majority of fatalities induced by the shot go unreported. They are instead attributed to infections from the Covid virus, or to heart attacks, strokes, or organ failure “coincidentally” following injections.
Likely causes for so much injury and death from this experimental injection will be explored in Part Two…. [which you can now read by clicking here]
The cries of the Worldwide Rally for Freedom were heard in Port Townsend on Saturday, March 20, 2021. About 40 people gathered on the plaza at Tyler and Water Streets without masks, but with musical instruments and songs and greetings on their lips. Others held signs encouraging people to think for themselves and be fully informed about lockdowns, vaccines, and what they say are overstated claims of the lethality of COVID-19.
The gathering was loosely connected to other Rallies for Freedom held in at least 40 countries. See below for links to some of the coverage. A friend from Albuquerque, New Mexico jubilantly informed me that they had over 200 people at their event
“It was fantastic,” said Hannah McFarland, one of the Port Townsend event’s organizers. “This was all word of mouth. We really don’t have an organization. It’s as grassroots as it can get.”
But an organization with the purpose of repeating the Rally for Freedom on a weekly basis is being born. Enough names and contact information were collected that this coming Saturday, March 27, 2021, at 11:30 a.m. the crowd will return to the same location. McFarland is hoping for an even better turnout.
In addition to those rallying on concrete, a Freedom Flotilla was in the waters off shore. One of the mariners came ashore to shake hands.
I participated as one of the musicians. I asked McFarland, a Port Townsend resident for 13 years, “Which is the real Port Townsend? Is it the people jogging by themselves, walking by themselves, biking by themselves and wearing masks, fearful of other human beings? Is it the harsh looks directed at someone walking along Water Street without a mask? Or is it live music performed on the street, with strangers greeting each other, happy to be around other human beings?”
That was a rhetorical question.
“We got multiple, ‘Oh, my gosh, thank yous!” from passerby,” McFarland said. “Or, “‘It’s a relief to see you out here.’ People are just so isolated. [Their] fear of death has been so exploited they stop using their rational mind.”
What are the goals and hopes for weekly Freedom Rallies? “We want to connect with people who have already seen through the misinformation, who have been able to study and learn about the issue for themselves without just accepting the word of big media and the medical establishment. And to others, we want to reach out and share in a loving, kind way what’s really going on. This virus is not as lethal as we’ve been led to believe. Shutdowns and masks are not needed.”
She’s worried the next move will be mandatory vaccine cards that will be required to be in the company of others. In fact, the topic arose at a meeting of the Jefferson County of County Commissioners. “It is extraordinary how people believe all this,” she said.
Port Townsend Free Press has been questioning the lock downs, highlighting the arbitrary and senseless nature of Governor Inslee’s orders–indeed the favoritism evident is many of his decrees, the unnecessary costs imposed on working families, the destruction of small businesses while large companies were never shut down. We’ve reported the good news on mortality rates from the CDC, and published thoughtful, carefully researched articles on the need to know precisely what those “case” numbers mean so we can determine whether infection rates are overstated and consequential fears overblown. We’ve been at it since April 2020. You can find our coverage using this site’s search function.
I will be at this week’s event, again with my guitar, joining other Port Townsend residents in enjoying life, and not being crushed by exaggerated fear. I worry about those gloomy, depressed people walking the Larry Scott Trail alone with masks, or hiking Ft. Worden trails and pulling on a mask when they approach another human at a distance of a quarter mile. Those people who drive alone with windows rolled up and wearing a mask and rubber gloves–I think they embrace the abnormalities of the past year. It gives them an excuse to crawl even deeper inside their own problems. I worry especially about the angry young people who wear their masks like uniforms or badges of conformity. I fear they’re more afraid of the pandemic ending than they are of a virus with a 99.7% survival rate, higher for those very same young people. A Pew study finds the lockdowns have caused “devastating” psychological problems among young people.
Just look at this headline from USA Today: “Why we’re scared for the pandemic to end: It feels strange, the idea of being together in the world again.” People need to see other people being normal. These Freedom Rallies are group therapy for a community that has lost its lighthearted joy, love of freedom and irreverence toward authority. It is past time to remember what it means to challenge the dominant paradigm.
