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True Detective III: “The Cowles’ Identity”
According to the DEA—which, caveat emptor, lies like a dog when it suits its purposes—El Chapo Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel “supplies 80% of the heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine, with a street value of $3 billion, that floods Chicago each year.” Though it seldom comes up, that flood flows both ways. And since the money from…
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True Detective II: “The Vaughn Addendum”
In 2003, Directors Performance Fund, a hedge fund controlled and run by Sharon Vaughn, mother of actor Vince Vaughn, capitalized a “bank” specializing in providing financing to drug traffickers and snake oil salesmen peddling goat’s blood. The deal received attention only after Vaughn’s hedge fund went fully rogue two years later, in a much larger…
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True Detective: Chicago, El Chapo, & Vince Vaughn’s Mom
Actor Vince Vaughn, in the news for his starring role in HBO’s True Detective and recent controversial statements advocating more guns in schools, now has a new source of notoriety guaranteed to keep him in face time: his family. Vaughn’s mother, Sharon Vaughn, a sparkling and vivacious Chicagoland socialite, and his step-father, Stephen Ferrone, a…
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Tampa ‘Black Ice” drug operation tied to organized crime
Doug McClain learned the ins and outs of financial fraud while working for Robert Colgin Wilson, who—far more than “The Wolf of Wall Street”—exemplified the role of American organized crime in financial fraud during the last quarter of the 20th Century. Wilson was no fly by night. His roots ran deep. When he was convicted…
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The Enterprise & Southern-style organized crime
The man who facilitated the purchase of several DC-9’s for SkyWay Aircraft in St. Petersburg Florida was the company’s largest shareholder, Doug McClain Sr.’s Argyll Equities. So how did he get such an important job in such a thriving Enterprise? During the 90’s, Doug McClain Sr. belonged to an organized crime ring run by Robert…
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Con man for Christ Floated ‘Cocaine One’ Drug Plane
Doug McClain Sr’s financial fraud career as a grifter, racketeer, and flimflam man can be traced back more than two decades, and likely extends much further into his past. The so-far unanswered question about him has been where he first acquired powerful patrons whose clout could—and did—keep him out of jail despite his record for flagrant…
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The Vanishing: Christian Cult’s Airport Disappears
“Law enforcement always follows the drugs, because that leads to drug thugs no one cares about,” according to one former Federal official familiar with the case. “Following the money, which is much more effective, is discouraged, because it leads to the suits—bankers, politicians, law enforcement types—people with social and political clout.”
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Christian cult leader worked Tampa “BLACK ICE” Operation
All the really successful con men are politically connected. Some of them cut out the middle man and run for President.” Douglas Aaron McClain Sr., 62, whose Argyll Equities was a shady and now-bankrupt “investment bank” in Boerne Texas which provided services to at least three drug smuggling operations, including supplying a DC-9 to a very-possibly criminal…
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“Hollywood Head” Was Drug Cartel ‘Concierge’
The decapitated head found in a plastic bag on a hiking trail in the shadow of the Hollywood Sign four months ago belonged to a man known to local authorities as the former “concierge” in Los Angeles for the now-defunct Cali drug cartel, the Mad Cow MorningNews has learned exclusively. “His activities were legal; he…