Da Vinci painting of Christ sells for $450 million

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The Louvre Abu Dhabi might seem to have all you could ask for in a world-class museum. Its acclaimed design shades its galleries under a vast dome that appears to hover over the waters of the Persian Gulf. Inside are works by Rembrandt and Vermeer, Monet and van Gogh, Mondrian and Basquiat.

Yet the work that the Louvre Abu Dhabi once promised would anchor its collection is conspicuously absent: “Salvator Mundi,” a painting of Jesus Christ attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.

Few works have evoked as much intrigue, either in the world of art or among the courts of Persian Gulf royals. First, its authenticity as the product of Leonardo’s own hand was the subject of intense debate. Then, in November 2017, it became the most expensive work ever sold at auction, fetching $450.3 million from an anonymous bidder who turned out to be a close ally and possible stand-in for the ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Now, the painting is shrouded in a new mystery: Where in the world is “Salvator Mundi”?

Although the Abu Dhabi culture department announced about a month after the auction that it had somehow acquired “Salvator Mundi” for display in the local Louvre, a scheduled unveiling of the painting last September was canceled without explanation. The culture department is refusing to answer questions. Staff of the Louvre Abu Dhabi say privately that they have no knowledge of the painting’s whereabouts.

The Louvre in Paris, which licenses its name to the Abu Dhabi museum, has not been able to locate “Salvator Mundi,” either, according to an official familiar with the museum’s discussions with Abu Dhabi, who declined to be named because of the confidentiality of the talks.

 Officials in the French government, which owns the Louvre in Paris, are eager to include “Salvator Mundi” in a landmark exhibition this fall to mark the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death and say they are still holding out hope that the painting might resurface in time. (A representative of the Louvre declined to comment.)

But some Leonardo experts say they are alarmed by the uncertainty about the painting’s whereabouts and future, especially after the announcement from Abu Dhabi that the painting would go on display to the public.

“It is tragic,” said Dianne Modestini, a professor at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts and a conservator who has worked on “Salvator Mundi.” “To deprive the art lovers and many others who were moved by this picture — a masterpiece of such rarity — is deeply unfair.”

Martin Kemp, an Oxford art historian who has studied the painting, described it as “a kind of religious version of the ‘Mona Lisa’” and Leonardo’s “strongest statement of the elusiveness of the divine.”

“I don’t know where it is, either,” he added.

Noting that it was never clear how Abu Dhabi might have acquired the painting from the Saudis in the first place — whether by a gift, loan or private sale — some have speculated that Crown Prince Mohammed might simply have decided to keep it. The Saudi embassy in Washington declined to comment.

The 33-year-old crown prince may not be the painting’s first royal owner. Believed to have been painted around 1500, “Salvator Mundi” was one of two similar works listed in an inventory of the collection of King Charles I of England after his execution in 1649, Professor Kemp said. But the painting disappeared from the historical record in the late 18th century.

The painting sold at the record auction later turned up in the collection of a 19th-century British industrialist. It had been so heavily painted over that “it looked like a drug-crazed hippie,” Professor Kemp said, and it was attributed at the time to one of Leonardo’s followers. In 1958, it was sold out of that collection for the equivalent of $1,350 in today’s dollars.

The claim that the painting was the work of Leonardo himself originated after a pair of dealers spotted it at an auction in New Orleans in 2005 and brought it to Professor Modestini of N.Y.U.

She stripped away overpainting, repaired damage made by a split in the wood panel, and restored details. Among other things, one of Jesus’s hands appeared to have two thumbs, possibly because the artist changed his mind about where the thumb should be and painted over the original thumb. It had been exposed by scraping later on, and Professor Modestini covered the thumb she believed Leonardo did not want.

Its new attribution to Leonardo won the painting a spot in a retrospective of his work at the National Gallery in London in 2011. Two years later, a Russian billionaire, Dmitry E. Rybolovlev, bought it for $127.5 million — less than a third of what he sold it for in 2017, when it was auctioned in New York by Christie’s.

Now the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s failure to exhibit “Salvator Mundi” as promised has revived doubts about whether it is Leonardo’s at all, with skeptics speculating that the new owner may fear public scrutiny.