Have we been lied to? Have we not been told the full truth? Has the story kept changing? Have government and “the experts” gotten it wrong? Have people been hurt unnecessarily? Has the suffering not been shared equally, and is there no just reason for those inequities? Are our fundamental freedoms being eroded by the exploitation of fear and acquiescence in authoritarian control? The need to keep asking those questions and seeking answers never ends, except by surrender. So bring on those Rallies for Freedom. We need them desperately.
Here is some of the coverage on Rallies from Freedom around the world. Just click on each highlighted word for the link. Thanks to PTFP contributor Stephen Schumacher for the research, and the photo:
Police raids, asset seizures, SEC cease and desist orders.
Illegal slot machines masquerading as charity fundraising.
A take down by the Mad Max of Wall Street.
Yet another corporate adventure for the “acting” managing director of Bayside Housing and Services, the group Port Townsend City Council wants to get the Cherry Street Project. The City Manager ignored a $1 million cash offer that would have bailed taxpayers out of that mess because he had been directed to deal only with Bayside Housing.
Gary Keister is Bayside’s “acting” manager director. He has held that position for going on two years and basically controls Bayside with his two fellow investors in the Old Alcohol Plant and his wife, who are also Bayside trustees and officers.
I wrote about the red flags surrounding Bayside and the whistleblower complaint from a former employee now being investigated by the Washington Attorney General’s Office. You can read those stories here and here.
Mr. Keister is a convicted felon. He was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison on conviction for 35 counts of bank fraud, four counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy committed while operating a Tukwila hardware-construction wholesaler from 1986 to 1988. The charges arose from sophisticated manipulation of a network of corporations he controlled and used to defraud First Interstate Bank of $1.2 million. After he was caught and punished, he assembled a new network of interconnected, commonly-controlled corporations. One corporation became his flagship, a sort of hub for all the others. According to an autobiographical promotional profile, that corporation, Wescom Capital, would have begun business while he was still in prison.
I thought I had found all the Gary Keister corporations–about a couple dozen here in Washington. Their purposes range from bio-fuels development to telecommunications to property management to utilities, though none of them seem to have amounted to much. Keister’s profiles claim he ran other corporations, such as an international food processing company. He has also claimed to have owned a commercial fishing fleet. Then I stumbled across another five corporations in Nevada.
Then a former employee tipped me off to one more I had missed. This one was called Washington Station LLC. It was a 2001 joint venture with an Austin, Texas company called BGI, Inc. At the time BGI was a hot penny stock, soaring from pennies to an evaluation more than 500 times higher.
It crashed fast when police in Texas and North Dakota started seizing the illegal slot machines it had placed in VFW and bingo halls. And then the SEC stepped in. But not before Anthony Elgindy blew the whistle. He was known as the “Mad Max of Wall Street.” A boiler room con artist himself, he was an FBI informant and delighted in exposing stock scams, taking down fraudulent corporations and “pump-and-dump” stock schemes while raking in short-selling profits for himself and his followers. In 2001 he set his sights on BGI and turned up Gary Keister.
Keister’s “Wescom,” Elgindy wrote, “is the master of stock promotion.”
“Charity Station”
Founded in 1994, the main product of Austin, Texas-based BGI, Inc. was a phone card dispenser called “Lucky Strike.” In exchange for buying a phone card that allowed only a two-minute call, the purchaser was entitled to participate in a sweepstakes for an instant cash payout.
In 2001 BGI stock hit a 52-week high of $5.14.
But its fortunes were turning sour at the same time management hyped the company. Its 2000 revenue, according to the 10K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, plummeted by almost 40%. It had an explanation: competition. And it had a solution: renaming its machines as “Donation Station” and “Charity Station” and promoting them as charity fundraising vehicles.
It also had a big problem: law enforcement considered its machines to be illegal slot machines.
As Elgindy would report, the company assured investors its machines were legal. But the Texas Attorney General disagreed. And so did the North Dakota Supreme Court.
