Simon had to know about drug trafficer ex-partner’s past
From the L.A. Weekly, showing conclusively that California Republican candidate for Governor Bill Simon must have known about the drug convictions of his ex partner, something Simon has continued to deny.
While claiming that a Los Angeles jury’s $78 million judgment against William E. Simon & Sons for fraudulently running the Pacific Coin company into the ground will be overturned, Simon struggles with an explanation for why he, a former federal prosecutor, did not know that the company president with whom he was going into business, Paul Edward Hindelang, was in fact a convicted major drug trafficker. The $1 million “due diligence” procedure carried out for Simon by the Deloitte accounting firm as part of his company’s takeover of Pacific Coin was, according to Simon, limited to the 10 years before his firm took control of Pacific Coin in 1998. But that spin is not correct. Deloitte hired the L.A.-based Scherzer & Co. investigative firm to check out Hindelang and received the report of his big-time criminal background. Hindelang went to prison in the early ’80s for his role as one of the nation’s biggest marijuana traffickers.
The Weekly engaged in an amusing e-mail exchange with Russo, who finally refused to answer when asked why Simon was not suing Deloitte for failing to red-flag Hindelang’s criminal past in its report. (italics added)
On KPKF news recently Bill Bradley, the author of the story thought it note-worthy that the business in question, a pay phone business, was a cash business and thus ideal for money-laundering.