Click here to read Chapter 1 of this story.
Click here to read Chapter 2 of this story
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To better understand the scope of Yank Barry’s achievements, we must consider a business venture that Yank undertook beginning in 2005, the same year that Yank held a party in the Bahamas for some of his friends and business associates—the party I mentioned in Chapter 1 of this article.
One purpose of this party was to celebrate Yank’s involvement with a company called NorMexSteel, which purported to be a major player in the Mexican steel industry. When I asked Yank about his involvement with NorMexSteel, he told me that he was only a passive investor in the company, but according to multiple sources, including another man who invested in NorMexSteel, Yank Barry was one of the company’s co-founders.
One of NorMexSteel’s investors reported to the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that NorMexSteel was a massive fraud, and an SEC official named Thomas Gargan was appointed to investigate NorMexSteel, but neither the SEC nor the FBI took action against the company.
When NorMexSteel was founded in 2005, Yank Barry had not yet been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by three members of the U.S. Congress, but he was on close terms with multiple former and current FBI officials, including Oliver “Buck� Revell, who was formerly associate deputy director (second-in-charge) of the FBI, and who was, as we know, the chairman of the advisory board of Yank Barry’s charity, the Global Village Champions Foundation (which was a massive fraud).
NorMexSteel was not, in fact, a major player in the Mexican steel industry, and indeed it was in no way actually in the steel business. Soon after the fraud was reported to the FBI and the SEC, the company (in early 2006) changed its name to Biochem Solutions, which had only two products, one a purported treatment for HIV infection (brokers who sold Biochem’s stock described the treatment as a “cure� for AIDS), and the other a purported treatment for arthritis (described by brokers as a “cure� for arthritis).
Biochem Solutions was a classic pump and dump fraud. The company had no real business, and the pump end of the fraud involved little other than Biochem Solutions, in August 2006, issuing a press release stating that Biochem had signed a purported $25.33 million deal with Yank Barry’s other company, Vitapro International, whereby Vitapro (the entirety of whose business had theretofore consisted of selling a small amount of dehydrated soy meat substitute) had acquired a “Master License� from Biochem to “exclusively manufacture, market and distribute Biochem’s innovative arthritis medication ‘Arthromir’ worldwide.�
During one of several phone conversations that I had with Yank Barry, Yank told me that Arthromir was a real medication that had been “invented� by a man named James McNichol. I asked if McNichol was a doctor, and Yank said “I think he was a pharmacist, or something like that. He had a lot of letters after his name.� But I have found no record of anyone named McNichol who was in any way connected with the “invention� of an arthritis medication, and nor have I found any record that anyone named McNichol was involved with Biochem Solutions in any way whatsoever.
It is possible that James McNichol was somehow involved with Biochem Solutions, and it is possible that he “invented� Biochem’s arthritis medication, but the fact that no record of this exists on the internet suggests that McNichol, if there is any such person, was not keen to advertise his involvement with Biochem or his alleged invention of Biochem’s supposed arthritis medication, Arthromir.
Yank Barry also told me that his other company, Vitapro International, really did manufacture Arthromir and that Vitapro really was going to distribute the supposed arthritis medication worldwide. Given that Vitapro was in the business of selling a dehydrated meat substitute, it seemed unlikely that Vitapro had the capability to manufacture a high-tech pharmaceutical product, but Yank assured me that Vitapro did have the capability. Yank said that manufacturing a dehydrated meat substitute and manufacturing an arthritis medication involved essentially the same process.
“It’s all just mix and stir,� said Yank.
In another one of our phone conversations, though, Yank conceded that Vitapro International, as of 2005, did not even have any manufacturing plants. The dehydrated meat substitute was manufactured by sub-contractors, so presumably Yank meant that it was one of Vitapro’s subcontractors that manufactured the arthritis medication.
But there is no evidence that Vitapro’s subcontractors, all of which specialized in manufacturing food products, including, of course, dehydrated meat substitute, actually manufactured any arthritis medication, and it is more than likely that the alleged Biochem Solutions arthritis medication did not actually exist as anything more than, at best, a potion that somebody had cooked up in a kitchen.
Even more likely, the medication did not exist at all, other than in the Biochem Solutions press releases announcing Biochem’s alleged $25.33 million deal with Vitapro International. In other words, Yank Barry’s company, Vitapro International, signed a phony $25 million deal with Yank Barry’s other company, Biochem Solutions, and then hyped the phony deal to sell Biochem Solutions stock to investors.
To some people, this apparently seemed like a good investment, and Biochem Solutions not only continued to hype its alleged $25.33 million deal with Vitapro International, but also claimed that both its treatment for AIDS and its arthritis medication (allegedly manufactured by Vitapro) were tested in clinical trials under “FDA protocols� and shown to be remarkably effective for the treatment of AIDS and arthritis.
When I asked Yank Barry about this, he assured me that the alleged arthritis medication really had been tested under FDA protocols, and that Biochem Solutions had submitted the medication to the FDA for approval. Yank stated further that the FDA did not ultimately approve the arthritis medication, but that this did not mean that Biochem Solutions was a fraud. According to Yank, Biochem Solutions genuinely believed that its arthritis and AIDS medications were effective, but like many other pharmaceutical companies with promising treatments, Biochem was ultimately unable to prove that its medications were sufficiently effective to warrant FDA approval.