Enter Gary Keister and his Wescom Capital. BGI announced August 13, 2001, that it had hired Wescom Consulting “to aid its expansion in the promotional sweepstakes and prepaid phone card markets. Financial arrangements call for the two companies to share expenses and revenue. Wescom Consulting will target three areas — general management, finances and marketing.”
Wescom Consulting was identified as “a division” of Keister’s Wescom Capital. “”Wescom will give us the operational expertise we need to focus on diversifying our product line and creating strong, sustained revenue,” said BGI’s CEO at the time (he would be gone soon).
The next day, BGI announced a new CFO, who happened to also have been the CFO of Keister’s Wescom Capital. That man, James Sylvester, signed off on Wescom Capital’s 2000 annual report to the Washington Secretary of State as assistant secretary and was identified as a director or officer (his title is not legible on the scanned document).
A couple weeks later, BGI and Wescom Capital announced a joint venture, called Washington Station LLC. “to explore expansion opportunities…for Charity Station.” According to Elgindy, “a source familiar with BGI and its management offered a few more details about the business. He said the Charity Station machines were structured so that for every $1 a customer put in the machine, 72 cents were paid out in prizes, BGI got 45% of the profit, and the charity and location split the remainder. Like the Lucky Strike phone card machine, the Charity Station both looks and acts like a slot machine. As a matter of a fact , according to certain law enforcement officers, the machine is nothing more than a slot machine with a different face.”
The raids started quickly. October 3, police in McAllen, Texas seized 25 machines. According to an article in the McAllen Monitor quoted by Elgindy (but no longer available online), “.. investigators collected evidence in hopes of securing a grand jury indictment on those believed to be behind the scheme. The grand jury will have to evaluate their guilt in connection with five violations that include keeping a gambling venue and possession of a gambling device,” police said. If convicted, the suspects face a maximum penalty of one year in prison. The article continues, “Police said that many were duped into thinking the gambling machines were legal because signs posted in the area said all proceeds went to charity. A poster on the wall called the room a “Donation Station” and said proceeds from the “Charitable Sweepstakes” went to the Department of Texas Veterans of Foreign Wars. Furthermore, “Patrons might have been further confused by forms they saw tacked to the side of the machines, which advertised that tickets for free games could be obtained by writing to Charity Promotions Associates in Austin. However, telephone information operators and officials from the Office of the Texas Secretary of State did not have such an organization listed in their records.”
Then came three raids in New Braunfels, Texas that netted 200 machines. Laredo and Fort Worth police seized 72 Charity Station machines. Bexar County seized 8 machines and nearly $1 million from the company’s bank accounts. Rio Grande City police seized 33 machines. The Texas Attorney General and El Paso police seized 69 Charity Stations.
The Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement staff recommended fraud charges. BGI agreed to a cease-and-desist order. It voluntarily delisted its stock. Investors lost everything, but some insiders had cashed out before the stock crashed.
Sylvester was gone as BGI CFO within three months. Keister and Wescom Capital, and the joint venture to promote the Charity Station gambling machines, dropped out of sight.
Elgindy saw it all coming.
The Mad Max of Wall Street
Elgindy had been part of two large boiler room operations taken down by federal authorities. He turned informant and said he had dedicated himself to exposing stock fraud. He bragged that because he had done so much of it, he could spot scams from afar. He also profited off his insight by shorting stocks he exposed.
He developed a huge online following and posted many of his reports at siliconinvestor.com, which is no longer operational. On January 10, 2002 Elgindy announced he had started covering BGI and its illegal slot machine business. He exposed the fact that the favorable industry press on BGI had been a paid plant by a corrupt stock media company, owned by a man with a prison record.
Keister and Wescom turned up on Elgindy’s radar.
“Wescom is the master of stock promotion,” Elgindy wrote. It sounds like he was already familiar with Wescom but I can’t verify that. Elgindy dragged out Keister’s convictions for bank fraud and money laundering. And he claimed that he had found evidence from Hawaii, where Sylvester–the Wescom CFO made BGI’S CFO–had been an accountant. The link to the evidence is no longer operable. According to Elgindy, “that link says he used unethical practices while doing his job.”
