RE: Donor Vet

From:bobby_schmuck@who.eop.gov To: RivardC@dnc.org, ReedA@dnc.org, MARSHALL@dnc.org, ReynoldsL@dnc.org, DaceyA@dnc.org CC: CoxC@dnc.org, KaplanJ@dnc.org, VetD@dnc.org Date: 2016-05-09 14:15 Subject: RE: Donor Vet

Fail. ----- Good morning all, Finance asked us to vet as potential POTUS host/donor. George Lindemann - convicted of three counts of wire fraud in 1995 and received a 33-month term in federal prison; Investigation stemmed from a federal investigation where over 50 horses were killed in a 20 year period in acts of insurance fraud; nothing new as of 5/9/16 Thanks, Chad Rivard | Senior Research Supervisor, Compliance Democratic National Committee direct: (202) 572-5486| cell: (616) 308-0330 George Lindemann - convicted of three counts of wire fraud in 1995 and received a 33-month term in federal prison; Investigation stemmed from a federal investigation where over 50 horses were killed in a 20 year period in acts of insurance fraud; nothing new as of 5/9/16 4500 Biscayne Blvd Ste 105 Miami, FL 33137-3227 DOB: 3/1964 EMPLOYER/OCCUPATION: Linre, LLC (Real Estate Development) / President NGP NOTES: Summary George Lindemann Jr. was a highly-ranked rider, Olympic hopeful, and heir to an $800 million fortune. In 1990 he hired Tommy "The Sandman" Burns to electrocute his horse, Charisma, in order to collect on a $250,000 insurance policy. Lindemann was convicted of three counts of wire fraud in 1995 and was sentenced to a 33-month term in federal prison with two years probation after his release. He was sentenced to pay a $500,000 fine, $250,000 in restitution to the insurance company, and the cost of his prison stay. He was expelled from the American Horse Shows Association ("AHSA"), and upon his release, filed a $100 million antitrust suit against the AHSA for refusing to allow him to compete. Federal investigators believe that over 50 horses were killed between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s in acts of insurance fraud. Lindemann was one of 23 people indicted for charges related to the scandal, which received national media attention at the time and rocked the world of equestrian sports. During the Lindemann investigation, Tommy Burns identified James Druck, who he claimed taught him how to electrocute a horse to collect on an insurance policy. Coincidentally, James Druck was the father of Lisa Druck, now known as Rielle Hunter. Burns further claimed that Druck paid him to kill Druck/Hunter's horse when she was 18, a point that press of John Edwards/ Rielle Hunter did cover. Since his release following a 21-month prison stay, Lindemann has attempted to rehabilitate his image with philanthropic activity and now runs a real estate development company. He has made sizable contributions to Democratic and Republican candidates, committees and PACs. A few of these contributions have been returned. Recently, in June 2009, Lindemann received press coverage when Florida gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink removed Lindemann as a host of a fundraising event. Similarly, Chuck Schumer returned contributions from Lindemann in 2004. NGP VET HISTORY: Yes * 2/24/2014 - Issue 6OK; resubmit * 5/31/2011 - Failed 6OK; Failed until further notice; Resubmitted per Alan and Tobias * 2/24/2010 - Failed 6OK; Failed vet per Alan, Ann Marie, Brad * 4/20/2004 - Issue 4OK EVENTS: None CONTRIBUTIONS: None LOBBYIST/DOJ FARA: None EARMARKS/TARP/ARRA: None LIENS: None JUDGMENTS: None BANKRUPTCIES: None HEALTHCARE SANCTIONS: None CRIMINAL RECORDS: Yes * 6/4/1996; United States Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit; 3 counts felony wire fraud; Court plea: Not guilty; Court Disposition: Guilty (Court of appeals affirmed decision of district court) LEXIS-NEXIS/INTERNET: Yes * THE LADY IS A CHAMP - AND A HORSE KILLER, TOO "She's known to Westminster Dog Show fans for her prized French bulldog - and to the equine set for her heinous role in the slaying of a valuable horse for insurance money. Marion Hulick, 75, proudly watched as her adorable canine, I'm On Fire, made history at the Madison Square Garden dog competition Monday night, becoming the first of his breed to score top honors in the Non-Sporting Group. But some onlookers said they were sickened after realizing that Hulick is the former horse trainer who helped a low-life, animal hit man kill one of her charges in the Putnam Country town of Brewster 20 years ago at the behest of her boss, cellphone heir George Lindemann Jr. "I guarantee that if Michael Vick walked into the Westminster Dog Show, he would be chased out. And yet, there's somebody famous for killing horses and everybody is smiling and clapping," said a former local groom, referring to NFL star Vick, who did time for running a dogfighting club. Witnesses at Hulick's trial said she met with the killer, Tommy Burns, offering him a $35,000 cut of the $250,000 insurance money to kill the show animal, Charisma, on Dec. 15, 