“The medication didn’t work,� said Yank, stressing that Biochem really had conducted trials of the medication under “FDA protocols� and that the trials had suggested that the arthritis and AIDS medications were effective, though further trials ultimately suggested otherwise. When I asked Yank who had conducted the trials, he said the AIDS and arthritis medications were tested by scientists in India and the United States, but I have found no evidence that scientists in India and the United States tested the medications.
A Biochem Solutions press release, however, reported that the company’s AIDS and arthritis medications had been tested by a doctor in Kenya named Davy Koech. When I reminded Yank of this, he said that, yes, now he remembered, Dr. Koech also tested Biochem’s medications, and Dr. Koech found that the medications were remarkably effective for the treatment of AIDS and arthritis. It is unlikely that Yank had forgotten about Dr. Koech because Dr. Koech was a member of the board of advisors of Yank’s charity, the Global Village Champions Foundation.
Biochem produced a report by Dr. Koech as evidence that not only its arthritis medication, but also its AIDS medication, were remarkably effective, but aside from Dr. Koech’s report, there was, to repeat, no evidence that these medications even existed as anything more than (at best) potions someone cooked up in their kitchen, and at the time when he wrote this report (which was, of course, favorable to Biochem), Davy Koech was a member of Biochem’s board of directors (meaning that he was paid by Biochem to produce his report claiming that Biochem had effective products).
Koech allegedly conducted trials (under “FDA protocols�) of both Biochem’s supposed arthritis treatment (Arthromir) and Biochem’s supposed AIDS treatment at a lab in Kenya, where Koech was a director of the Kenya Medical Institute. Koech was, at the time, notorious for earlier promoting a fake “cure� for AIDS, and Koech was subsequently (in 2012) indicted in Kenya on charges of fraud and stealing more than $233,000 from the Kenya Medical Institute.
The president of Biochem, meanwhile, was James Shelley, who, you will recall from Chapter 2 of this long article, was, like Dr. Koech, a member of the Global Village Champions Foundation’s illustrious advisory board.
A press release issued by Biochem described Shelley as the former president of Bank of America Canada, which is how the Global Village Champions Foundation described him, suggesting that Shelley was president of the Canadian operations of a major financial institution, but as we know, Shelley had never held that job. Shelley was never employed by Bank of America in any capacity, much less as president of that major financial institution’s operations in Canada.
Recall from Chapter 2 of this story that Shelley did, however, incorporate a small company that he named Bank of America Canada Realty. This company had nothing whatsoever to do with Bank of America, the big financial institution, but it enabled (and it was likely incorporated precisely to enable) Shelley and others (including Biochem Solutions and the Global Village Champions Foundation) to state that he was, in fact, President of Bank of America Canada, while fraudulently suggesting that he was president of the major financial institution by that name.
The chairman of Biochem Solutions was Tony Lichaa, who was another member of the Global Village Champions Foundation’s illustrious advisory board. A Biochem press release described Tony Lichaa as a prominent doctor and Tony Lichaa claimed to be the former “director of internal medicine and cardiology� at the Montreal Heart Center, one of the world’s best cardiology hospitals, but as we know from Chapter 2 of this article, Tony Lichaa was no such thing. He never worked in any capacity for the Montreal Heart Center, much less as head of cardiology at that prominent heart hospital.
It is not even clear that Tony Lichaa was a real doctor, and if he was, he had spent most of his career promoting fraudulent medical treatments.
Brokers who sold Biochem’s shares to unwitting investors told prospective investors that Biochem’s top executives and founders were behind the Global Village Champions Foundation, and that while Biochem Solutions was striving to cure AIDS and arthritis, the Global Village Champions Foundation was (to quote the foundation’s website) “striving to become the undisputed world leader in private humanitarian delivery of nutrition to needy persons everywhere, sustaining human life and eradicating hunger from the entire face of the planet Earth.�
To repeat: aside from a report produced by Koech, there was no evidence that Arthromir was an effective arthritis medication, and there are good reasons to believe that it was not a medication at all. If it was a medication, it was manufactured by nobody other than Yank Barry’s Vitapro, which had no actual manufacturing facilities, and was otherwise in the business only of selling a dehydrated meat substitute.
DeepCapture is willing to go out on a limb and say that just as Yank Barry’s charity, the Global Village Champions Foundation, was a massive fraud, so too was Biochem Solutions, co-founded by Yank Barry, a massive fraud whose business amounted to nothing more than announcing a fake $25.33 million deal with Yank Barry’s other company, Vitapro, while selling the company’s stock to dupe investors.
In one of my conversations with Yank Barry, he suggested that Biochem Solutions was, in fact, a fraud, but that he, like other investors in the company, was a victim of the fraud. This, of course, contradicted his earlier statement that Biochem Solutions had real medications and was therefore not a fraud.