An expert on Leonardo’s paintings, Jacques Franck, sent letters to the office of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, raising doubts about the attribution. Mr. Macron’s chief of staff, François-Xavier Lauch, wrote back that the president “was very attentive to the preoccupations.”  Others have argued that the painting was so extensively restored by Professor Modestini that it is as much her work as Leonardo’s.

“Nonsense,” she said in an interview, calling these “ridiculous claims.”

Auction house contracts typically include a five-year authenticity warranty. But the extensive public documentation and debate before the 2017 sale would make it difficult for the buyer to recover the payment by challenging the attribution to Leonardo.

The anonymous buyer at the auction in New York, Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud, was a little known member of a distant branch of the Saudi royal family with no publicly known source of great wealth or history as a major art collector. But he was a close friend and confidant of Crown Prince Mohammed. A few months after the auction, the royal court named Prince Bader as the kingdom’s first-ever minister of culture.

Christie’s initially sought to guard Prince Bader’s identity so closely during the bidding that it created a special account number for him that was known only to a handful of the house’s executives. But contracts and correspondence obtained by The New York Times showed Prince Bader to be the anonymous buyer.

American officials familiar with the arrangement later said that Prince Bader was in fact acting as a surrogate for Crown Prince Mohammed himself, the true purchaser of “Salvator Mundi.”

Prince Mohammed’s aggression and impulsiveness have recently come under new scrutiny in the West after American intelligence agencies concluded that he ordered the killing last fall of the dissident Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who was ambushed and dismembered by Saudi agents in a consulate in Istanbul. But by the time of auction, the prince had already shown a taste for pricey trophies, paying $500 million for a yacht and $300 million for a chateau in France.

Unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne

I must admit that the English language has a lot of flexibility in its usage. Even Albert Einstein wouldn't have been able to be so creative when it comes to figuring it out. The following is a perfect example: 


When I was growing up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, there was an area, about half a mile downtown from me, known as "The Bowery." One of the most elegant areas of the city during the 1800s, by 1900, the Bowery devolved into low-rent concert halls, flop houses, beer gardens, brothels and streets that became the living quarters for hundreds of people with no visible means of support. 

These days, people in those circumstances are called "homeless" or "temporarily un-sheltered." In those days they were known as Bowery Bums. 

The word, bum, simply refers to someone who refuses to work and tries to live off of others. Those who either chose, or were thrust into such penury, were also called beggars and tramps. Such references were made during a time in our history when euphemisms were rare.  

Today, there are euphemisms for just about every activity that, if given the specific title, would be deemed offensive to civil discourse, also known as polite conversation. Hence, in a continuing effort to soften our language and distort reality, we find words that make us feel better about who we are and how un-judgmental we can be. 

Those who are extremely overweight are not referred to as obese or fat. Instead, a man would be called heavy-set or husky, while a woman would be full-figured. People who used to be called handicapped or crippled are now labeled physically challenged. 

The famous comedian Henny Youngman told a joke about his brother-in-law who claimed to be a diamond-cutter. Later, it was learned that he was in charge of mowing the lawn at Yankee Stadium. Ed Norton, the famous sewer-worker from "The Honeymooners" television show, introduced himself as "an engineer in subterranean sanitation." Employees are never fired from their jobs; they are "let go." 

When I was a young lad, people who were physically attracted to the same sex were known as homosexuals. Now they are gays and lesbians. The late English author Quentin Crisp, who was openly gay, was also very open about the use of softened language. "Euphemisms are not, as many young people think, useless verbiage for that which can and should be said bluntly; they are like secret agents on a delicate mission; they must airily pass by a stinking mess with barely so much as a nod of the head," he said, adding, "Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne." 

In days of yore, we never even heard of someone being able to change from one sex to another, but when it became surgically possible it was called a sex change operation. Soon, the term was considered objectionable, so it became "gender reassignment." Once upon a time, if you supported taking the life of a child in the womb, you were pro-abortion; if you didn't, you were anti-abortion. Now, you're classified pro-choice or pro-life.

