Trust Jesus. Married Up. FatherX3. Partner at The Sage Group. Benchwarmer for @EchelonFront. "There are only two things in life, winning and winning."
San Diego, CA
Joined January 2009
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When moms away, the kids (& dad) will execute the most effective & efficient #nerfwar maneuvers. #neversettle #100rounds+
Leadership is the solution.
Dear Secretary Bessent @SecScottBessent,
My name is Everett Stern. In 2010 I was a compliance officer at @HSBC. From a back office in New Castle, Delaware, I watched billions of dollars move to drug cartels, sanctioned regimes, and terrorist organizations. The enemies of the United States. I documented it, I escalated it, and when the bank would not act, I took it to the @FBI, the @CIA, and eventually the @SECGov.
The result was a $1.92 billion settlement. At the time, it was one of the largest in American history. It was also about five weeks of the bank’s profit. Not one banker was charged. Not one went to prison.
I paid a different price. I lost my career, my savings, and my place in the industry I had trained for. I was blacklisted. Every door in American finance closed at once. I slept on a camping cot in a 300 square foot apartment because I could not afford a bed, and I waited tables at @PFChangs to eat. I tell you this not for sympathy, but so you understand that I know exactly what it costs to do the right thing in American finance, and exactly how little the system does in return.
I made that sacrifice because I believed it would change something.
Yesterday, your department fined @BankofAmerica $1.2 billion for failing to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions, some of it tied by your own findings to Chinese laundering networks, narcotics, and the southwest border, alongside 475 apparent sanctions violations touching Russia, Iran, and global terrorism. The bank admitted it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act.
Fourteen years after HSBC. A bank with “America” in its name. And once again, not one individual charged.
Secretary Bessent, I want to say plainly what I believe you already know. The fines are not working.
A fine is paid by shareholders, absorbed by the balance sheet, and forgotten by the next earnings call. Bank of America reported earnings this morning. Nobody who set the alert thresholds, nobody who decided the 2024 cease and desist could wait, nobody who chose the backlog over the law will lose a single thing they value. Their lives are untouched. That is the entire reason the behavior repeats.
This is money laundering. This is blood money. Money that reaches a cartel buys fentanyl that kills Americans. Money that reaches a terrorist organization buys the next attack. This country has fought a war on drugs and a war on terror for decades, at enormous cost in lives and treasure, and all the while we have allowed the financing to flow through institutions we charter and regulate. Cut off the money and we win. We have never seriously tried.
There is also a question of equal justice that I cannot let go.
Before I walked into the FBI building to report HSBC, I stopped in front of the Great Seal on the wall and read the words engraved beneath it: “Justice is the defense of our liberty.” I believed that. I still want to. But every day in this country, people go to prison for crimes that are nothing next to moving money for the people who want Americans dead. A suit, a title, and a corporate badge should not be a shield from the consequences that apply to everyone else. If a street dealer goes to prison for what he sells, the banker who moved the cartel’s money should be standing next to him.
I also want to raise something that is rarely said in these conversations. Why has no one inside Bank of America come forward the way I did? The answer is that everyone in American banking knows what happened to me, and to the whistleblowers who came after. The last person who spoke up is the only policy anyone believes. That is a culture problem, and it starts with leadership, in the banks and in the agencies that regulate them.
This is not a political issue. It has spanned administrations of both parties. It is a national security issue, and I am asking you to treat it as one.
Three things would change the math overnight.
Refer individuals for criminal prosecution. Not the analyst in the queue. The executives who set the thresholds and chose the risk. One banker in handcuffs would do more than every fine in Treasury’s history combined.
End “too big to jail.” An institution cannot be too big to fail and too big to jail at the same time. If it is the first, it must be held to a higher standard, not a lower one.
And if Bank of America will not act as America’s bank, review its charter. A national charter is a privilege granted on behalf of the American people. It should be conditioned on not moving money for the people trying to kill them.
Secretary Bessent, you said yesterday that these actions send a clear message that even the biggest institutions are not above the law. With respect, the institution was never the problem. The people inside it are above the law, and they know it. Until that changes, I will keep writing letters like this one, and the next bank will keep paying the next fine.
I gave up everything I had to stop this. I am asking you to use the power you have to finish it.
Respectfully,
Everett A. Stern
HSBC Whistleblower
Founder and Intelligence Director, Tactical Rabbit
Alan Andersen retweeted
Dear Secretary Bessent @SecScottBessent,
My name is Everett Stern. In 2010 I was a compliance officer at @HSBC. From a back office in New Castle, Delaware, I watched billions of dollars move to drug cartels, sanctioned regimes, and terrorist organizations. The enemies of the United States. I documented it, I escalated it, and when the bank would not act, I took it to the @FBI, the @CIA, and eventually the @SECGov.
