Go big or stay home; or in this case, go big and lose your home

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40 howard road

I’ve always wondered at the stupidity of bank robbers, whose average take is, according to the FBI, around $3,500, while the average sentence upon conviction is 7.5 years; for anyone who values his time, and admittedly, many of these de-depositors probably don’t, that’s a terrible risk/reward ratio.

So it was with a certain admiration that I read in Greenwich Free Press about the exploits of a Mr. Paul R. Steed, who took the time and effort to at least make the game worth the candle; or it would have been, had he not been caught. He had a nice run, though, and even managed to purchase a modest home in Greenwich at 40 Howard Road in 2023*. That house will apparently be returning to the market soon; Mr. Steed’s own personal resurfacing may be more protracted.

Stamford Man Pleads Guilty to Fraud and Tax Charges Related to Theft of More Than $28 Million from Mars, Inc.

David X. Sullivan, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced on Thursday that Paul R. Steed, 58, of Stamford, pleaded guilty earlier in the day in Bridgeport to fraud and tax offenses stemming from his commission of multiple frauds against his former employer Mars, Inc.

According to court documents and statements made in court, between approximately 2011 and 2023, Steed was employed by Mars Wrigley, a subsidiary of Mars. Inc. (“Mars”), working remotely from his home in Stamford.

Steed served in several positions at the company and last served as Global Price Risk Manager for Mars Wrigley’s Global Cocoa Enterprise.  As part of his employment, Steed was responsible for managing Mars Wrigley’s participation in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) Sugar-Containing Products Re-Export Program.

In approximately 2016, Steed created a company, MCNA LLC, to mimic an actual Mars entity, Mars Chocolate North America.  He then diverted more than $15 million in Mars assets to a bank account he set up in MCNA’s name by directing sugar refineries purchasing Mars’s re-export credits, obtained through the USDA program, to pay MCNA LLC as if it were a legitimate Mars entity.

Mars had an ownership interest in Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (“ICE”), a financial services company that operated financial exchanges and clearing houses, and received quarterly dividends in connection with that ownership.  In 2017, Steed directed Computershare Limited (“Computershare”), a company that ICE utilized for stock-related services, to pay MCNA LLC for Mars’s dividends from its ownership shares in ICE.  As a result, more than $700,000 in dividend payments were diverted to the MCNA LLC account.  In 2023, after Steed had used a fraudulent letter purportedly from the Mars Treasurer authorizing him to trade ICE shares, Steed directed Computershare to sell Mars’s ICE shares entirely.  Computershare issued a check in the amount of more than $11.3 million, which Steed deposited into the MCNA LLC account.

In addition, from 2013 through 2020, Steed used a company he owned called Ibera LLC to invoice Mars for services Mars did not receive.  Mars paid Ibera LLC more than $700,000 through this scheme.

Steed failed to report and pay taxes on his stolen income on his 2014 through 2023 federal tax returns.

Steed pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, an offense that carries a maximum term of imprisonment of 20 years on each count, and one count of tax evasion, an offense that carries a maximum term of imprisonment of five years.

Steed has agreed to pay restitution of $28,410,489 to Mars, Inc., and the government has calculated that he owes the IRS an additional $10,310,680 in back taxes.

The government has seized, and Steed has agreed to forfeit, more than $18 million from bank accounts controlled by Steed, and the government is seeking to forfeit, or alternatively liquidate for restitution, a Greenwich home that Steed is alleged to have purchased with nearly $2.3 million in stolen funds.  It is alleged that another $2 million was sent by Steed to Argentina, where he is a dual citizen, has family ties, and owns a ranch.

Steed was arrested on March 26, 2025.  He is released on a $5 million bond pending sentencing, which is scheduled for December 9.

*In a bidding war, no less, paying $2.525 million on a list price of $2.3; ah, the power of OPM: Other People’s Money

More on Josephine Tey and The Daughter of Time: it should be counted right alongside Atlas Shrugged and Camp of the Saints as a presager of current events

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‘But I thought they were very holy people—the Covenanters, I mean.’