Someone who has died is said to have passed away, bought the farm, given up the ghost, kicked the bucket, or, as the great Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, "shuffled off this mortal coil." When ending the life of a pet it's called "putting him/her to sleep." 

When the mob wants to put someone to sleep, they put a "contract" out on him. They don't want to murder the guy, they want him "whacked," "hit," "taken for a ride," or "fitted for a cement overcoat." The bad guys don't get sent to prison; they go to correctional institutions. 

In military terms, people and places bombed out of existence have been "marginalized." When innocent civilians are killed during a war, it's known as "collateral damage." 

Slums and ghettos have been euphemistically excised from the language and reborn as economically depressed or culturally deprived environments. People who violate our laws by sneaking across our borders are no longer "illegal aliens," they are "undocumented immigrants."
When taxpayers became aware of the term "earmarks," which are pork barrel projects intended to benefit constituents of a politician in return for their political support, it became an epithet for wasteful spending. Therefore, it needed a new name, so it was magically transformed into "legislatively directed spending." All of the foregoing is meant to be more than a linguistic exercise; it's about questioning where we are as a society. 

It's about our refusal to deal with reality, preferring instead to pretend that what is happening before our eyes can be creatively denied by the use of more "tolerant" language. 
In other words, if we can find a comfortable substitute for the truth, we can avoid facing it. This doesn't make me sick; it makes me lose my lunch. 

Mexico braces for new caravan

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico is bracing for the possible arrival of the “mother of all caravans,” even as doubts arise over whether the group of Central American migrants will be all that big.

Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero has said a caravan of migrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala could be forming.

“We have information that a new caravan is forming in Honduras, that they’re calling ‘the mother of all caravans,’ and they are thinking it could have more than 20,000 people,” Sanchez Cordero said Wednesday.

But a WhatsApp group calling for people to gather Saturday in El Salvador to set off for Guatemala only has about 206 members.

Activist Irineo Mujica, who has accompanied several caravans in Mexico, said reports about “the mother of all caravans” were false, claiming “this is information that (U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen) Nielsen is using to create fear.”

His group, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, said in a statement there was no evidence the new caravan would be that large, noting “there has never been a caravan of the size that Sanchez Cordero mentioned.” Indeed, past caravans hit very serious logistical hurdles at 7,000-strong.

He and others suspect the administration of President Donald Trump may be trying to fan fears of a big caravan to turn the U.S. national agenda back to the immigration issue.

Honduran activist Bartolo Fuentes, who accompanied a large caravan last year, dismissed the new reports as “part of the U.S. government’s plans, something made up to justify their actions.”

Later Thursday, Honduras’ deputy foreign minister, Nelly Jerez, denied that a “mother of all caravans” was forming in her country.

“There is no indication of such a caravan,” Jerez said. “This type of information promotes that people leave the country.”

A caravan of about 2,500 Central Americans and Cubans is currently making its way through Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas. The largest of last year’s caravans in Mexico contained about 7,000 people at its peak, though some estimates ran as high as 10,000 at some points.

Mexico appears to be both tiring of the caravans and eager not to anger the United States. It has stopped granting migrants humanitarian visas at the border, and towns along the well-traveled route to Mexico City sometimes no longer allow caravans to spend the night.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday that Mexico is doing its part to fight immigrant smuggling.

“We are going to do everything we can to help. We don’t in any way want a confrontation with the U.S. government,” he said. “It is legitimate that they are displeased and they voice these concerns.”

Sanchez Cordero has pledged to form a police line of “containment” around Mexico’s narrow Tehuantepec Isthmus to stop migrants from continuing north to the U.S. border.

The containment belt would consist of federal police and immigration agents, but such highway blockades and checkpoints have not stopped large and determined groups of migrants in the past.

Diamond and Silk at Lincoln-Reagan Dinner

Heroes yesterday and today

I'm not old enough to remember the mood of the country during World War 2, but America's sentiments can be readily understood by viewing any of the movies made during the war against the Axis powers in Europe. Even during the 50's, a decade after the troops were back home, the films continued to portray the greatness of our country and its fight for freedom around the world. 