In June 2009, Biochem Solutions was purchased by Balmoral FX Systems, a company that raised new money from investors with the claim that it had acquired a foreign exchange trading platform. Two years later, Balmoral FX Systems changed its name to Amalgamated Gold and Steel, a company that now claims to be mining gold and steel in the U.S. and Mexico. Back in 2005, we know, the company was called NorMexSteel, which advertised itself as a major player in the Mexican steel industry.
Some of the same people behind NorMexSteel were, of course, also behind Biochem Solutions, and one of them, aside from Yank Barry, was a man named Terry Hunter (see the document posted here at DeepCapture.com, which shows that Terry Hunter was a key principal with NorMexSteel, soon to be known as Biochem Solutions). Terry Hunter was a convicted drug trafficker, and as of 2005, when he co-founded NorMexSteel with Yank Barry, Terry Hunter was living in Yank’s house in the Bahamas.
While Terry Hunter was living in Yank’s house, Yank reported that his house had been robbed, and Terry Hunter backed up the claim that the house was robbed, but two of Yank’s former business partners report that the house was robbed by Yank and Hunter themselves, and that they pocketed a lot of money in insurance pay-outs. In other words, a standard-issue insurance fraud. Yank, though, told me that his house really was robbed by men who pointed a gun at his head, and that Terry Hunter was, at the time, sound asleep in his basement. So let us assume that there was no insurance fraud.
When I asked Yank how it came to be that he had a convicted drug trafficker living in his house, and why he had co-founded NorMexSteel, soon to be Biochem Solutions, with a convicted drug trafficker, Yank reiterated that he was only a passive investor in NorMexSteel/Biochem Solutions, and he said that he did not really know Terry Hunter, while suggesting that Hunter had tricked him into investing in NorMexSteel/Biochem Solutions.
But another investor in NorMexSteel says that Yank and Terry Hunter had been associates since the 1980s, when Yank was jailed for his involvement in a Mafia extortion scheme (see Chapter 2 of this article for more on the Mafia extortion scheme), and this same investor says that Yank’s claim to have been only a passive investor in NorMexSteel/Biochem Solutions is simply not true.
The investor’s story seems more plausible than Yank’s story, given that it is clear that far from being a mere passive investor, Yank co-founded NorMexSteel/Biochem, while Biochem’s top two executives and the doctor who allegedly tested Biochem’s “medications� were all members of the advisory board of Yank’s charity, the Global Village Champions Foundation.
The president of NorMexSteel (until the day it changed its name to Biochem Solutions) was Brad Wilson (the same document linked above shows Brad Wilson’s initials signed at the bottom of every page). Like the others, Brad Wilson was involved not only with NorMexSteel, but also Biochem. And, of course, Biochem and NorMexSteel were simply two different names for the same company—a company that had no real products, though it claimed to be in the steel business while it was NorMex, and it claimed to be in the pharmaceutical business while it was Biochem Solutions.
Brad Wilson (president of NorMexSteel, also involved with Biochem) had formerly worked as a stock broker for a brokerage and investment firm called Sovereign Equity Management. Wilson was also the principal courier for Sovereign Equity Management’s founders, who were the DeCavalcante Mafia family capo Phil Abramo (known in mob circles as “The King of Wall Street�) and Thomas Quinn, an associate of the Genovese Mafia family. That is to say, Wilson was a courier for the mob before he became the president of NorMexSteel (a leading player in the Mexican steel industry, with no actual steel, soon to be known as Biochem Solutions, the pharmaceutical company with no actual pharmaceuticals).
When I asked Yank Barry about Brad Wilson, Yank told me that he did not know who Brad Wilson was. When I told Yank that Brad Wilson was the president of NorMexSteel (co-founded by Yank), Yank said, “He might well have been.�
It was also likely no coincidence that Brad Wilson became president of NorMexSteel, given that he had previously been employed by Mafia capo Abramo and organized crime figure Quinn (an associate of the Genovese Mafia family). In 2005, not long before Wilson became president of NorMexSteel, Abramo was sentenced to life in prison on charges of securities fraud and murder, but as you might recall from Chapter 2 of this series, Abramo, prior to going to prison, not only had co-founded Sovereign Equity Management (which employed Wilson), but also had been a principal with brokerages (e.g. Centex Securities and Barron Chase Securities) controlled by Evgeny Dvoskin and Gerald Burns.
Dvoskin, as we know from Chapter 2 of this article, was a major Russian organized crime figure and a Russian intelligence agent later alleged to have been the ring-leader of ten Russian spies whom the FBI arrested in 2010, and Burns was a principal with the First International Bank of Grenada and its subsidiaries, including the World Investors Stock Exchange (which was a sham stock exchange that specialized in listing sham companies). Recall that Yank Barry, in the 1990s, listed the shares of his sham company, Global Village Market, on the World Investors Stock Exchange, and Global Village Market, of course, advertised itself as being not only a company, but also a charity (soon to be known as the Global Village Champion Foundation).