‘You’ve been looking at nineteenth-century pictures of conventicles. The reverent little gathering in the heather listening to the preacher; young rapt faces, and white hair blowing in the winds of God. The Covenanters were the exact equivalent of the I.R.A. in Ireland. A small irreconcilable minority, and as bloodthirsty a crowd as ever disgraced a Christian nation. If you went to church on Sunday instead of to a conventicle, you were liable to wake on Monday and find your barn burned or your horses hamstrung. If you were more open in your disapproval you were shot. The men who shot Archbishop Sharp in his daughter’s presence, in broad daylight on a road in Fife, were the heroes of the movement. “Men of courage and zeal for the cause of God”, according to their admiring followers. They lived safe and swaggering among their Covenanting fans in the West for years. It was a “preacher of the gospel” who shot Bishop Honeyman in an Edinburgh street. And they shot the old parish priest of Carsphairn on his own doorstep.’

‘It does sound like Ireland, doesn’t it,’ Carradine said.

‘They were actually worse than the I.R.A. because there was a fifth column element in it. They were financed from Holland, and their arms came from Holland. There was nothing forlorn about their movement, you know. They expected to take over the Government any day, and rule Scotland. All their preaching was pure sedition. The most violent incitement to crime you could imagine. No modern Government could afford to be so patient with such a menace as the Government of the time were. The Covenanters were continually being offered amnesties.’

‘Well, well. And I thought they were fighting for freedom to worship God their own way.’

‘No one ever stopped them from worshipping God any way they pleased. What they were out to do was to impose their method of church government not only on Scotland but on England, believe it or not. You should read the Covenant some day. Freedom of worship was not to be allowed to anyone according to the Covenanting creed—except the Covenanters, of course.’

UPDATE: Modern day Covenanters respond to the Kirk assassination:

Maybe if she'd spent more time obtaining a dock permit than clutching her curtains, this Riverside (tidal) waterfront might sell more quickly

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166 Indian Head Road, beautifully built by one of our top builders in 2010, is back on the market after a 12-year hiatus and priced at $12.750 million. It failed to sell for $9 million in 2012-2013. It’s waterfront, and (small) boats can launch from here at least 3 hours on either side of the tide, and docks on property so situated are highly desirable. If the town has refused a permit well, that’s unfortunate, and a loss to the owner, but permits can usually be wrangled through, given time and money.

So no dock; even more of a turn-off, in my opinion, is the prospect of new buyers having to explore their purchase with flashlights and then finding no privacy if and when they discover the bedrooms. Maybe if they offer $12,750,000.25 the owner will relinquish her precious(es).

Silly.

Exclusions: Lighting Exclusions: - 3 lights above kitchen table - 3 lanterns in the living room hanging near window - 2 ceiling lights in library - entry artichoke hanging light - 2 ceiling lights in family bedrooms Curtain Exclusions: -All bedroom curtains are excluded (5 rooms)

I still can't bring myself to read the news, so I'm contenting myself with rereading a favorite novel, and found this quote:

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not guilty

From Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, the protagonist’s cousin, responding to his discovery that Richard III did not murder his two nephews in the Tower of London, says this:

It’s an odd thing but when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you. They don’t want to have their ideas upset. It raises some vague uneasiness in them, I think, and they reject it and refuse to think about it.

Tey wrote that in 1951 concerning a myth that has endured since 1485, yet she could just as easily been referring to any number of great myths, from the Boston Massacre; to “Remember the Maine” ; to “there are some fine people among the Nazis”; to global warming. All of which would have disrupted Tey’s storyline, of course, but the point is, human nature hasn’t changed.

Pending on North Street

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“garaging” for 7, plus visitor’s space

382 North Street, new construction, priced at $17,875,000. 14,126 sq. ft. a third of that which is presumably buried underground, 2.39 undividable acres in the RA-1 zone, across from North Street School.

We previously wrote, several times, about this property’s previous incarnations before it was sold as land in 2024 for $2.950 million. You can read one of those posts, and the comments, here.

The “New” look is now the old look — same design, different price ranges, all over town

Turning point

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TPU speaker on campus! Aaaaghhh!