It was a time of John Wayne, James Stewart, and Betty Grable; major stars whose patriotism was self-evident in the roles they played and the additional time they spent supporting the troops.

It was a time when men shed their blood fighting on the battlefield and women backed them up with their sweat and tears in defense plants from coast to coast. It was a time when families prayed together and prominently displayed flags in front of their homes to proudly show their faith in God, their love of country and their support of the men in uniform. 

Legendary comedian Bob Hope was entertaining the troops at military bases around the world, accompanied by other major Hollywood celebrities. It was a time in our history when we knew the good guys from the bad guys. It was the time of heroes.

What happened to those heroes? Since the turbulent 60's with its anti-American rhetoric and its drug induced revolution against propriety, we have witnessed an erosion of values that has sought to turn religion into a prohibited practice and patriotism into a foolish philosophy only engaged in by fascists. 

When Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992 it was the beginning of a new era in politics, one in which patriotism or morality was no longer relevant to a Chief Executive’s résumé. Clinton’s widely disclosed burning of the American flag on foreign soil during the Vietnam War and his highly publicized affair with Gennifer Flowers didn’t stop voters from electing him over George H.W. Bush, a devoted family man, fighter pilot and hero in World War 2.  

Clinton’s continuous immorality in the Oval Office soon became regular headlines and fodder for late night comedy shows. Finding humor in a President’s infidelities and sexual harassment of interns seemed to blend with the moral tenor of the times. In 1996, his reelection over Bob Dole, another hero of WW2, further exemplified the cultural decline of our country. 

Voters preferred youth over experience; decadence over decency. Once again, our country had made its choice, signifying that people were rejecting the principles that formed the foundation of our society.

This is not to suggest that former presidents were completely virtuous in their private lives; a short history lesson would disabuse us of such naiveté. However, most mature Americans can understand, albeit, not approve of, the rapacious appetite of people high on the food chain. What’s most important for our future is to trust that our leaders truly love our country. 

When President Obama traveled the world telling foreign nations that the US is not an exceptional country he was attempting to embarrass the very country that gave him the megaphone to voice his lack of gratitude.

When the Clintons began padding their foundation with mega-bucks from foreign entities, with quid pro quos attached, they were selling out the country that gave rise to their predatory influence. Not coincidentally, the Clintons and the Obamas were conspicuously contemptuous of our military. That’s not surprising when you realize that the military’s purpose is to defend us against enemies, foreign and domestic. 

Yet, what happens when the domestic enemies are occupying the highest positions in our government? I’m proud to say the answer to that question occurred on November 8, 2016, when voters, aka, “the deplorables,” fed up with the leftwing orchestrated demolition of the US, elected Donald Trump to breathe new life into a once thriving capitalist republic that was being systematically suffocated by the malignant purveyors of global socialism.

After 8 years with a President and a First Lady who evinced shame for their country, and faced with a successor that would follow the same path toward deterioration and mediocrity, America looked for a leader that would restore patriotism, with all of its  bountiful rewards, to the bloodline of  that shining city on a hill. 

It was a time when leadership was needed; a time to eschew the political correctness that was crippling us. It was a time for speaking clearly and acting decisively. The vicious rage against Trump’s election is merely the embittered rejoinder of a corrupt institution which, hitherto, felt certain they were invulnerable to exposure. 

Thankfully, the United States of America, that glorious beacon of freedom in a hostile world, has always found its heroes in times of need.

Democrats desperate to find something on Trump

Now that the Mueller Report couldn't find anything to pin on President Trump, some Democrat members of the House have decided to pry into every move he's made and everything he's done since he was born. Rep. Adam Schiff has accused him of being a hitman for the Mafia; being a leader of a Mexican drug cartel and of being a stepchild of former Russian Dictator Joseph Stalin. 
It's been obvious since the beginning that they are desperate to find something, but they are really pushing it with this latest charge. 

Senior community planned for Flower Mound

Senator Nelson - Best medicine for Texas

Red light cameras - Highway robbery!