I will remind the reader that Offshore Alert, a prominent publication that covers off-shore financial crime, reported that Yank Barry was directly involved with both the First International Bank of Grenada and the World Investors Stock Exchange. One of Yank’s associates also told me that Yank was directly involved with both those criminal outfits, but Yank told me that he was not involved in any way other than to have listed his company, Global Village Market, on the World Investors Stock Exchange. Yank also told me that Global Village Market sold “no more than $79 of stock� on that exchange.
In any event, Wilson (president of NorMexSteel) was an important employee of Sovereign Equity Management, co-founded by Quinn and Mafia capo Abramo.
It is probably also pertinent that during the 1980s, Quinn and Abramo had been partners in a global network of criminal brokerages (e.g. Kettler Asset Management, Equity Management Services, Crowley Management Services, and many more located in the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, and the United States) that were linked to the BCCI enterprise. Another partner in those brokerages was a man named Arnold Kimmes, whom the FBI described as a “major organized crime figure,� while others involved with those brokerages were Canadian organized crime figures, including Yank Barry’s associates Antonio Commisso and his son, Cosimo Commisso.
In 1988, Quinn was sentenced to three years in a French prison, and it was shortly after his release from prison when he co-founded Sovereign Equity Management in partnership with Mafia capo Abramo. Meanwhile, Abramo and Quinn financed several other brokerages, one of them called Mayfair Securities.
Another principal with Mayfair Securities was Jay Gottlieb, a close associate of Yank Barry, and Gottlieb later (see photograph below) attended the 2005 party that Yank hosted in the Bahamas. At the time, Gottlieb was an investor in NorMexSteel/Biochem Solutions, and he was widely known as one of the world’s leading operators of “boiler room� brokerages. These boiler room brokerages changed names regularly, but were affiliates of Gottlieb’s holding company First Capital Investment Mercantile, Inc.
Brokerages referred to as “boiler rooms� are typically brokerages that specialize in using high-pressure sales tactics to sell stock in bogus companies as part of larger “pump and dump� schemes, which see miscreants first acquiring stock in a public company, then “pumping� up the share price while selling the stock to dupe investors, only to subsequently ‘�dump� shares into the market and then hit the stock with manipulative short selling that causes the stock to go into a death spiral so that the stock hits zero before the dupe investors can realize what is happening.
It is not surprising that Gottlieb was an investor in NorMexSteel/Biochem Solutions, given that Gottlieb had known Yank Barry for some time, and while Brad Wilson (president of NorMexSteel) had previously been a principal with Sovereign Equity Management, co-founded by Mafia capo Abramo and Quinn, Gottleib, of course, had previously been a principal with Mayfair Securities, financed by Abramo and Quinn.
As of 2005, when he invested in NorMexSteel, Gottlieb had also just invested $3.3 million in an another of Yank Barry’s schemes, an outfit called the People Against Tobacco Foundation, which was ostensibly in the business of helping residents of foreign countries and foreign governments file lawsuits against American tobacco companies. Yank advertised the People Against Tobacco Foundation by describing it as a charity affiliated with the Global Village Champions Foundation, and by noting (correctly) that one of the People Against Tobacco Foundation’s board members was Oliver “Buck� Revell, former associate deputy director of the FBI (who was also chairman of the Global Village Champions Foundation’s advisory board).
The People Against Tobacco Foundation was no charity. It is was a purely for-profit scheme. Outside investors were invited to invest in the Foundation with promises that they would receive a cut of any money that the Foundation earned from litigating against big tobacco companies. This was an investment scheme that would be illegal if it were operated in the United States, but the People Against Tobacco Foundation was registered offshore, and claimed to take investments only from residents of foreign countries. I am not aware of evidence that it broke any laws.
While Buck Revell sat on the board of the People Against Tobacco Foundation, one of Yank’s partners in this enterprise was a former top Russian intelligence officer named Sergei Chemezov. In one of our phone conversations, Yank acknowledged that Chemezov was involved with the People Against Tobacco Foundation, and Yank said that he had been introduced to Chemezov by Gordon Stula, who was, as we saw in Chapter 2 of this article, also involved with the Global Village Champions Foundation, but Yank stressed that Chemezov is a prominent businessman.
Chemezov is now the head of Russia’s state owned arms industry, and in that capacity, he has been linked to illicit arms sales to the Iranian regime, among others. The Russian journalist who broke the story about the illicit arms sales to Iran was a fellow named Ivan Safronov, and soon after he reported the story, Safronov fell from a fifth floor window and died. The Moscow police ruled the death a suicide.
Salon, the online news magazine, among others, reported on the possibility that Chemezov had been involved in the journalist’s murder, but there is no proof that Chemezov ordered the murder, and, oddly, all media stories naming Chemezov as a possible suspect in the murder have since been wiped from the internet.
One of Chemezov’s associates was a Russian citizen named Egor Chernov, whose sister, Marina Gorbacheva was married to Aleksander Gorbachev, a relative of the former Soviet premier Mikhael Gorbachev. In one of our phone conversations, Yank Barry told me that he doesn’t know Chernov, and never met him or did business with him, but Yank acknowledged that Terry Hunter (convicted drug trafficker and co-founder, with Yank, of NorMexSteel/Biochem Solutions) “might have been dealing with Chernov,� and we will see in a moment that Chernov had dealings with other NorMexSteel investors, while Chernov was involved on the peripheries of that company.