Elgindy predicted storm clouds and he was right. BGI stock not only sank, it was delisted. Elgindy’s full report is available by clicking here.
Elgindy after prison, 2010
Elgindy was good at spotting dishonesty because he was himself a crook and remained so until a huge investigation caught him and two corrupt FBI officers. He didn’t escape prison this time. Authorities suspected Elgindy, an Egyptian American born Amir Ibrahim Elgindy, had inside information on the 9/11 attacks. He had issued instructions to liquidate all his holdings just days before the planes hit the Twin Towers. A few years after release from prison he killed himself.
This American Greed episode [click here for transcript] tells the fascinating and troubling story of The Mad Max of Wall Street. Who could ever have imagined that one of his targets would be in talks with the City of Port Townsend to take over the Cherry Street Project?
[This article has been corrected to reflect that Sylvester’s exact title with Wescom Capital is not legible on the scanned 2000 filing with the Washington Secretary of State.]
Three former employees tried taking concerns about irregularities and ethical issues to the trustees and officers of Bayside Housing and Services. They were unsuccessful. Now one of them has taken their concerns to the Washington Attorney General.
Port Townsend Free Press has obtained a whistleblower complaint submitted for investigation to the Attorney General. The whistleblower has legal counsel. I have seen confirmation that a complaint was received and was being assigned. I have also been informed that an AG investigator conducted the office’s first interview on the matters raised in the complaint.
Bayside Housing and Services is a non-profit dedicated to providing transitional housing. It leases rooms in Port Hadlock at the Old Alcohol Plant, which is owned by Inn Properties, LLC., a for-profit corporation. Gary J. Keister owns 67% of and manages Inn Properties. Since July 2019 he has also been the acting managing director of Bayside Housing. His two partners in the Inn Properties are also Trustees of Bayside. Vince Verneuil is the Secretary/Treasurer. Christopher Eagan is a past president.
I wrote about these obvious conflicts of interest last week in “Cherry Street Handover: Red Flags About Bayside Housng.” Those red flags arise against Mr. Keister’s history for bank fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. The article asked whether taxpayers should be concerned about turning over the Cherry Street project to Bayside, which is essentially turning it over to Mr. Keister.
After that article was published I was contacted by another former employee of Mr. Keister’s. This person shared their concerns and knowledge about Mr. Keister’s operations. I learned he is involved in the failed development of the Hastings Building in downtown Port Townsend. I have been informed he serves as business consultant for that project and is a creditor. The address of one of the corporations in that project is the same as that of Mr. Keister’s offices in the Old Alcohol Plant in Port Hadlock.
During the conversation, while I was checking statements by the former employee on my computer, I stumbled across five Nevada corporations formed in 2000 for which Mr. Keister was listed as a director or officer or with which he had some other connection. This is in addition to the approximately 30 corporations mentioned in last week’s article. All those corporations were formed after he got out of prison, except one, Wescom Capital, which may have been started while he was still incarcerated.
This former employee said that Mr. Keister had claimed to have owned a fishing fleet but was put out of business by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. Indeed, in a promotional piece for a reading of his autobiography at Village Books in Bellingham, he says his commercial fishing career was ended by the Exxon Valdez disaster. But, from 1986 to 1988 he was committing bank fraud and money laundering running a construction-hardware wholesaler in Tukwila. 1989 was when that house of cards collapsed and he had to file for bankruptcy. In the course of those proceedings his crimes came to light and he was headed for 41 months in federal prison.
A Cherry Street handover would deliver millions of dollars of assets and more than $300,000 to entities under Mr. Keister’s control. He is already involved in receipt and disbursement of public funds, including a $18,550 grant from Jefferson County and a $169,000 grant from the Washington Department of Commerce, both to Bayside Housing. There are other financial dealings with Jefferson County, including a contract for meals for the homeless/transient camp at the Fairgrounds. The county pays Bayside, but the funds pass through to Inn Properties.
Let’s turn to the allegations (I repeat, allegations) of the whistleblower complaint.