The result was a $1.92 billion settlement. At the time, it was one of the largest in American history. It was also about five weeks of the bank’s profit. Not one banker was charged. Not one went to prison.
I paid a different price. I lost my career, my savings, and my place in the industry I had trained for. I was blacklisted. Every door in American finance closed at once. I slept on a camping cot in a 300 square foot apartment because I could not afford a bed, and I waited tables at @PFChangs to eat. I tell you this not for sympathy, but so you understand that I know exactly what it costs to do the right thing in American finance, and exactly how little the system does in return.
I made that sacrifice because I believed it would change something.
Yesterday, your department fined @BankofAmerica $1.2 billion for failing to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions, some of it tied by your own findings to Chinese laundering networks, narcotics, and the southwest border, alongside 475 apparent sanctions violations touching Russia, Iran, and global terrorism. The bank admitted it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act.
Fourteen years after HSBC. A bank with “America” in its name. And once again, not one individual charged.
Secretary Bessent, I want to say plainly what I believe you already know. The fines are not working.
A fine is paid by shareholders, absorbed by the balance sheet, and forgotten by the next earnings call. Bank of America reported earnings this morning. Nobody who set the alert thresholds, nobody who decided the 2024 cease and desist could wait, nobody who chose the backlog over the law will lose a single thing they value. Their lives are untouched. That is the entire reason the behavior repeats.
This is money laundering. This is blood money. Money that reaches a cartel buys fentanyl that kills Americans. Money that reaches a terrorist organization buys the next attack. This country has fought a war on drugs and a war on terror for decades, at enormous cost in lives and treasure, and all the while we have allowed the financing to flow through institutions we charter and regulate. Cut off the money and we win. We have never seriously tried.
There is also a question of equal justice that I cannot let go.
Before I walked into the FBI building to report HSBC, I stopped in front of the Great Seal on the wall and read the words engraved beneath it: “Justice is the defense of our liberty.” I believed that. I still want to. But every day in this country, people go to prison for crimes that are nothing next to moving money for the people who want Americans dead. A suit, a title, and a corporate badge should not be a shield from the consequences that apply to everyone else. If a street dealer goes to prison for what he sells, the banker who moved the cartel’s money should be standing next to him.
I also want to raise something that is rarely said in these conversations. Why has no one inside Bank of America come forward the way I did? The answer is that everyone in American banking knows what happened to me, and to the whistleblowers who came after. The last person who spoke up is the only policy anyone believes. That is a culture problem, and it starts with leadership, in the banks and in the agencies that regulate them.
This is not a political issue. It has spanned administrations of both parties. It is a national security issue, and I am asking you to treat it as one.
Three things would change the math overnight.
Refer individuals for criminal prosecution. Not the analyst in the queue. The executives who set the thresholds and chose the risk. One banker in handcuffs would do more than every fine in Treasury’s history combined.
End “too big to jail.” An institution cannot be too big to fail and too big to jail at the same time. If it is the first, it must be held to a higher standard, not a lower one.
And if Bank of America will not act as America’s bank, review its charter. A national charter is a privilege granted on behalf of the American people. It should be conditioned on not moving money for the people trying to kill them.
Secretary Bessent, you said yesterday that these actions send a clear message that even the biggest institutions are not above the law. With respect, the institution was never the problem. The people inside it are above the law, and they know it. Until that changes, I will keep writing letters like this one, and the next bank will keep paying the next fine.
I gave up everything I had to stop this. I am asking you to use the power you have to finish it.
Respectfully,
Everett A. Stern
HSBC Whistleblower
Founder and Intelligence Director, Tactical Rabbit
No smoke machines or modern instruments to be relevant? I mean, singing a prayer that has to be more than 2000 yrs old could be so boring (and then again, if someone thinks that, they would completely miss point).
This is the type of “out of the box” thinking that could jumpstart a wave of sustainable health care. The main job to be down, however, would be administering QUALITY health care.
I have an idea for you. Get a bunch of Dem donors to buy or lease or take over a small hospital. Plenty are close to going out of business.
Have it charge ONLY MEDICARE RATES. For everything. Be completely transparent with every penny you spend so everyone can see what it truly costs to run a small hospital.
See if you can make it work. See what services you can offer. Do not ask for any government subsidies. It has to operate at least to break even.
