Moe Lane

Well, this sounds interesting:

A prominent Democratic campaign treasurer who works for federal, state and O.C. lawmakers including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Rep. Loretta Sanchez and state Assemblymen Lou Correa and Jose Solorio has been arrested by the FBI on suspicion of mail fraud, The Orange County Register has learned.

U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman Thom Mrozek confirmed Saturday afternoon that Kinde Durkee of Burbank-based Durkee and Associates, was arrested by the FBI on a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento. Special Agent Steve Dupre of the bureau’s Sacramento office said she was arrested in connection with her position as a campaign treasurer.

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Via Instapundit, it’s time for another game of…

NAME!
THAT!
PARTY!

Two high-level state officials have frozen nearly $150,000 in campaign contributions raised for them by a low-income housing developer now accused of bilking government agencies.

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer and state Controller John Chiang said they have put the money into separate accounts while they await the outcome of a federal probe into Advanced Development and Investment Inc [ADI]. The company has built dozens of subsidized apartment complexes up and down the state with taxpayer money.

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Hassan Nemazee helped raise 115 million for the DSCC in 2006.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Hot Air readers.

Hassan Nemazee was more recently a heavy donor and bundler for both the Clinton and Obama Presidential campaigns, bringing in over half a million for the new President; he was also a major bundler for the Presidential Inaugural.

NY Businessman Charged With $74 Million Bank Fraud Against Citigroup

A New York man was charged with allegedly defrauding Citigroup Inc. (C) out of $74 million in loans.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan and the Federal Bureau of Investigations say Hassan Nemazee, with residences in Manhattan and Katonah, N.Y., fraudulently applied for the loans for Nemazee Capital Corp., of which he is chairman and chief executive.

Federal prosecutors contend Nemazee obtained the money by giving the banking giant “numerous documents that purported to establish the existence of accounts in Nemazee’s name at various financial institutions containing many hundreds of millions of dollars,” the Justice Department said in a statement. “In fact, those were fraudulent and forged documents.”

And I originally had him down as ‘former’ national finance chair for the DSCC, except that I’m seeing no signs that he quit the job (screenshot here).

See also AoSHQ & @AmandaCarpenter. [Also, Dan Riehl, who's doing some more research on the topic.]

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

As you know, it’s in response to the PMA meltdown/outrage (see here for some background posts):

Rep. Flake targets earmarks amidst PMA controversy
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), the House’s most vocal critic of pork barrel spending, is trying to shake the ethics committee into action on the link between earmarks and campaign contributors.

Flake has seized on the public corruption investigation of PMA Group, a once-powerful lobbying force that has disintegrated in the wake of an FBI probe into fraudulent campaign donations to numerous members of Congress.

In the past 24 hours, Flake has highlighted earmarks in the omnibus appropriations bill for PMA clients, written a scathing op-ed to The New York Times about Congress’s pay-to-play practices and offered a privileged resolution on the House floor that would force the House ethics panel to scrutinize the connection between earmarks and campaign cash and report back to the full body in two months.

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