1990. She led Burns to the horse's stall, one witness recalled. Burns then attached a metal clip to the horse's ear and another to his hindquarters and plugged a wire from them to an outlet, electrocuting him. Hulick landed a 21-month sentence for her role. She served six months in federal prison. Burns and Lindemann also were convicted and served time, Last night at the dog show, she called the whole ordeal "a mistake of a young person I was working for." "It doesn't have anything to do with how I conduct my life. I love my dogs," said Hulick, who lives with her husband in Massachusetts, where she has a dozen French bulldogs - and about a dozen retired show horses. [New York Post, 2/17/2010] * SINK STEPS BACK FROM 3 SUPPORTERS "In politics, you are defined by the company you keep -- especially when that company is bearing checks. Alex Sink learned this the hard way when an invitation for her Monday fundraiser in Miami Beach listed two donors with checkered pasts. The leading Democratic contender for governor, a buttoned-down former banker, decided to dump both donors for fear they would be used to smear her. The first casualty was former Miami City Commissioner Johnny Winton, who was booted from office in 2006 after a drunken and profane run-in with police. Sink removed him as a co-host of the fundraiser on Wednesday. Some strategists saw that as a no-brainer for a campaign that made a rookie mistake by failing to background big donors. Others said Sink would have created less fuss had she stood by Winton. And wasn't she was boxing herself in so every donor with a less-than perfect profile would be questioned? (...) On Friday, they did. Turns out that one of the event's co-chairs, George Lindemann, wealthy chairman of the Bass Art Musem's board of trustees, served time for ordering a hit on his show horse and collecting $250,000 in insurance money. He was sentenced in 1996 to 33 months in prison. ''We make decisions on a case-by-case basis, and Lindemann was convicted of insurance fraud,'' said Sink spokeswoman Tara Klimek. ``This particular circumstance is over the line.'' Sink's rejection of Winton and Lindemann raises questions about where candidates should draw the line when vetting donors. Is a pending investigation cause for concern, or only a conviction? Is slugging a cop as bad as arranging the killing of a horse? And what's the statute of limitations on these matters? Another co-chair of the Sink reception, publicist Seth Gordon, was removed as a volunteer campaign advisor to Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundlein 2000 after police told her he was a suspect in the 1975 death of his first wife. Gordon has denied murdering her and never been charged. Gordon, who recruited Lindemann to help Sink, defended his friend and noted his involvement in civic causes. ''George doesn't deserve to continue to be a punching bag. He has contributed to every Democratic presidential candidate, and no one has ever suggested that they didn't want his money,'' Gordon said. Indeed, Lindemann has donated generously to a slew of candidates, including U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek,U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and former presidential contender Hillary Clinton. So it's okay to cash his checks but not to give him top billing on a fundraising invite? Even Florida's master politician, Gov. Charlie Crist, has struggled with this issue. At first he stood by a top fundraiser in 2006, developer Sergio Pino, whose relationship with a county commissioner was under federal investigation. Pino also had been tied to potential election law violations while raising money for former Gov. Jeb Bush. ''We're happy to have his support,'' a Crist spokeswoman said. Five days later, Pino stepped down. Crist said of his decision: ``I think it was the right thing to do.'' [The Miami Herald, 6/27/2009] * THE RIELLE DEAL; HOW LOCAL SCANDAL BEGETS NATIONAL SCANDAL IN THE CHARGED WORLD OF FORT LAUDERDALE POLITICS AND BUSINESS Rielle Hunter, who was born in Fort Lauderdale 44 years ago, has had an alarmingly eventful life. As a teenager, she was an accomplished equestrienne who rode a champion jumping horse until the animal was electrocuted in its stable by a hit man from Chicago, part of one of the biggest scandals to ever hit Florida's blueblood horse set. As a blond and pretty young woman, her voracious appetite for cocaine and men caught the attention of novelist Jay McInerney, who based a lead character on her in a bestselling book about the excesses of the 1980s. Now in middle-age, she's become a notorious national media celebrity as the femme fatale in the scandal that has all but destroyed the political career of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. It's been a wild, wandering, and wanton life for Hunter, who spent her childhood in Tamarac as Lisa Jo Druck, her given name. And to understand Hunter (she married, divorced, and kept her ex-husband's name), it's instructive to look back at those years in Fort Lauderdale, specifically at the untold story of her father, James Druck, who was a powerful attorney in downtown Fort Lauderdale for nearly two decades. [...] Once the family was transplanted to Ocala, things only got worse. In a particularly nasty turn of events, Druck hired an assassin named Tommy "The Sandman" Burns to kill his daughter's horse, Henry the Hawk, for the insurance money. The event deeply traumatized his daughter, who was near the stable when the horse was electrocuted. Burns later admitted to federal investigators that he had killed about 20 horses. One of those sentenced to prison in the case was George Lindemann Jr., a Palm Beach scion to a billion-dollar fortune. Like Druck, he also had Burns kill a show horse for the insurance money. [...] Hunter, who was with a boyfriend when Burns killed the animal, saw the horse dead on the stable floor. McInerney fictionalized the account in his 1988 book, The Story Of My Life. The character based on Hunter, named Allison Poole, recounts that she was so distraught by the killing of the horse (named "Dangerous Dan" in the book) that she had to be kept on tranquilizers for a week. [...] The book was published before the Edwards scandal broke (and the Poole character would also be included in American Psycho, a bestselling novel by Bret Easton Ellis). James Druck died in 1990 of lung cancer before he could be brought to justice on the insurance fraud charge. The rest of the story, quite literally, is history. [New Times Broward-Palm Beach, 8/28/2008] * CONVICT CONTRIBUTIONS "Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has accepted thousands of dollars in campaign donations from convicted criminals. After being informed of the source of the donations, the Schumer campaign said it would give $17,000 in questionable contributions to charity. (...) He accepted $2,000 from George Lindemann Jr., who was convicted in 1996 of ordering the killing of a show horse to collect insurance money [The National Journal, 6/10/2004] * 3-YEAR TERM IN '90 KILLLING OF PRIZE HORSE "A champion horseman and son of one of the richest men in the United States was sentenced yesterday in Chicago to almost three years in prison for his role in the killing of a show horse for insurance money. The defendant, George Lindemann Jr., son of a cellular phone magnate and the operator of a horse farm near Greenwich, Conn., was ordered to report to Federal prison within 30 days to begin a 33-month term for three counts of wire fraud. He was also sentenced to pay a $500,000 fine, $250,000 in restitution to the insurance company he bilked, as well as the cost of his prison stay. After being released, he will be on probation for two years under the sentence handed down by Judge George Marovich of Federal District Court. Marion Hulick, a trainer at the Lindemann family farm, Cellular Farms, was sentenced to 21 months in prison on the same charges. She was not ordered to pay a fine or restitution. The pair were convicted last September after an admitted horse "hit man" testified that he had killed the show horse Charisma so Mr. Lindemann could collect insurance money. The insurance company, Generali-U.S., paid $250,000 after the horse's death in 1990. The trial was the culmination of a four-year Federal investigation into crimes in the show-horse business. Of the 23 people indicted in Chicago in July 1994, 20 pleaded guilty. The remaining defendant, Barney Ward, owner of Castle Hill Farm in Brewster, N.Y., is scheduled to go to trial on March 4. Those convicted in the investigation included people who had killed horses to collect insurance money and others who had defrauded elderly widows in horse deals. One, Richard Bailey, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after a Federal judge concluded he had also solicited the murder of Helen Vorhees Brach, the candy heiress and an investor in horses. Mr. Lindemann, 31, made no comment as he was sentenced. But Mrs. Hulick, 60, sobbed and told the judge that she was sorry. Judge Marovich called the pair's acts "despicable and reprehensible" and said he wanted the sentences to send a message to the country club and "horsy set." [The New York Times, 1/19/1996] My bad, NGP ID 33404689 -- Clayton Cox Regional Finance Director Florida, Georgia & Midwest Democratic National Committee CoxC@dnc.org <mailto:CoxC@dnc.org> Office: (202) 572-5453 Cell: (678) 595-4557 Contribute today: >https://finance.democrats.org/page/contribute/Midwest2015< Do you have an NGP ID or address? Hello- Can we please vet George Lindemann, Jr. to give to the DNC and attend a POTUS event? Thank you! Clayton -- Clayton Cox Regional Finance Director Florida, Georgia & Midwest Democratic National Committee CoxC@dnc.org <mailto:CoxC@dnc.org> Office: (202) 572-5453 Cell: (678) 595-4557 Contribute today: >https://finance.democrats.org/page/contribute/Midwest2015<