An affidavit given by an FBI agent (the affidavit is posted at a website called TheWhistleblowers.org), the FBI agent quotes one of Chernov’s coconspirators as saying that Chernov was planning a big stock “score” involving $13 million worth of NorMexSteel stock.
Previously, Chernov was involved with brokerages operated by Russian organized crime figure Dvoskin, and like Dvoskin, Chernov was not only an organized crime figure, but also a Russian intelligence asset with close ties to elements of the U.S. government.
As of 2005, Chernov was also in business with another of Yank Barry’s FBI associates, an FBI special agent named Mark Pinto. Among other ventures, Pinto and Chernov were working with two other men–Mark Avery and Rob Kane–to run weapons to the Philippine island of Mindanao, where a terrorist group called Abu Sayyaf was doing battle with the Philippine National Army. Kane had lived in Mindanao for many years with a local wife, and his previous adventures (or so he claimed) included his involvement in a U.S. government mission to either purchase or retrieve a stash of gold that Abu Sayyaf terrorists had hidden in the Mindanao jungle.
Purportedly, this gold was part of a stash of gold, known as “Yamashita’s Gold,� that had earlier been hidden in the Philippines by Japanese forces during World War II. See the excellent book “Gold Warriors,� by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave for more on Yamashita’s Gold, but it suffices to know that it is true that the Japanese stashed a lot of gold in the Philippines during WWII, and it is true that American officials retrieved a lot of the gold, and subsequently used it to fund so-called “black� projects (i.e. intelligence operations conducted off-the-books, and without oversight from Congress).
It is also true that some of Yank Barry’s associates, including former BCCI figure Adnan Khashoggi, subsequently had involvement in retrieving Yamashita’s Gold from the Philippines. Khashoggi’s son-in-law, Larry Kolb, incidentally, was an agent for the former boxer Muhammad Ali, but Kolb told me that he was Ali’s agent only in the 1980s, which was before Yank Barry started doing business with Ali (who, recall from earlier chapters of this story, was paid by Yank to help promote Yank’s company, Vitapro International, and who also endorsed Global Village Market and its successor, the Global Village Champions Foundation).
In any event, while Yamashita’s Gold is quite real, many scam artists prey on the story of Yamashita’s Gold, soliciting money from hapless investors with promises to carry out missions to retrieve more of the gold from the Philippines, though they never actually carry out the missions. Whether Kane was one such scam artist, or whether he was genuinely involved in government missions to retrieve the gold, is not known.
What is known is that Kane and Avery owned a private air charter company called Security Aviation, and FBI agent Mark Pinto was involved with that company, as was Chernov. Another person involved with Security Aviation was Skip Brandon, who, like Buck Revell, served for a time as associate deputy director of the FBI. Also involved with the company was a man named Dennis Hopper (not the Hollywood actor by that name), who had a license to make and sell machine guns and silencers.
Hopper told people that he had been involved in “black ops� missions for the U.S. government. Whether these claims were true or not, Kane was later arrested and charged with being in possession of Soviet-era rocket launchers that he had mounted on his fleet of Czech-made L-39 Albatross jets.
When FBI investigators determined that Security Aviation was making preparations to traffic weapons to the Philippines, Mark Pinto, the FBI agent who was in business with Security Aviation, produced a letter, apparently from the commander of the Philippine National Army, inviting Pinto and his partners to assist the Philippine government in counter-terrorism training. But according one of Yank’s associates, also a former associate of Chernov and Pinto, Security Aviation was running guns to Abu Sayyaf, as were some members of the Philippine National Army. That is a charge they would no doubt deny, but I was unable to reach any of Security Aviation’s principals or Pinto for comment.
It is perhaps worth noting at this point that there was substantial evidence that the First International Bank of Grenada (owner of the World Investors Stock Exchange) had dealings with elements of the U.S. government (see, for example, a recent story published on the hacker website zoklet.net), and we will see that others of Yank Barry’s associates claimed to be agents of the U.S. government. It is also possible that Yank Barry himself has business with elements of the U.S. government.
It is even possible, as some have suggested, that the Global Village Champions Foundation is an elaborate front established so that Yank Barry can travel the world, carrying out black operations for elements of the U.S. government. That is pure speculation, but Muhammad Ali, with whom Yank often travels overseas, has worked as an agent of the U.S. government, and Larry Kolb, who was Muhammad Ali’s agent for a time in the 1980s, has written two excellent books about his (Kolb’s) work for the CIA.
Elements of the U.S. government, including Buck Revell, have a long history of having “assets� who could carry out missions that full-time, on-the-books government employees were prohibited by law from carrying out without the consent of Congress.
This, of course, is a more generous and more unlikely interpretation of Yank Barry’s activities (better a secret agent than just than just an extraordinary con-man), but in either case, it is clear that Yank Barry is protected by elements of the U.S. government, and we should question the relationships that some U.S. officials have maintained with people like Yank Barry. We should also question relationships between U.S. government officials and people like Egor Chernov, who, of course, was a major Russian organized crime figure.
