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SACRAMENTO — Months after he was convicted of ordering murders throughout the California prison system, an imprisoned leader of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang allegedly attacked two corrections officers who were escorting him back to his cell. Ronald Dean Yandell, 62, allegedly drew a knife on two prison guards as they were escorting him to his cell from a medical appointment at California State Prison, Sacramento on Nov. 22. No staff were injured in the fight, but they did deploy pepper spray on Yandell, causing him to drop the weapon, according to a news release by the state prison system. The incident came two months after a different corrections officer injured Yandell during a transport, allegedly knocking him down and striking him while he was handcuffed. Yandell had filed a lawsuit alleging prison and federal authorities retaliated against him for political advocacy work just days before he was injured. Yandell, a former West Contra Costa resident, has not been charged in connection with the Nov. 22 incident, but it was being treated as a double attempted murder, authorities said. Prison officials say they plan to send the case to the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office. Yandell is currently awaiting sentencing in a federal racketeering case, where he was convicted of conspiracies to commit murder, smuggle drugs and other contraband in prison and serving as a leader of the notorious prison gang. Most of the convictions centered on a wiretap of Yandell’s contraband cellphone in the late 2010s, led by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Tensions have been brewing in the Sacramento prison where Yandell and his co-defendants are housed. One of his co-defendants, Brant Daniel, recently accused prison staff of attempting to set him up to be killed through a planned transfer to a prison in Corcoran. Another of Yandell’s co-defendants, Danny Troxell, traded death threats with him during their trial last March, before both men were convicted. Yandell is also known for political advocacy work, having helped arranged a peace treaty between rival prison gangs and serving as a leader of a prison-wide hunger strike in the early 2010s. The strike helped scale back the rampant use of solitary confinement. He has accused law enforcement of retaliating against him by bringing on the racketeering case, though a federal judge recently denied a motion to throw out the convictions based on those grounds. If Yandell is charged in Sacramento court, it’s unlikely to have much effect on his life trajectory. He is already serving a life sentence for murder and manslaughter convictions in Contra Costa, and faces a life sentence in the federal case. The incident is the third bit of violence being treated as an attempted murder of a prison staffer in California so far this month. All three incidents occurred at different prisons and do not appear to be related.No matter how much a financial system is fortified against scams, there is always a fraudster, a conman, or a swindler aiming to game that system. Financial crimes, a la white-collar crimes, are committed, interestingly, by those working closely with the system or those having the innate skill to justify the art through the framework of ‘fraud triangle’, that is in the terms of opportunity, incentive and rationalization. Scams, mainly the pecuniary ones, involve conduct of dishonest practices leading to perversion, depravity and debasement of the entire morals of the social fabric. Financial scandals, like any other scandal, have a story of their own and, of course, the denouement. The truth of the scandals appears to be a drama at times, and at times an enthralling thriller. Vijay Narayan Govind, in his book Fraudster Tales, promises to tell select 10 true stories of financial scams, spread across centuries and continents, and in his own words, “these frauds were significant enough at the time to send major ripples through the systems they challenged, with many of them serving as the catalyst for key legal and regulatory reforms.” The book introduces 10 swindlers, each with their own story of fraud in a separate chapter with a suitable story-title to it. In Govind’s fraudster tales, Hegestratos’s tale emerges as the ‘First Fraudster’, circa 300 BCE, in Athens. He, along with his crime partner Zenosthemis, working as ship merchants, planned to steal the cargos, sink the vessel, and con the vessel’s insurers of shipload of valuable goods through enforcement of the clauses of bottomry and respondentia contracts. However, the plans went awry due to the alert captain and crew members and Hegestratos jumped and drowned himself in the sea. Zenosthemis was arrested, tried and imprisoned in Athens for a long time. The author picks stories, random perhaps, from Athens and other countries, including India. Haridas Mundhra in the tale of ‘The Great Investor’ and Natwarlal in ‘The Master Manipulator’ are the two Indians figuring in the book. The Mundhra scandal, first of its kind in independent India, not only was embroiled with the stock markets and financial institutions but was an expose of the wicked nexus between political party, bureaucracy, ministers and business class, perhaps a prototype of ‘crony capitalism’. The conman Mudhra duped Life Insurance Company (LIC) by forging share certificates, using them as collateral for loans, and amassing huge loans to the tune of Rs 15.60 crore by the mid of 1957. It was Feroz Gandhi, the law maker, who brought this scam to public attention that led to nationalization of LIC, resignation of TT Krishnamachari – then finance minister, indictment of finance secretary and some senior LIC officials, and, of course, sentencing of Haridas Mundhra to 22 years in prison. In the Mithilesh Kumar alias Natwarlal’s case, the story, though intriguing, is simple. From forging signatures and withdrawing money from banks, he graduated to nefarious crimes such as decamping cash from merchants and siphoning off goods from the cargo areas while using more than 50 aliases. Natwarlal even sold, impersonating himself as government official, the Taj Mahal thrice, the Red Fort twice, and the Rashtrapati Bhawan and Parliament once. He had developed this shrewd art of escaping prison, and one heard him saying quite often that ‘no jail is enough to hold me for too long’. Then, there is a story of how an expert William Chaloner counterfeited coins, notes, and lottery tickets, in the 1600s, but finally got caught by Sir Issac Newton, and sent to gallows for he was guilty of multiple currency frauds. Hugh Cameron’s story is about his conspiracy to cheat Royal British Banks and its customers, eventually which led to the Bank’s collapse. However, in due course, it triggered major legislative reforms in the corporate governance systems in Britain. Oscar Hartzell, a brazen rook, in another story, swindled millions of dollars from investors in a popularly known Sir Francis Drake estate scam. Another story, rather smutty and historical, called the ‘necklace scandal’, involves one French noble woman Jeanne de valois as the key conspirator. It became one of the scandals that led to French Revolution. US major Enron bankruptcy, led by Kenneth Lay, and the Ponzi scheme by Charles Ponzi, the two white-collar financial crimes, rocked the financial systems in the US. The 10 tales are fun, and a riveting read and, in the tales, the readers would find themselves in the murky world of scandals. The criminals of the stories have two things in common, one they dreamt of becoming filthy rich in a trice, and when caught they tried to justify that all is done in good faith, and second, all of them are caught and punished, which the author seems to lay down as the moral of the book.