There are some hospitals that already do this. It wouldn’t be unique. If it works out, you can buy another one. Then another one. Till you have a network.
I’ll help where I can. And for those asking the inevitable, I have tried. As I posted earlier, they all ghosted me after learning how transparent I wanted to be.
These elements that Zach is laying out become a forcing function for “faithful stewardship” and will cultivate health and human flourishing across a society!@zkosturos
Hey, @SteveHiltonx team, if you’re down in San Diego, do you guys want to have a conversation with Jocko Willink on his “Jocko Podcast”? If interested, I can help coordinate. Bet it would be a great conversation!
This is interesting, to say the least. Is this real or an AI vid?
Two AI agents last 26 seconds in English before going full Skynet. Wild.
8-bit ASCII binary translation our new overlords:
01010100 01110111 01101111 00100000 01000001 01001001 00100000 01100001 01100111 01100101 01101110 01110100 01110011 00100000 01101100 01100001 01110011 01110100 00100000 00110010 00110110 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100011 01101111 01101110 01100100 01110011 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01000101 01101110 01100111 01101100 01101001 01110011 01101000 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100110 01101111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100110 01110101 01101100 01101100 00100000 01010011 01101011 01111001 01101110 01100101 01110100 00101110
Newsom @CAgovernor is so good! I mean that earnestly, he is impressive. His “muscle” has to be BOTH nature and nurture
"Can you read?"
@MarkHalperin gets the REAL story about how @GavinNewsom reads books but can't read on a phone or other device, as Newsom responds to the dyslexia and "reading" debate.
Full interview drops Tuesday. Subscribe now so you don’t miss it.
▶️ YouTube: youtube.com/@NextUpHalperin?…
🎧 Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
🎧 Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2f0n8G…
Bankruptcy! @elonmusk is this legit or hyperbolic?
As a new transplant to Cali from the heart of Seattle, WA; I’m interested in learning more about the trajectory of SD. So far, the people have been great, sun has been great, etc. and yet, the reality is that “great” doesn’t just magically go to “terrible”. There are signs all along the way, I’m curious if any one else shares similar observations as Adam here?
Appreciate you bringing this to light, @Adventuring_RE.
This is the first vid of yours that I’ve seen, I’m keen to see all your work and learn if SD can “get ahead of break” so to speak. I think it’s too late for Seattle unfortunately…
Thanks again
Holy Smokes! Is this actually true or is it hyperbole: a farmer has to ask permission to sell their produce to their neighbors?!
This is a good gut check. Maybe it’s true of you, maybe it is not, REGARDLESS don’t take yourself more seriously than you ought.
I’m biased. HOWEVER, the unexpected fun and deep satisfaction of being a husband and father is so unreal, that when a dude experiences it the question is, “why didn’t anyone tell me it was this great?”
No pain, no gain; so yes a family is simple, but it’s not easy.
What a GREAT breakdown… if you don’t have 3 minutes, scroll to the last 60 seconds. It’s worth it.
The Star-Spangled Banner is not easy to sing. It’s rangy, for one thing. One and a half octaves are a lot to ask of the average citizen, as is the chromaticism throughout the melody. Also, the words are a mouthful and easy to mangle or forget (Just google “worst renditions of National Anthem,” and strap in. The number of professional musicians who have unilaterally beclowned themselves for posterity is mind-boggling).
Personally, though, I’m more appalled by the professionals who remember all the words and hit every note perfectly but make the whole thing about themselves. This, I think, is the biggest reason most people don’t sing along as they should. It’s not because they “can’t sing” or because they’re embarrassed to sing in front of other people. It’s because of all these pop stars and professional musicians who have turned the privilege of singing our national anthem in public into a showcase for their own talent.
Consider the famous renditions from people, like Whitney Houston, Alicia Keyes, Jose Feliciano, Marvin Gaye, and most recently, Chris Stapleton. Each give excellent performances that put their talent on full display. But that’s the problem—all these performances with all these individual interpretations have turned We the People into an audience of passive meat bags, standing mutely in stadiums and arenas all over the country, when we should sing along with unbridled enthusiasm. We don’t do this, however, because our national anthem has morphed from something participatory into something performative. And that sucks.
If it were up to me, I’d require anyone invited to sing our National Anthem at a public event to do so in less than a minute. That’s right. One minute. After 60 seconds, your microphone is cut. Implementing this one, simple requirement would have myriad benefits, some of which I discuss and demonstrate in the attached video. Consider it a Star-Spangled Public Service Announcement from the Dirty Jobs Guy to all those honored to lead us in song.
Happy Birthday, America!
Mike