As of 2005, Chernov was running a global fake passport ring in partnership with his sister, Marina Gorbacheva, who was a judge in Moscow, and who was, as I mentioned, married to Alexander Gorbachev, a relative of former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Chernov traveled with a fake Bulgarian passport (a copy of Chernov’s fake passport is posted here at DeepCapture.com) identifying him as Aleksandrov Vasko Svetlinov.
Soon after the party that Yank hosted in 2005, Chernov was named as the chief suspect in the murder of a man named Rex Judd, who was a long-time business associate of Yank Barry, and who had posted bail for Yank Barry when Yank was indicted for bribing the director of the Texas prisons.
When Rex Judd was murdered, the FBI reported not only that Chernov was the principal suspect in the murder, but also that the murder was “inextricably linked� to Chernov’s global fake passport ring. Chernov was subsequently jailed on charges of possessing fake passports, but he was never charged in the murder of Rex Judd, and in 2010, Chernov was released from prison, having served only a few months.
According to one of my sources (whom I can identify only as a “Congressional staffer�), when members of Congress asked why Chernov had been released from prison, FBI managers, behind closed doors, told the members of Congress that Chernov had been released because Chernov had helped the FBI identify the ten Russian spies whom the FBI arrested in 2010, at which point, recall, it was alleged by former Russian intelligence officials and some Russian media that Dvoskin had been the ring-leader of those spies.
Chernov, as we know, had been involved with brokerages operated by Dvoskin, as had at least two of those Russian spies, Christopher Metsos and Mikhael Semenko. In other words, Chernov was a business partner of Dvoskin, and he likely had involvement with those Russian spies. Also involved with Dvoskin’s brokerages, of course, were Gerald Burns (who, like Dvoskin, was linked to the First International Bank of Grenada and the World Investors Stock Exchange) and some of Cosa Nostra’s leading lights, including DeCavalcante Mafia family capo Phil Abramo (“The King of Wall Street�).
More on the murder of Rex Judd momentarily, but the first thing to know about Rex Judd is that he claimed to be an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Whether this claim was true is unknown, but it is known that Rex Judd had been a close business partner of Yank Barry since the 1990s, when they were involved together in the Global Prosperity Group. As you might recall from Chapter 2 of this article, the Global Prosperity Group was in the business of holding conferences at which “motivational� speakers taught people how to get rich quick by investing in scam companies, including Yank’s Global Village Market (which later evolved into the Global Village Champions Foundation) and other companies that were, like Global Village Market and the Global Prosperity Group itself, listed on the World Investors Stock Exchange, a subsidiary of First International Bank of Grenada (which was also a massive criminal enterprise).
The second thing to know about Rex Judd is that back in 1998 he, as I already mentioned, posted bail for Yank Barry when Yank was indicted for paying bribes to the director of the Texas state prisons (the bail documents are posted here at DeepCapture.com). In one of our phone conversations, Yank told me that Rex Judd was not a close associate of his, and that he had not seen Rex Judd since 2001. Yank also told me that he was unaware that Rex Judd had been murdered, allegedly by Chernov, all of which seems hard to believe given that Judd’s murder was widely reported in the media, and Judd was certainly a close enough associate of Yank that he was moved to bail Yank out of prison when Yank was indicted for paying bribes to the director of state prisons in Texas.
As of 2005, a jury had convicted Yank of that crime, but strangely, the judge, the Honorable Lynn Hughes, had allowed Yank to leave the United States and travel to the Bahamas while he was awaiting sentencing. (Yank had a house and permanent residency status in the Bahamas).
One of the people who attended the party that Yank hosted in the Bahamas says that he was sitting next to Yank when Yank took a phone call from Buck Revell (formerly second-in-charge at the FBI). When Yank got off the phone with Revell, Yank announced that Revell was going to arrange for his conviction to be overturned. And sure enough, Yank’s conviction was overturned with remarkable alacrity
Soon after Yank’s phone call with Buck Revell, the judge, Lynn Hughes, ordered a retrial, and as reported by the publication Offshore Alert, it was one of the stranger trials in Texas history, with the prosecutor suddenly getting called up for duty with the Army Reserves, and Judge Hughes proceeding without him, while the court reporter was sentenced to prison for producing “false� transcripts of earlier trial proceedings that had led to Yank’s conviction by a jury of his peers.
Then, rather than hold the retrial with a jury, which would have been the normal procedure, Judge Hughes simply threw out the earlier jury conviction and ruled unilaterally (i.e. without a jury) for Yank to be acquitted on all charges.
Whether Buck Revell actually arranged this amazing sequence of events is unknown, but a man who was, at the time, a close associate of Yank confirms that Yank Barry stated on multiple occasions that Buck Revell was going to fix the outcome, and Revell did testify in court on Yank’s behalf. It is also certain that while the allegations of Yank’s bribery, along with the reports that Yank’s dehydrated meat substitute had poisoned Texas prisoners, constituted one of the larger scandals in recent Texas history, the only person to do jail time as a result of this scandal was the hapless court reporter.