Fraud
In April 2020 Jefferson County awarded $18,550 to Bayside Housing to add an additional ten rooms to their lease with Inn Properties. Those rooms would serve low income individuals who might otherwise be homeless. The whistleblower alleges that all of those rooms paid for by the county were not made available to Bayside clients but were, instead, leased to Inn Properties hotel customers. Nonetheless, Inn Properties continued to charge Bayside for those rooms.
Keister has publicly talked about how Bayside has a waiting list of people needing transitional housing but it lacks the rooms to serve them. The whistleblower alleges that Keister took rooms that should have gone to help those people and instead rented them to higher paying Inn Properties customers. The whistleblower further alleges that Keister kept Bayside case managers and others in the dark about this. Eventually, after a bookkeeper complained about what was going on, he did agree to rebate to Bayside some portion of the lease payments for these rooms but has still overcharged Bayside by tens of thousands of dollars.
It is under Keister’s direction that invoices from Inn Properties are prepared and delivered to Bayside. It is Keister who essentially receives those billings and it is under his direction that Bayside pays Inn Properties.
The whistleblower alleges that Keister is “the only person outside of accounting who sees lease and expense invoices, approves them, and signs checks/transfers money from Bayside to Inn Properties.”
The whistleblower also alleges that Keister has increased the rent charged Bayside by 30% with the approval of Keister’s two partners in Inn Properties who are also trustees of Bayside. As mentioned, one of those men is also Bayside’s secretary/treasurer. Keister’s wife is also a Bayside trustee.
The whistleblower claims that Inn Properties (Keister) opened two accounts at the same financial institution as Bayside, with those accounts having the same online banking profile as Bayside. “Internal online banking transfers could be made between the two entities with no oversight whatsoever, and they were.”
Compromising Bayside’s Tax-Exempt Status and More Conflicts of Interest
Keister saw to it that an employee of Inn Properties was added as a check signer on Bayside’s accounts, according to the whistleblower complaint. “At Gary’s direction, she wrote checks in amounts ranging from $10K to $25K with no invoices to pay against to cover Inn Properties cash shortages.” (This is not likely a permissible transaction for a federal tax-exempt organization–Editor). Lease invoices from Inn Properties to Bayside were used to offset these payments. “The overpayment was so great it took several months of lease invoices to fully apply the overpayments correctly,” according to the complaint.
In December 2020, the whistleblower complaint alleges, the Bayside Board voted to “take over” Inn Properties’ for-profit restaurant and hotel business. (Again, possibly a questionable undertaking for a federal tax-exempt organization whose tax-exempt purpose is not making money in the hospitality industry–Editor).
Possible Abuse of PPP Funding and More Fraud
The Federal Paycheck Protection Program of 2020 loaned funds to businesses to help them keep their employees employed. The amount loaned was determined by the amount spent on payroll, generally speaking. The whistleblower alleges that Bayside stopped covering Inn Properties cash shortages when a PPP loan was obtained. But, the complaint alleges, the Inn Properties application for the PPP loan included employee time reimbursed by Bayside. “Inn Properties received their PPP loan based on the inclusion of reimbursable payroll expenses and continued to bill Bayside for the covered payroll,” according to the complaint.
Where Does This Go From Here?
The complaint raises other concerns, including questions about relations with local governments. Bayside is becoming increasingly more involved with government funding as, under Keister’s direction, it has expanded its operations beyond providing transitional housing at the Old Alcohol Plant to involvement with homeless camps and tiny homes villages. Keister has stated in a fundraising video released by Bayside that the group is adding permanent housing as one of its focuses. Keister has sought to obtain use of Chimacum Park, the Fairgrounds and other properties in the area.
The AG won’t be talking about its investigation. Keister has stopped responding to our questions.
Perhaps governments that have been paying Bayside will audit those transactions. Perhaps Bayside’s trustees will act. But three of them–Keister’s business partners and his wife–have financial interests in seeing Inn Properties make money off Bayside. Three employees–all of them key people–have already tried and gotten nowhere.