You're driving on your way home from work and mulling over some of the day's events in your mind as you approach the green light at an intersection. About 50 feet away, the light turns to yellow, and you know you have plenty of time to get by it before it becomes red. Halfway through the thoroughfare, just as the light passes over the top of your windshield, the crimson beam makes its appearance.

You've easily reached the other side of the street before the opposing traffic gets the green go-ahead signal. You continue along, confident that you cleared the byway lawfully. About a week later, you find a traffic summons in your mailbox ordering you to pay $150 fine for passing a red light. 

According to the edict, you were caught by a camera that has your picture and plate number branding you as a red light-runner. Stunned, you stare at the legal notice and try to remember when this so-called violation occurred. That may not be easy because the set of facts described above is a common driving pattern that most people engage in without a second thought.

The yellow light is a warning that the red light will follow in a matter of seconds; therefore, if the driver is near enough to the cross-street to pass it within seconds, he/she is most likely to continue driving, rather than jam on the brakes and perhaps get rear-ended by another car. Nevertheless, you've been summoned by the Big Brother of that city, and you can either mail in the money or plead not guilty and try to fight it in court.

That could mean taking a day off work, sitting around in a crowded courtroom, and pleading your case against an intractable video that will coldly indict you for something you barely remember doing. If you had been pulled over by a police officer, you could have debated the reasonableness of being ticketed under the circumstances.

Furthermore, if you lost the debate, you would at least have recalled the incident. Inasmuch as taking a day off work may cost you more than the ticket price, you're likely to simply grimace and pay it. It seems to me that being convicted by a machine is antithetical to everything we learn about fair play and justice.

You can't argue with a contraption if the authority paying for the robotic tyrant is determined to agree with the judgment made by the device. We're told it saves money because it requires fewer cops to enforce traffic laws, allowing them to stay vigilant for more serious crimes. Using that logic, we should have numerous cameras in high-crime areas to assure the public that felony prevention is more important than minor traffic infractions.

The reason that won't happen is because a city can bring in a lot more revenue by picking off the errant motorist, who is most likely able to pay the fine, than by arresting itinerant dirtbags for burglary or purse-snatching, since they are most likely to be unemployed and, hence, unable to contribute to the local treasury.

Simply put, the hardworking, law-abiding taxpayer is a lucrative target for municipalities that are always looking for more cash to feed their insatiable appetite for other people's money. Thankfully, people are fighting back against this legalized robbery of the citizenry. Lawsuits have been filed in several cities not only claiming, but proving that some cameras have shorter yellow-light durations than state law requirements in order to catch drivers running red lights and boost ticket revenue.

The implications of those findings are frightening when you realize that a city can increase revenue enormously simply by tweaking the time frame by a split-second, thereby making violators out of lawful citizens and ripping them off with impunity. In some areas of the country people are becoming violent, vandalizing the pole-mounted cameras by literally shooting them off their lofty perches.

One notorious resistance operative has been wearing Halloween masks to keep the authorities from proving who was operating his vehicle. Some of these tactics, assisted by other forms of public outrage, are working. Two large cities, Los Angeles and Houston, have recently banned the red light surveillance systems.

Yet New York City, where I worked as a cop for 20 years, has increased the number of metallic peeping Toms. In the past, when the city wanted people to pony up more dough, the word came down from the mayor's office to the police commissioner's office to the division office to the precinct captain that there was dissatisfaction with the lack of "traffic enforcement" in the city.

Those were code words for "tell your subordinates to get those pens working or expect a lot more supervision!" Now, it's all done with the click of a camera.

City to die for

Robert David Weir, better known as Bob Weir in local circles, makes a triumphant debut into the literary world with, "City To Die For: One Man's Struggle against the Mafia takeover of Dallas."

Weir takes the reader back 60 years to the gangster heydays of Dallas and astounds him with the vivid images of the underworld and police workings only a former cop might know.

Tommy Crandon is the lead mobster of the time, while Harold Battle runs a gambling unit with a cut going toward Crandon. When Crandon demands a bigger piece of the pie, Battle has no choice but to stand his ground or look the fool in front of his own minions.