The editor of Offshore Alert, David Marchant, watched Yank’s trial more closely than any other journalist, and wrote, “I have never seen a stranger case and, in my opinion, it screams for an investigation into the judge who handled it. After being found guilty of money laundering and bribery and facing up to 20 years in prison, Barry, who has a previous conviction for extortion, was not only released pending sentencing but was actually allowed to return to the Bahamas to continue living there….The case has ‘judicial corruption’ written all over it.â€�
I am not aware of any evidence that the judge was technically corrupt, as in accepting bribes, but it is certainly possible that the judge did a favor for a friend, Buck Revell, who testified in court on Yank Barry’s behalf, and who has close ties to the judicial community in Texas where he, Revell, once ran the local operations of the FBI (in addition to having served as the FBI’s associate deputy director).
In any event, as of 2005, the judge had allowed Yank to return to the Bahamas, and as we know, Yank, in 2005, held a party in the Bahamas to celebrate his involvement in various business ventures, including NorMexSteel, the company that he co-founded with, among others, Terry Hunter.
I know about Yank’s party in the Bahamas because one of my sources, who was then a close associate of Yank, attended the party (and provided me with photographs of the party, posted below). Much of the discussion at the party in the Bahamas concerned, of course, NorMexSteel, which was then advertising itself as a major player in the Mexican steel industry, though it would soon be known as Biochem Solutions, a company that had no real business and only two supposed products, a fake cure for AIDS, and a fake cure for arthritis, that had been tested by nobody other than a criminal in Kenya.
Biochem’s biggest deal, we know, was the supposed $25.33 million deal with Yank Barry’s other company, Vitapro International, whose biggest deal prior to this one was its $33 million deal with the Texas state prisons (i.e. the deal that was voided when Yank was indicted for paying bribes to the director of those prisons).
I will repeat that Vitapro ostensibly manufactured Biochem’s “innovative� arthritis medication, though Yank acknowledged to me that Vitapro did not, at that time, have any manufacturing facilities, and had previously been only in the business of selling dehydrated fake meat (manufactured by other companies that Yank describes as “subcontractors�). Or maybe Vitapro manufactured Biochem’s high-tech arthritis medication out of the Vitapro corporate headquarters, a photograph of which can be found on Vitapro’s website (though it is a fake photograph, made with Photoshop, or some similar software, and there is some doubt that Vitapro actually has a corporate headquarters other than Yank’s house in the Bahamas).
Either way, according to the Biochem press release, Vitapro (a company in the business of selling fake meat that was, in fact, manufactured by another company) had the “Master License� not only to manufacture Biochem’s “innovative� arthritis medication, but also to distribute the arthritis medication worldwide (in addition to poisoning Texas state prisoners with dehydrated fake meat), all the while ostensibly donating 60 percent of its profits to the “charity� that would later earn Yank Barry multiple nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Most of the others involved with NorMexSteel/Biochem Solutions had ties to organized crime, and one of them we know was Terry Hunter, a convicted drug trafficker (who was, at the time, living in Yank’s house in the Bahamas), while another, recall, was Jay Gottleib, a former principal with Mayfair Securities, financed by Quinn and Mafia capo Abramo. As we know, Gottleib, who was one of the world’s leading operators of boiler room brokerages, had not only invested in NorMexSteel/Biochem Solutions, but had also invested $3.3. million in Yank’s People Against Tobacco Foundation.
Later, though, Gottleib and Yank had a falling out, and Gottlieb, in 2007,filed a lawsuit against Yank in the Bahamas, accusing Yank of pocketing his $3.3 million investment in the People Against Tobacco Foundation. Gottleib also provided an affidavit (the affidavit is posted here at DeepCapture.com) stating that Yank Barry had pocketed around $3.3 million that he, Gottleib, had, at Yank’s behest, invested in bonds for a resort development in the Bahamas.
For this and other reasons, officials in Switzerland and Interpol launched a major investigation into Yank Barry on suspicions that Yank had been involved in “money laundering, fraud/embezzlement and falsification of documents.� Among other things, the Swiss and Interpol investigated allegations that Yank had used his company, Global Village Market, also known as a charity (which evolved into the Global Village Champions Foundation) to launder money through the United Bank of Switzerland (UBS).
However, the Swiss authorities, in 2008, concluded their investigation, stating in a long “order of dismissal� that they had not found sufficient evidence to charge Yank Barry with any crime. I won’t go into all the details, but you can read the “order of dismissal� yourself (it is posted here at DeepCapture.com).