The City of Port Townsend in September 2020 directed its City Manager, John Mauro, to enter exclusive negotiations with Bayside for handover of the Cherry Street Project. He ignored a $1 million cash offer for the project because he had been authorized to talk only with Bayside, which he said was being represented by Gary Keister. The information reported here at Port Townsend Free Press may help inform the city on how to proceed. I emailed Mauro to ask if he had been contacted by the Attorney General’s Office. I also asked if he had been informed of Mr. Keister’s history of conviction for bank fraud and money laundering and how he might be taking that information into account in negotiations. He has not responded.
Bayside is required by the IRS to file an annual return, called a 990. One can study those returns through the Guidestar service. As I wrote in the preceding article, Bayside’s returns showed skyrocketing income that turned out to be a pledge that has never been paid. Yet, that pledge continues to be carried as an asset and makes Bayside look like it is doing much better than it is.
The 990 does report that three of Bayside’s trustees (Verneuil, Eagan and Susan Keister) have financial interests in Inn Properties, though the form does not explain in any way the enmeshed relationship between the for-profit Inn Properties and tax exempt Bayside Housing. The 990 does not disclose the conflict of interest of Bayside’s managing director. It discloses nothing about Gary Keister’s control over Bayside Housing as its “acting” managing director at the same time he is the majority owner and manager of Inn Properties. Bayside’s 990 for the past year should be filed soon, but won’t be publicly available until Guidestar releases it online.
Should taxpayers have concerns about handing over the failed Cherry Street Project and another $300,000 to Bayside Housing? So far taxpayers are out about $2.33 million dollars on what is now widely recognized as a boondoggle and symbol of government incompetence and waste. Taxpayers got burned with the first group entrusted with the project and public largesse. That group, Homeward Bound Community Land Trust, was incompetent and not altogether honest, and defaulted on its commitments.
In September 2020 City Council directed the City Manager to negotiate a handover of the project to another local non-profit, Bayside Housing and Services. The latest Cherry Street giveaway was going to hit taxpayers harder. Taxpayers would eat all the indebtedness on the project and deliver it debt-free. Bayside would get more than $300,000 in cash unspent by Homeward Bound. Bayside would only be required to complete renovation and build-out of 8 apartments in the 70-year old building barged here form Victoria, B.C. in May 2017. After that, they could do whatever they wanted with the rest of valuable 1.5 acres on a hillside above the golf course.
The City Manager disregarded a $1 million cash offer for the property because he had been instructed to only negotiate with Bayside.
I reported in October 2020 that, despite headlines trumpeting the turnover, this was still “not a done deal.” We have since learned that Bayside and the City have been engaged in negotiations. Bayside has retained legal counsel to assist in the transaction and has been searching for partners to join on the project.
In that report I raised questions about whether, like Homeward Bound, Bayside lacked the resources and qualifications to get the job done. Would taxpayers again be left holding the bag? Bayside had never built anything. It owns no real estate. It had been unable to obtain financing, though its public reports show skyrocketing revenue and assets.
Bayside earned a lot of respect in the community under its first managing director, Aislinn Palmer (now using her married name, Diamante). She grew the fledgling organization from nothing into one of the most highly regarded non-profits in Jefferson County. But Diamante resigned abruptly in July 2019. Bayside made no mention of her departure–not a single public farewell or well wishes for her next venture. Diamante is now running operations at Fort Worden. She won’t tell us why she left. “I can’t talk about that,” she said.
Takeover and Conflicts of Interest
I had suspicions she may have left because things at Bayside were getting out of her control, and not in a good way. In October 2020 I asked Gary J. Keister why she left. Keister has been serving since Diamante’s departure as “acting” managing director. He’s been acting in that capacity for going on two years. Keister also manages the Old Alcohol Plant. This hotel/restaurant business is owned by Inn Properties, LLC. Keister is majority owner along with two other men who are also trustees of Bayside Housing. One has been president. The other is secretary/treasurer. Keister’s wife is also a Bayside trustee.
The Old Alcohol Plant rents rooms to Bayside. Kiester oversees billings to Bayside. He also oversees payments from Bayside to the Old Alcohol Plant. He’s on both sides of what are clearly not arms-length transactions. His business partner in the Old Alcohol Plant who is Bayside’s treasurer and the other trustees with ownership interests in the Old Alcohol Plant are also on both sides of these transactions.