But Crandon can't stand the affront to his power-he owned the Dallas underworld and most of the police force-so he puts a price on Battle's head, and the novel becomes some freakish event after event of surviving an assassin's tool.

This is how Battle gets the nickname, Cat. There is, of course, the "incorruptible" cop, James Huntley, who joins with Battle in the struggle against Crandon.

 Theme:

During the 1940s, the virgin territory of Dallas, Texas, was being set up as a prime target for invasion by Mafia bosses from New York and Chicago, including Lucky Luciano, the "capo di tutti capi." 

Conspiring with a recognized leader of a petty gang of gamblers and hoods in Dallas, Luciano intended to move in with drugs, prostitution, gambling, union infiltration, and other rackets.

However, another Dallas gambler, Harold Battle, engaged in a continuing struggle to keep his city free from a Mob stranglehold. Together with an incorruptible police detective, Battle fought back against incredible odds to save his city and his life.

 Available in paperback at Amazon.com

Police work in black and white

Recently, I was reflecting on some experiences I had as a cop in the high-crime area of Brooklyn known as Bedford-Stuyvesant. Much like these days, every white cop was a target – if not from a bullet in the back, then, from charges of racism. 

It was about 3:00 am, and I was working the midnight shift with my partner on radio motor patrol. Suddenly, as we turned a corner, we saw a car at the next intersection slowly moving past the red light. As we drove up on the auto, it had come to rest halfway across the avenue and stopped, as if it were parked. 

We exited our car and approached carefully. The man behind the wheel was slumped over it and appeared to be sleeping with his foot on the brake. Luckily, there was no traffic at that late hour on the side street in the middle of the single-family-home area. Afraid to alarm the man, I reached into the car and turned off the engine, while my partner placed our car in the intersection with the roof lights on. 

When the engine stopped, the man jumped in his seat, slamming his foot on the accelerator, confirming my reason for grabbing the keys. It was evident the man had been drinking, stopped at the light, and fell asleep. I ordered him to slide over, and I drove the car to a space across the street. After checking his license, I found that he lived just a few houses away. He was apologizing for his actions and pleaded with me not to arrest him. 

My decision was to give him a ticket for passing the light and let him off down the street at his driveway. After receiving the summons and walking unsteadily toward his front door, he made some kind of snide comment toward me as he looked back. I dismissed it as someone who should have been grateful instead of angry, and I continued on patrol with my partner. 

A few days later, while working a day tour, I received a command to report to the station house. When I did so, I was ordered to report to the division office in regard to some sort of investigation. My partner was assigned a foot post until my return. I was ushered into an office and seated in front of a desk being occupied by a ruddy-faced lieutenant in civilian clothes. He was holding a crumpled piece of paper on which was scrawled a letter of complaint against me. 

"Officer Weir, do you have a problem with black people?" he asked. "Excuse me, Sir?" "I have a letter here from a man who says you used a racial slur when giving him a ticket," he growled, tossing the letter on the desk for me to read. 
"Lieutenant, I assure you that's an outright lie," I protested after perusing the ragged document. "Really?" he replied, furrowing his brow. "I doubt the man would go through the trouble of sending a letter unless he was outraged by your insult." "Sir, I was very respectful toward that guy." I went on to explain what happened, but the lieutenant seemed intent on finding me guilty. 

"Who were you working with that night?" he asked. "Officer Parker," I replied, as he picked up the phone and called my precinct. "I'll find out what your partner has to say, because let me tell you, he could be in as much trouble as you if he didn't report your actions." 

For the next 30 minutes, he read me the riot act, determined to add my scalp to his belt. "Lieutenant, Officer Parker is here," said the woman on the intercom. "Send him in," he barked. The door opened, and my interrogator looked up in shock. 

"You're Officer Parker?" he said to the tall black man standing in the doorway. "Yes, Sir. I was told to report here." Looking as though his fish had just popped off the line, the supervisor was at a loss for words. "Er...were you with Officer Weir when he gave a ticket to this man the other night?" "Oh, yes, I remember this," Parker said confidently. "This guy is saying Bob called him what? That's baloney! I've worked with Bob long enough to know that's a lie, and I was there that night. This man was lucky he wasn't arrested." 