I got back yesterday afternoon, but new of Charlie Kirk’s assassination just saddened me so much that I didn’t have the will to read, let alone prost about it, but today is September 11th, and it seems appropriate to at comment on two milestones in the country’s disintegration, 24-years apart in time, but closely tied together.

September 11 shocked many of us into realization that in fact that muslim terrorists were really, truly coming after the western world; My shock has passed, but not my fury that my children had to endure watching the towers burn from Tod’s Point, and I will always mourn for the victims, the dead and their survivors, including Sally Malone’s son Tommy.

Yesterday’s assassination of Charlie Kirk, however, jolted us not so much into an awakening, but as confirmation of what’s been growing increasing obvious since the Light Bringer arrived in Washington in 2008: we’re a nation at war with ourselves, and that war has turned deadly.

Charlie Kirk founded Turning Point when he was an 18-year-old college student, with the specific goal of returning civilized, informed debate back onto campuses. To that end, he held debates across the country, where he would always conduct a question and answer segment, with an unwavering rule that those who disagreed with him would go first. Check any video of one of these debates, and you’ll see that process in action. Unfortunately, you’ll also see rabid, angry people who, incapable of rational argument, seek to shut it down instead, screaming, blowing air horns, tossing smoke bombs and hurling objects at Kirk and others on stage.

This was all condoned by campus administrators, just as pro-Hamas rioters have been allowed to attack Jews, vandalize campuses, and, before that, prevent any discussion of any issues “they” disapprove of. It’s been a quick march from seeking merely to imprison dissenters: a 2022, poll, for instance, revealed that nearly half of all Democrats believed that fines and prison time were appropriate for anyone publicly questioning COVID vaccines’ effectiveness to outright murder.

Kirk’s assassination is already being called the natural, expected reaction to “divisive, hateful” speech, by which the apologists mean “anyone and anything that departs from what we think is correct”. Leftist of all ages are becoming pretty scary, but the youngest of them are already there: A poll of college students showed 48% of them viewed the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson as tototally or somewhat justified. I’m guessing, but I imagine their professors would agree with them

We’re in for interesting times.


“There’s a difference between wanting to be in America, and wanting to be an American” — same is true in Canada, obviously

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Everywhere, indians cause trouble

Watch SE Asian migrants poach Canadian salmon while they spawn. The problem is worse than you know.

Video out of Bowmanville, Ontario, shows Southeast Asian men (do with that what you will) flipping salmon out of a small stream during the annual salmon run back to their spawning locations.

Early September is peak salmon-fishing season. Fisherman across the continent catch millions of fish as they return upriver to spawn.

But it is highly illegal to catch salmon near their actual spawning sites (especially with nets), which includes Bowmanville (upriver from Lake Ontario). It is also unsafe, as the fish die off in mass numbers after spawning, making the meat inedible.

Despite this, migrants have been seen poaching fish in the area for several years (at least).

I called out and reported a large group like this snagging spawning King Salmon with large treble hooks in Duffins Creek at the Valley Farm Road bridge in Pickering, Ontario. They had at least 5 fish flopping on the bank. I called MNR and the Police, both said there was nothing they could do, I even went to Pickering Police station just down the road, in person, spoke to 3 cops at the desk and they informed me that they don't deal with such incidents as it's not their responsibility, and there wasn't anything they could do. I don't even bother anymore, these criminals have get out of jail free cards, it's pointless.

And, no surprise, it’s not just the fishing laws of their new country they’re ignoring.

Over the summer, SE Asian men went viral in Muskoka, Ontario, for filming themselves shooting up a local bridge and river. Locals say they have reported such incidents for years, but despite the danger and the leftover environmental pollution, authorities have been slow to act.

Qustions that must be asked — in the Blue Belt

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RELATED: Three More Examples of Why You Don't Hate Media Nearly Enough

AND STILL MORE: JOEL ABBOTT The media's silence about the Ukrainian refugee killed in North Carolina has turned me into the "extremist" they fear

Also relevant, although it’s about a clueless politician’s response rather than the media’s reaction: