Custer Battles Business Innovation - Steal Your Capital Good, Then Lease It Back To You
by Vince?Daliessio
Actually, it's way better than that;
In one instance, the company claimed ownership of forklifts used to transport the C.P.A.'s cash (among other things) around the Baghdad airport. But up until the war the forklifts had been the property of Iraqi Airways. They were "liberated," along with the Iraqi people, following hostilities. Custer Battles seized them, painted over the old name, and transferred ownership to its offshore businesses. The forklifts were then leased back to Custer Battles for thousands of dollars a month, a cost that Custer Battles passed along to the C.P.A. In 2006, a federal-court jury in Virginia ordered the company to pay $10 million in damages and penalties for defrauding the government... The jury decision in the whistle-blower lawsuit was subsequently overturned when the trial judge set the verdict aside, pointing out that the C.P.A. was not in fact a U.S.-government entity and hence Custer Battles could not be tried under the federal fraud act.
"Helicopter Ben" Bernanke has nothing on the CPA, which, along with being financially raped by Custer and thousands of other contractors for billions in "legitimate" expenses, also managed to utterly and completely lose $9 billion in cash.