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Ex-Chair of FCC Broadband Committee Gets Five Years In Prison For Fraud (arstechnica.com) 43

Posted by BeauHD from the fiber-fraud dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The former head of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) was sentenced to five years in prison for defrauding investors. Elizabeth Ann Pierce was CEO of Quintillion, an Alaskan telecom company, when she lied to two investment firms in New York in order to raise $270 million to build a fiber network. She also defrauded two individual investors out of $365,000 and used a large chunk of that money for personal expenses. Pierce, 55, pleaded guilty and last week was given the five-year prison sentence in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman announced. Pierce was also "ordered to forfeit $896,698.00 and all of her interests in Quintillion and a property in Texas." She will also be subject to a restitution order to compensate her victims "at a later date." Pierce landed the top sot on Pai's broadband advisory committee in April 2017. "But she left Quintillion in July 2017 as her scheme unraveled, and she resigned from the FCC advisory panel," reports Ars. "Pai appointed a new chair for his committee two months later; he thanked Pierce for her service, saying she did 'an excellent job' chairing the committee and 'wish[ed] her all the best in her future endeavors.'"

According to Berman's announcement, Pierce forged contracts in order to raise $270 million from investors.
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Ex-Chair of FCC Broadband Committee Gets Five Years In Prison For Fraud More

Ex-Chair of FCC Broadband Committee Gets Five Years In Prison For Fraud

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  • How can this be? (Score:3)

    by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Tuesday June 25, 2019 @05:05PM (#58824008) Homepage
    How did he not instead get an executive bonus? Or a bribe? Or at least a promotion? Or something. A plump position in some private company was, say, "director of paperclip counting", for say six figures a year.

  • whaaaaa? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Robert Ng ( 5984596 )
    Someone appointed by the Trump administration turns out to be a crook!? INCONCEIVABLE!
  • it would be legal. If anyone's wondering why guys like Mitt Rhomney spend a fortune getting and advanced education it's to learn how to do stuff like this legally. Also it's to get the kind of connections that let you get away with stuff like this (and let you know who you can and can't scam).

  • I've no special sympathy for the tangerine bloke or his appointees, but c'mon, there are greedy swindlers appointed and uncovered during every administration. We are further dividing ourselves, being utterly unable to put aside partisan hatred.

  • Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job (Score:4, Interesting)

    by epine ( 68316 ) on Tuesday June 25, 2019 @05:48PM (#58824294)

    Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job vetting your advisory committees.

    What "Brownie" Regrets [theatlantic.com] — 28 August 2015

    The former FEMA head talks about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, whether he really did a "heckuva job," and why it's "bullshit" to suggest the response was affected by race.
    ...
    So we walk into that briefing and we're standing there, it's the typical photo op, I'm talking to the president about what we're going to see and the press pool is there, and Gov. Riley, who I'd known for years even when he was a congressman, made a simple comment, and said, "Mr. President, I want you to know that I think FEMA is doing a great job in Alabama."

    And the president, because he and I had a good working relationship, the president just took that cue and, as is his style, immediately kind of slapped me in the gut like he would do and said, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

    And I was like, at that instant, [I knew] the media was going to jump all over that, because I knew that we weren't doing a good job in Louisiana.

    And we can debate who was and wasn't doing a good job, but I knew things weren't working in New Orleans, and he was looking as if he didn't have a clue what was going on.

    Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

  • Shame it wasn't Ajit Pai (Score:4, Funny)

    by NerdENerd ( 660369 ) on Tuesday June 25, 2019 @06:10PM (#58824436)
    Reading the first sentence made think that piece of turd Ajit Pai had been jailed. Shame it wasn't.

  • No surprise. The surprise is that she got caught and actually gets punished. She probably pissed somebody major off (Refused to let her pussy be grabbed?) or those in power have decided it is time again to pretend that even powerful people can get sent to prison by creating a rare example case from what is doubtless a very large list.

  • Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm - I do love the smell of coerced false confession in the morning!

  • Now if her boss and colleges join her in prison, we can open the Champagne.

  • Seriously, it is clear he is on the telco payroll.

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