The OC Mafia pats each other on the back
members of the OC mafia want you to know they recommend each other.
Elites are prone lavish praise on each other. Take disinformation reporter for NBC News, Ben Collins.
Collins is the recent recipient of the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism.
NBC News reporter Ben Collins was one of the winners of the 2023 Walter Cronkite Awards for Excellence in Television Political Journalism, given by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. This year’s awards focused on “best practices of TV journalism aimed at combating disinformation and defending democracy.” Collins included this memo to the judges, along with a compilation of TV news reports.
Soon after he won this award, the disinformation expert engaged in…you guessed it, disinformation.
Take the Gaza hospital explosion, for example. On Tuesday, reports surfaced that the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza had come under attack, resulting in as many as 500 deaths. The New York Times ran with "Israeli Strikes Kill Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say." Underneath this headline was an image of an obliterated building—readers who squinted would have noticed that this was not the hospital, but a completely different target.
The Times' only source for information about the explosion was the Gaza Health Ministry; mainstream reporting noted that Palestinian authorities laid the blame squarely on an Israeli airstrike. Subsequent intelligence reports from both Israel and the U.S. provide credible evidence that the hospital was most probably struck by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group.
Did Collins soberly wait for these facts to come in? Nope. The award-winning disinformation expert helped circulate the inaccurate claims of the Palestinian authorities. When other voices on social media recommended caution, Collins chimed in to assert that any delay in reporting the horrific casualty numbers represented a profound moral failing. (Casualty estimates have yet to be confirmed.)
His latest missive is not the only time the disinformation expert got into hot water. He had to be pulled from covering Elon Musk and Twitter last year.
NBC News has temporarily removed journalist Ben Collins, who covers disinformation and extremism and their intersection with digital venues, from regular reporting on Twitter and Elon Musk according to a person familiar with the matter, citing remarks on social media that the NBCUniversal news organization felt were not consistent with its editorial standards.
NBC News declined to make executives available for comment, noting in a statement that it would not comment on personnel matters. The decision regarding Collins was previously reported by the online news outlet Semafor.
When a madman shot up a nightclub in Colorado last year, Collins was quick not to blame the shooter, Anderson Lee Aldrich, but conservatives for riling him up.
Most conservatives think he’s a hack, but inside the beltway, he’s a well respected reporter. The elites love him.
The best example of this elite phenomenon is the Nobel Prize given to Abiy Ahmed Ali, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia. Ali won the award- given for work toward peace- in 2019.
By 2020, the same Nobel Prize winner had plunged Ethiopia into another war.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the primary political party representing Tigray, historically dominated leadership coalitions and politics at the national level despite Tigrayans’ status as an ethnic minority. Between 1991 and his death in 2012, Tigrayan soldier-politician Meles Zenawi governed Ethiopia as an autocracy through a period of rapid development. With the backing of a TPLF-dominated coalition, he secured aid from the United States and the United Kingdom, hosted difficult negotiations between Sudan and South Sudan during their 2011 split, and supported peacekeeping missions in Sudan. However, his regime failed to curtail a brutal war [PDF] with Eritrea, marginalized ethnic groups including the Somali, Oromo, and Amhara—each of which is larger than the Tigrayan population—and solidified a centralized autocracy.
The TPLF continued to govern Ethiopia after his passing in a similar manner. However, Tigrayan control of the national government came to an end in 2018 with the accession of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, who was heralded by international actors and Ethiopians alike as the country’s new hope for peace and ethnic harmony. Abiy promised early in his premiership to heal broken trust between Ethiopia’s ethnic enclaves and create a sense of community. In 2019, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for ending violence at the Eritrean border and quickly rolling back domestic restrictions on freedoms.
However, within a year, ethnic relations in Ethiopia once again began to deteriorate. Multiple delays of long-promised national elections and the declaration of an extension on Abiy Ahmed’s first term as prime minister in June 2020 drew indignation from Tigrayan leadership. The Tigray State Council’s choice to hold local elections in defiance of federal orders inflamed tensions even further: in advance of the regional elections, which ultimately solidified the popularity of the TPLF, Tigrayan leaders warned that they would consider intervention by the federal government a “declaration of war.” Following the TPLF’s regional victory, Abiy accused Tigrayan troops of attacking a federal military camp to loot weapons. It soon became clear that the combative political rhetoric in fall 2020 had signified the first warning shots of what would become a bloody civil war.
On November 4, 2020, Abiy Ahmed ordered Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) troops north to begin a military operation known as the Mekelle Offensive in Tigray, named for the region’s capital city. The offensive increased in severity over the next few months as Tigrayan troops (Tigray Defense Force, or TDF) ramped up their military response. The conflict gradually escalated into a civil war also known as the Tigray War.
In Orange County, members of the probate mafia engage in the same kind of back slapping, attempting to legitimize people who don’t deserve it. I received a file, which no longer appears to be on the internet, with several members of the OC mafia recommending each other.
Steve Giammichele and Richard Huntington both provided endorsements to a company called Fiduciary Real Estate Services (FRES).
“As a Trust and Estate attorney, it is imperative my Fiduciary clients retain professionals with the utmost integrity and experience,” Giammichele said in his glowing review, “Fiduciary Real Estate Services is often the brokerage firm of choice for my clients.”
Both Steve Giammichele and Richard Huntington were featured players in my recent investigation of Mehdi Rahimi Kashani’s trust.
If you are a victim of the OC probate mafia, an endorsement from Giammichele and Huntington may not mean much. Inside the probate world, these two are well respected figures.
I reached out to Huntington and Giammichele, but I received no response.
Who were these two endorsing? Their endorsement was of the aforementioned Fiduciary Real Estate Services (FRES) run by Ruben Martinez and his wife, Teresa Gorman. Inside the probate world in Orange County, California, these two are well respected figures who are counted on often to sell real estate, when it is necessary.
As those who have dealt with the Orange County probate mafia know, Gorman, Martinez, and FRES are part of a “cabal” as Wayne Dolcefino called it, which preys on the elderly and sells their real estate at under market value.
Jodee Sussman’s case, which Wayne featured, is just one time when FRES pops up. Last year, I interviewed Yvette Dobbie. Below is FRES’ involvement in her case.
I reached out to FRES but received no response. Lori Schiller also had the displeasure of dealing with FRES.
The case wound up in Orange County’s probate system.
Lori immediately made a huge error. Trying to save money, she asked the court to appoint a lawyer for her parents.
That lawyer was Teresa Gorman.
I reached out to Gorman and her husband, Ruben Martinez, but received no response.
Gorman quickly recommended that Cicerone be appointed the conservator.
As soon as Cicerone was appointed a conservator, Lori told me that Cicerone recommended that Lori stay away from her parents for at least two months.
The elites in OC, like they do in DC and other places, pat each other on the back. It’s an exclusive club and their numerous awards and recommendations attempt to convince the world that they are honest and ethical. Do not believe them.
Listen to the people who had the misfortune of being forced to work with them, not their colleagues.
Postscript:
Check out the previous articles on the series on Orange County. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8. Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25. Part 26, Part 27, Part 28, Part 29, Part 30, Part 31, Part 33, Part 34, Part 35, Part 36, Part 37, Part 38, Part 39, Part 40, Part 41, and 42.
The OC probate Mafia is on the ropes, but they are not out. Please consider contributing to the Orange County fundraiser so I can continue this investigation.
Racketeering bastards
Thank you for being our voices and exposing these horrible and inhumane people.