We asked Keister if Palmer/Diamante resigned because of ethical concerns, and whether she had been unsuccessful in getting the trustees to address those concerns. Keister has not responded to our emailed questions.
“Our Wonderful Founders”
Keister is now effectively in control of Bayside Housing. A video released by Bayside in December 2020 is promoted as “Hear from our wonderful founders…” The “founders” in the video are Gary and Susan Keister. The video rewrites history. The Keisters were not the founders. Bayside was incorporated September 10, 2014 by individuals associated with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul of Eastern Jefferson County. Keister’s group of real estate investors were going to be Bayside’s landlord after it had purchased and renovated the Old Alcohol Plant. Bayside’s founders at one point mothballed the organization because Keister had been unable to rent them space when needed. In 2016 Kiester told The Leader he was not in control of the Bayside project.
Bayside’s original founders and trustees are gone, just like Palmer/Diamante. Inn Properties and Bayside have also seen resignations by accounting personnel.
Dodgy Finances, Corporate Shell Games, Money Laundering and Bank Fraud
Port Townsend Free Press has obtained what appears to be a whistleblower complaint against Keister and the way he is directing the finances of Bayside Housing. From the allegations in the complaint (I repeat, allegations) it would appear that the whistleblower has detailed, first-hand knowledge. The Washington Attorney General’s office has acknowledged receiving a complaint. The complaint obtained by PTFP alleges a plethora of conflicts of interest, possible abuse of Bayside’s non-profit status to cover cash flow needs of the Old Alcohol Plant, and specific allegations of fraud in how rooms supposedly for homeless persons are being charged to Bayside when in fact they are being rented to Old Alcohol Plant hotel customers. I will return to the whistleblower complaint in the next article. (You can read that article, published March 8, 2020 at this link.)
Keister has not responded to any of our recent questions, though he did confirm by email in January that a huge pledge receivable (upwards of $700,000, according to the whistleblower), has never been collected though it is years later still being reported as an asset. “It remains fully committed,” wrote Keister. The whistleblower alleges that pledge is illusory because it comes from Inn Properties, the corporation behind the Old Alcohol Plant controlled by Keister. The whistleblower says they doubt Inn Properties has that kind of money and that Inn Properties itself is heavily in debt.
What looks to be questionable reporting of assets–booking pledges never received as income and carrying them as assets–may be a red flag. It makes the organization look like it is doing much better than it really is. This could help in getting loans or attracting donations. It deserves a closer look. Playing fast and loose with financial information and sophisticated manipulation of inter-related corporations is what in 1992 landed Gary J. Keister in federal prison for money laundering and bank fraud.
Apparently while still in prison, Keister began assembling a new network of corporations. I have identified almost 30 corporations with Seattle and later Port Townsend and Port Hadlock addresses for which Keister was a governor or registered agent, or one of the corporations he controlled was a governor or registered agent of another corporation.
1239 Water Street, “Suite” A, Port Townsend
The addresses of the corporations in this network eventually became 1239 Water Street, Suite A, Port Townsend. This address is a nondescript door between the dumpster and drive-up window at the U.S. Bank. According to a bank employee, this space has not been rented for years. Keister now runs his corporate networks from his Old Alcohol Plant offices.
Who Is Gary Keister?
One of Kiester’s autobiographical profiles, from his personal blog.
Biographical profiles published by Keister on various websites claim he was the head of several corporations, such as “Hudson Bay Group,” an investment company called Veribus, Inc. and a corporation with fish processing plants around the world. He also claimed that Wescom Capital, operating out of the space by the dumpster behind U.S. Bank, “regularly handles transactions ranging between $5 to $50 million.” He did not respond to questions asking for verification of these claims, nor have I found any information to corroborate those claims. The only information I located on the fish processing company, John Cabot Company, was an expired trademark coming back to an Everett, WA address and mention of the ruins of a fish processing facility in Seldovia, Alaska.
In another autobiographical profile he says that he worked in the Middle East as an advisor to AID contractors, “and upon returning to the US took a position as president for an international food processing company” (which he does not identify).
None of the biographies published by Mr. Keister mention running Augustine Unlimited, a construction-hardware wholesale business in Tukwila, when he was committing bank fraud and money laundering crimes.
In October 2019, after Aislinn Palmer Diamante’s departure, articles of incorporation of a for-profit corporation called Bayside Housing LLC were filed with the Washington Secretary of State. The Governor of this for-profit Bayside Housing was identified as Wescom Capital. The Governor of Wescom Capital is Gary Keister. The stated business purpose of this for-profit Bayside Housing: real estate.
One of the corporations with which Keister got involved after prison was St. Joseph’s Housing Group of Seattle. The purpose of this non-profit corporation, like the non-profit Bayside Housing, was to provide housing and transitional services. It started in 1992. It never filed an IRS 990, an annual report required of nonprofits with annual income exceeding $50,000. In one annual state corporation report, its income was reported as less than $4,000. Keister appeared suddenly in 2005 as Vice-President and Chair. The non-profit began to shed directors. In 2007 it was just Keister as President and Chair and a secretary. On February 2, 2009 the Secretary of State dissolved St. Joseph’s Housing Group for failure to file a list of officers within the time required by law.
Keister, in an interview with The Leader, has claimed he was “associated” with the project in Seattle “where homes owned by Housing and Urban Development were sold at the height of the housing market and used to build 50 units called Monica’s Place.” There is a Monica’s Village Place in Seattle. It is a 53-unit apartment building built in 2011 by Catholic Community Services of Western Washington.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. GARY KEISTER
Everybody deserves a second chance. But conviction for multiple counts of bank fraud and money laundering in a sophisticated scheme to bilk $1.2 million dollars out of bank is worth taking into consideration when weighing whether valuable public resources should be entrusted to such a person. Former Bayside Housing and Inn Properties employees who have spoken on condition of confidentiality say they wanted to give Gary Keister the benefit of the doubt, but, to paraphrase one former key employee, began to wonder whether “a leopard could change its spots.”
Keister was the owner of Augustine Unlimited, a Tukwila construction/hardware wholesaler, which he ran from 1986 until 1988 when he sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He was accused and convicted of making false statements to First Interstate Bank to obtain loans of $1.2 million. Much of the money was eventually repaid, but the bank still lost between $200,000 and $400,000.
Keister was convicted of one count of conspiracy, four counts of money laundering and 35 counts of bank fraud. He was denied bail upon conviction and sentenced to 41 months in prison. His sentence was “enhanced” by the U.S. District Court judge due to his leadership role and the sophistication of the scheme he orchestrated.
In its 1994 decision upholding Keister’s conviction and sentence, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit described Keister’s scheme:
When Keister acquired Augustine in late 1986, he obtained a line of credit from First Interstate Bank of Washington (FIWA). Under the terms of the line of credit agreement, Augustine would submit receivables data daily to FIWA and FIWA would extend credit to Augustine on the basis of Augustine’s receivables. The agreement provided that Augustine was to refrain from engaging in any business not reasonably related to its normal business. The crux of the allegations against Keister were that: (1) he falsified receivables data to increase the availability of funds under Augustine’s line of credit; (2) he funneled money advanced under Augustine’s line of credit through other business entities under his control and then redirected the funds into Augustine as injections of new capital, which the terms of the line of credit agreement required him to make; (3) he used Augustine’s line of credit to provide credit to other business entities under his control in violation of the line-of-credit agreement.
As reported by The Seattle Times, “Rather than invest the money in Augustine Unlimited as intended by the bank, Keister spent the loans on personal debts, homes and other businesses.”
Keister was convicted on or about July 10, 1992. He was sentenced to 41 months. His conviction was upheld January 3, 1994. He began rebuilding his corporate network on May 5, 1995 when he filed articles of incorporation for Wescom Capital, that “regularly” handled “transactions ranging from $5 to $50 million.” One of Keister’s autobiographical profiles says Wescom started business in 1994, when he would still have been in prison.
NEXT: The Whistleblower Complaint and More Red Flags (You can read that article, published March 8, 2020 by clicking here).
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