A REMINDER: Grimms sleaze goes back years. Remember his old pal, the felon Carlos Laquis? We do! >>Shortly before leaving the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2006, after a swashbuckling undercover career that would later help catapult him into Congress, a young agent named Michael G. Grimm went into real estate, investing roughly $1 million of borrowed money in a luxury development in Texas. Seeking a builder to cooperate on the project, Mr. Grimm chose a former F.B.I. agent who had served with him in New York — even though the former agent was under indictment on state racketeering and fraud charges, according to court and property records. The former agent, Carlos Luquis, was soon convicted for his role in skimming $2 million from Texans’ electric bills, and served 18 months in prison. Yet Mr. Grimm went on to do business with Mr. Luquis and his wife in two other companies, records show. And during Mr. Grimm’s successful insurgent campaign for Congress in 2010, Mr. Luquis was frequently at his side. Mr. Grimm’s ties to Mr. Luquis reflect a checkered business background that seems to clash in some ways with his image as a straight-arrow veteran of the Marine Corps and the F.B.I. That image has been crucial to his ascent in the Republican Party. Before becoming an F.B.I. agent for a decade, Mr. Grimm worked for a year for a small firm on Wall Street that frequently ran into problems with regulators and customers, regulatory filings show. But his official biographies do not mention the firm, Whale Securities. After he left the bureau, he opened a restaurant in Manhattan that has been accused in a lawsuit of cheating its workers and fined by the state for failing to carry workers’ compensation. Mr. Grimm, who represents Staten Island and part of Brooklyn, is facing scrutiny after The New York Times reported last month that the F.B.I. was investigating his main fund-raiser in the 2010 race. The fund-raiser, Ofer Biton, helped Mr. Grimm collect more than $500,000 in campaign donations from the followers of an Israeli rabbi and mystic, a vast majority of whom do not live in the Congressional district. Followers of the rabbi have told The Times that Mr. Grimm or Mr. Biton informed them the campaign would find ways to accept illegal donations, including those that exceeded limits, were paid in cash or came from foreigners without green cards. The F.B.I. is examining allegations that Mr. Biton embezzled millions of dollars from the rabbi’s congregation.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 14:29:46 +0000
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