The lieutenant glared at me and snatched the letter back. "Officer, why didn't you tell me your partner was black?" "Sir, you didn't ask me. You just assumed I'm guilty because the complainant is black and I'm white." "Get the hell out of my office!" he sneered, unwilling to admit his own knee-jerk bigotry. 

On the way back to our precinct, I told my partner that lunch was on me. "Why?" he inquired. "To thank you for being black," I replied with a grin. "Aw, don't mention it," he quipped. "It's my pleasure.”

Rackets, scams and con men

Recently, my wife and I attended a luncheon put on by the Denton Women’s Republican Club. The guest speakers were Denton County District Attorney Paul Johnson and the DA’s office special investigator Brian Wolfe. Together, they provided valuable information about Internet scams, telephone frauds and other sinister rackets being used by hustlers against unsuspecting, and naïve, victims.
Several scenarios were used to show how often people are defrauded out of their savings. The presentation reminded me of a TV series from the 60s called “Racket Squad.” At the opening of each show, the narrator began with this warning: “Confidence games are the carefully worked out frauds by which con men take more money each year from the American public than all the bank robbers and thugs with their violence.”

 When the luncheon ended I asked Brian Wolfe to come over for a video interview because the essential info he and Mr. Johnson imparted just might educate some people about the cunning tactics of con artists. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, which may save unsuspecting potential victims a lot of grief. The following are some examples of the type of schemes used to defraud decent people who may be looking for love in all the wrong places.

 One variety of scams takes advantage of people looking for romantic partners, often via dating websites, apps, or social media, by pretending to be prospective companions. They play on emotional triggers to get their victims to provide money, gifts or personal details. Dating and romance scams often take place through online dating websites, but scammers may also use social media or email to make contact. They have even been known to telephone their victims as a first introduction. Scammers typically create fake online profiles designed to lure you in.

They may use a fictional name, or falsely take on the identities of real, trusted people such as military personnel, aid workers or professionals working abroad. Dating and romance scammers will express strong emotions for you in a relatively short period of time, and will suggest you move the relationship away from the website to a more private channel, such as phone, email or instant messaging. They often claim to be from other countries, but travelling or working overseas.

Scammers will go to great lengths to gain your interest and trust, such as showering you with loving words, sharing “personal information” and even sending you gifts. They may take months to build what may feel like the romance of a lifetime and may even pretend to book flights to visit you, but never actually come. Once they’ve gained your trust and your defenses are down, they will ask you (either subtly or directly) for money, gifts or your banking/credit card details.

They may also ask you to send pictures or videos of yourself, possibly of an intimate nature. Often the scammer will pretend to need the money for some sort of personal emergency. For example, they may claim to have a severely ill family member who requires immediate medical attention such as an expensive operation, or they may claim financial hardship due to an unfortunate run of bad luck such as a failed business or mugging in the street.

The scammer may also claim they want to travel to visit you, but cannot afford it unless you are able to lend them money to cover flights or other travel expenses. To protect yourself from these scams, never send money to someone you haven’t met in person. Always consider the possibility that the approach may be a scam, particularly if the warning signs listed above appear.

Try to remove the emotion from your decision making no matter how caring or persistent the “prospective partner” is. Be cautious when sharing personal pictures or videos with prospective partners, especially if you’ve never met them before. Scammers are known to blackmail their targets using compromising material. Be wary of requests for money. Never send money or give credit card details, online account details, or copies of important personal documents to anyone you don’t know or trust.
Avoid any arrangement with a stranger that asks for up-front payment via money order, wire transfer, international funds transfer, pre-loaded card or electronic currency, like Bitcoin. It is rare to recover money sent this way. Do not agree to transfer money for someone else: money laundering is a criminal offense.
 If you think you’ve been a victim of a scam you can contact the Denton County District Attorney’s Special Crimes Unit at 940-349-2725

Tucker Carlson, Former NFL Player Burgess Owens On Hate Crime Hoaxes, Ra...

This Republican is 'OK' with 16 yr olds voting - Tucker Carlson 3/26/19