Derrick Roach is a California licensed investigator with over ten years of experience in fraud investigations. He specializes in representing school districts, cities, counties, and state agencies performing fraud investigations and assisting in the defense of legal claims against public agencies. From 2002 to 2006 he served on a local school board and in 2008 he was an official nominee for the California State Assembly.
Derrick Roach
What Happened to That ACORN Investigation Jerry Brown Promised?
by Derrick RoachCalifornia Attorney General Jerry Brown seems to be getting a lot of reminders from his gubernatorial challengers Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman about his failed governorship of the state from 1975-1983 when Californian’s endured high unemployment, home foreclosures, large scale labor strikes and fuel shortages at the gas station. Recognizing the failed policies of then Governor Brown, California voters revolted and passed Proposition 13 which is a landmark initiative that limited politician’s ability to arbitrarily raise taxes on California residents.
Over a week ago, Attorney General Jerry Brown got yet another reminder, this time coming from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The report “Follow the Money: ACORN, SEIU and their Political Allies” focuses public attention on AG Brown’s failed investigation of ACORN. While some of Brown’s gubernatorial challengers talk of the need for a California Governor to have a spine of steel, AG Brown has instead crumpled like an aluminum can cowardly hiding behind state bureaucrats and a wall of state agencies.
On October 1, 2009, Jerry Brown publicly announced that an investigation had been opened concerning undercover videos that were obtained by citizen journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles who videotaped ACORN employees at two California offices. ACORN employees were filmed providing advice regarding tax evasion, prostitution and human smuggling of underage girls. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was informed by AG Brown in a letter that he had “opened an investigation of both ACORN and the circumstances under which ACORN employees were videotaped.” Since that announcement, AG Brown has found himself at the center of a controversy surrounding the mismanagement of the investigation as well as a potential scandal due to a double standard involving one of his own state employees secretly recording conversations with reporters.
Shortly after ACORN had been alerted to the immanent investigation as a result of AG Brown’s public announcement, ACORN employees at the San Diego, CA office were caught engaging in a massive document dump on October 9, 2009. Those records were retrieved from an unsecured shared public dumpster where they had been thrown revealing sensitive personal, financial and banking information for both clients and employees in addition to revelations about the political inner workings of ACORN’s relationship with major U.S. banks and labor unions.
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ACORN Document Dump: Citibank Jeopardizes Customers for ACORN
by Derrick RoachWhat does the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai and ACORN have in common? Both of them have some bankers on Wall Street worried. When brokers and traders returned to work after the Thanksgiving Holiday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average went on a wild rollercoaster ride dropping as much as 233 points during the trading session due to an announcement that Dubai would be rescheduling the repayment of $3.5 billion in bonds. This unexpected announcement was not what Wall Street wanted to hear on Black Friday when retail sales were already down by 8% compared to the prior year and Cyber Monday sales were less than robust with individual online purchases being 2% less than they were last year. All of this at a time when brokers, traders and economists across the country are watching to see if cash strapped consumers are going to bailout retailers from what is shaping up to be a dismal retail Christmas season.
It is understandable why Wall Street would be concerned about Dubai. Why would they be concerned about ACORN? On October 24, 2009, Biggovernment.com revealed that the San Diego office of ACORN dumped thousands of documents into a dumpster in advance of an investigation into the organizations activities by California Attorney General Jerry Brown. I retrieved the documents from a shared public dumpster located behind the local ACORN office. The documents that were retrieved filled the back of my Suburban. Much of what was retrieved was truly trash, items such as banana peels, coffee grounds and marketing materials. After sorting through the documents, though, the 20,000 documents that were retained included sensitive personal information, financial records and documents outlining the internal and political workings of ACORN. One of the documents obtained by Biggovernment.com shows that ACORN had business relationships with 28 major financial institutions for the purpose of assisting homeowners whose mortgages were in foreclosure.
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BREAKING: San Diego ACORN Document Dump Scandal
by Derrick RoachOn October 1st, 2009 California Attorney General Jerry Brown announced that an investigation had been opened into ACORN’s activities in California, resulting from undercover videos showing employees seemingly offering to assist the undercover film makers with human smuggling, child prostitution and even tax advice to boot.
Although ACORN has denied any wrongdoing, some of the employees involved were terminated, and ACORN has publicly stated that they would fully cooperate with any investigations that followed.
Interestingly, the local head ACORN organizer in California, David Lagstein was caught on tape earlier this month speaking to an East County Democratic Club.
Mr. Lagstein stated: “…the attorney general is a political animal, but certainly every bit of the communication we have had with them has suggested that the fault will be found with the people that did the video and not the people with ACORN.”
Continuing, Mr. Lagstein stated: “…we are fully cooperating, some of the investigators visited our office this morning and I think they really understand what’s going on.”
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