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Ducks starting to ‘play with an identity’ ahead of hosting OttawaPublished 2:24 pm Saturday, November 23, 2024 By Terri Cowart Frazier Will the management at Chick-fil-A please take a bow. Your staff has impressed me. While hubby was out of town for a few days a couple of weeks ago, I made my way to your restaurant and on several consecutive nights — yes, I am one of those folks who can eat the same thing day after day after day. I chose to use the drive-thru to place my order for the Market Salad with the fried chicken filet and the Apple Cider vinaigrette dressing — two packs, please. And when I did, each and every time, a very, very polite teen took my order — with one of those occasions being at the kiosk and the other times from staff standing along the drive-thru line. This service is another perk of Chick-fil-A, because it helps expedite orders when there is a long line of traffic. By my fifth time of visiting the fast-food chain, you would think that I would have encountered at least one employee who was less than cordial, but nope. Not at the Vicksburg Chick-fil-A. Those young people’s manners and service was beyond reproach. I finally had to tell one of the cuties that they had made my day with their cheery disposition. And I meant it. There is something so contagious when interacting with a person who is upbeat and nice as opposed to interacting with a crank. So much so that after I had been handed my order, I found myself driving off with a smile on my face. In fact, I even wondered if that was the reason my salad tasted so delicious. I had a good taste in my mouth before I even took the first bite. In reflecting on my experiences at the Chick-fil-A, I couldn’t help but wonder what the management’s secret was in having a staff that is, well, just nice. And if they could share that secret with the rest of humanity. I don’t know about you, but more times than not, I have encountered folks who just seem downright irritated. Maybe it’s because they are having to work, or don’t like their job or maybe it’s because someone has been unkind to them. But, for whatever reason, these people – and if I am honest, I could mean me at times – really need to seriously consider an attitude adjustment. Because the last thing you want is for it to leak out on to others. And with the holidays around the corner, I really need to remember my words, because I know how I can get when there are a hundred million things to do and not a hundred million hours in a day. Probably a visit to Chick-fil-A could keep me in check because, like those Chick-fil-A kids, I would much rather spread joy than frustration. Robert Louis Stevenson once said, “Every heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world and bettered the tradition of mankind.” Hmm, maybe this is what Chick-fil-A uses as their motto. Terri Cowart Frazier writes features for The Vicksburg Post. She can be reached at terri.frazier@vicksburgpost.com . Terri Frazier was born in Cleveland. Shortly afterward, the family moved to Vicksburg. She is a part-time reporter at The Vicksburg Post and is the editor of the Vicksburg Living Magazine, which has been awarded First Place by the Mississippi Press Association. She has also been the recipient of a First Place award in the MPA’s Better Newspaper Contest’s editorial division for the “Best Feature Story.” Terri graduated from Warren Central High School and Mississippi State University where she received a bachelor’s degree in communications with an emphasis in public relations. Prior to coming to work at The Post a little more than 10 years ago, she did some freelancing at the Jackson Free Press. But for most of her life, she enjoyed being a full-time stay at home mom. Terri is a member of the Crawford Street United Methodist Church. She is a lifetime member of the Vicksburg Junior Auxiliary and is a past member of the Sampler Antique Club and Town and Country Garden Club. She is married to Dr. Walter Frazier. “From staying informed with local governmental issues to hearing the stories of its people, a hometown newspaper is vital to a community. I have felt privileged to be part of a dedicated team at The Post throughout my tenure and hope that with theirs and with local support, I will be able to continue to grow and hone in on my skills as I help share the stories in Vicksburg. When asked what I like most about my job, my answer is always ‘the people.’
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