Web-Browsing as fast as the Wind

Dirt digging, money laundering, open secrets…Oh my! William “Windy” March gave a lecture and a tutorial about some Web-sites that he uses as a political reporter. And boy, did he show you where you can find the dirt, fast!

To begin with he explained what money laundering was and how it can easily be abused by political candidates. Money laundering is where one person gives money to another person and tells them what to spend it on. Well, you say, how can I get arrested for that? You can’t but…if you do it 500 times with large quantities of money such as $1000, then you’re looking at some time sitting on a hard wooden bench in court, explaining yourself.

An example of this was in 1996 during Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign. March explained that a man by the name of Mark Jimenez, donated $1000 to the Clinton campaign. But he didn’t just donate $1000. He used his business Future Tech International and his employees to launder money into the campaign.

Norman Hsu, who was also apart of the fraud, had donated $850,000 of his own money. According to a Tampa Tribune article Hsu helped raise $1 million for the Democratic candidates through about 75 people he knew. He got these people to make contributions to the party. Also, Hsu gave another $3.5 million to charitable causes.

So following March’s advice, I searched for Norman Hsu through the Web-sites that he discussed. First, I went to http://www.sunbiz.org/ and search his name. No results were found there. Next, I went to http://www.opensecrets.org/ another Web-site had mentioned. And again nothing turned up. A man by the name of Paul Hsu came up who had donated several years a row, but nothing on Mr. Norman.

So, even though I came up empty handed, doesn’t mean you will. If you are looking to write about politics, these two Web-sites have some great information.

March continued his lecture and began to take about two companies.
“Accurint and Auto Track are companies that what they do is collect data, nationwide, and they sell what they have found back to you,” March said.

I used Google and researched these companies to learn more about them. Accurint according to their Web-site “is a locate-and-research tool available to government, law enforcement and commercial customers. Its proprietary data linking and analysis technology, LexisNexis® Link ID, securely and intelligently analyzes billions of partial and complete records, and then filters and links that information based on relevance to provide a complete picture of an individual—all in a matter of seconds.”

Wow, I thought to myself pretty cool. So how much would this cost someone? I don’t know. I researched the Web-site and it gave me no clues. I called the 1-866 number provided on the site to see if I could speak with a representative but in order to get through you must have a “LexisNexis” user ID number or else they will not call you back. So…again I turned up empty handed, but if anybody has the answer as to how much this service would cost, I would be interested in knowing.

William “Windy” March has opened and unlocked doors or Web-sites I should say that I never would have thought about. His intelligence on digging for dirt on political candidates is vast and creditable to his character as a reporter. Overall, Windy blew my mind away!