You can also read other documents from the case, including a letter from the Swiss authorities to officials in the Bahamas (posted here at DeepCapture.com); another letter from Swiss authorities to police headquarters in Nassau, the Bahamas (posted here at DeepCapture.com); and another letter from the Swiss authorities (posted here at DeepCapture.com) stating that the “Prosecutor 1 of the Canton of Zurich has opened a criminal investigation against an unknown person as well as Barry, Yank and Global Village Market Holdings (GVMH) concerning suspicion of fraud, embezzlement and possibly money laundering. As you can see…this is a criminal matter which may also be of interest to the authorities in the Bahamas.�
The order of dismissal from the Swiss authorities was originally written in German (the link provided above is to an English translation, and the original, in German, is posted here at DeepCapture.com). Again, there is no reason to go into all the details here, and it suffices to know that although the Swiss authorities and Interpol carried out a major investigation of Yank Barry on suspicions of “money laundering, fraud/embezzlement, and falsification of documents,� the Swiss closed its investigation after concluding that there was not enough evidence to charge Yank with a crime.
As I mentioned earlier, the FBI and the SEC both launched investigations into NorMexSteel/Biochem Solutions, but the FBI filed no charges, and the SEC took no action against NorMexSteel/Biochem Solutions or the people, including Yank Barry, who were behind those companies (actually the same company, with NorMexSteel simply changing its name to Biochem Solutions). As we know, Yank Barry established NorMexSteel/Biochem in partnership with, among others, Terry Hunter.
Given that Terry Hunter was a convicted drug trafficker, it should not be surprising to learn that Hunter was, as of 2005, dealing with a man named Paul Combs, who also went by the aliases Michael Woods and Aleksander Stanslavovv. Like Terry Hunter, Paul Combs was not only a securities trader and investor, but also a convicted narcotics trafficker. And like Yank Barry, Combs had gotten his start in life working with the Dubois Gang and other organized crime syndicates in Canada.
Combs was famous for having given the key testimony in the trial of a former Miami cop turned professional hit man who was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of three other narcotics traffickers. The murders took place on an isolated Florida highway that became known (because of the murders) as “Danger Road.� The story of the trial and the testimony of Paul Combs was told in a best-selling book by that name (“Danger Road�).
When I knew him, Combs carried a business card describing himself as an executive with DBS Securities, a prominent financial firm, and Combs had previously shown people a business card identifying Michael Woods (one of Combs’ aliases) as an executive with DBS Securities, but when I called DBS Securities, a spokesman denied that Combs had ever worked for the firm. Combs later became a U.S. government informant, and gave testimony implicating Chernov in the murder of Rex Judd, among other murders and attempted murders to be discussed, but Combs was nevertheless jailed for four years.
Not long after he got out of prison in 2010, Combs was found dead, with a bullet to the head. His death was ruled a suicide, but there are suspicions that it was no suicide, and we will discuss his death momentarily.
Yet another organized crime figure involved with the NorMexSteel/Biochem deal was Michael Tismer, also known as Michael Krause and Michael von Hohenstein Aragon. Given that he was involved with Yank Barry in the NorMexSteel/Biochem deal, it goes without saying that Tismer (aka Krause and von Hohenstein Aragon) was not only a securities trader and investor, but also a major league narcotics trafficker with ties to Nazerio Moreno Gonzalez, also known as El Mas Loco—the Most Crazy One.
We know Tismer was involved with NorMexSteel/Biochem because the proprietors of NorMexSteel filed a lawsuit against a man named Charlie Flynn, who was a large investor in NorMexSteel, and during the trial, to which we will return, Terry Hunter’s girlfriend testified in court that Tismer was involved with NorMexSteel (soon to be known as Biochem). At the time, Tismer was the most wanted man in Germany, and it had been widely reported in Germany that Tismer had ties to Gonzalez—El Mas Loco.
Gonzalez was, at the time, leader of Los Zetas, described by the U.S. government as “the most technologically advanced, sophisticated, and dangerous cartel operating in Mexico.� Los Zetas had been formed back in the 1990s by Mexican Army commandos who deserted from the army and first went to work for the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, a major drug trafficking organization.
Soon after Yank’s party in the Bahamas, Michael Tismer (a.k.a. Krause and von Hohenstein Aragon) was arrested in northern Mexico, but he had connections, and escaped charges. Among other connections, Tismer was romantically involved with the daughter of a Mexican general, Mario Arturo Acosta Chapparo, and Tismer had business with Acosta Chapparo, who was one of the bigger drug traffickers in Mexico.
A number of Mexican army generals had dealt with Buck Revell back in the 1980s and early 1990s, when the Mexican army was helping the FBI monitor Latin American dissidents in the United States. Yank Barry once received a medal of commendation from the Mexican military. Yank posted a letter announcing this medal of commendation on the Global Village Champions Foundation website as one piece of evidence that was supposed to prove that he had fed nearly a billion needy people, most of them children.
In 2009, Acosta Chapparo took a bullet to the head. His murder has not been solved.
Given the impressive cast of characters who were involved with Yank Barry in the NorMexSteel/Biochem deal, and given that Yank Barry, in 2005, held a three day party to celebrate his involvement in this deal, among other ventures to be discussed, the reader should not be surprised to learn that others at Yank Barry’s party were major organized crime figures.
One person at this party—a party that lasted for three days, with Yank snorting copious amounts cocaine while taking calls from Buck Revell, formerly one of America’s top law enforcement officials—was Antonio Commisso, the top boss of the Siderno Group, widely considered to be the top boss of Italian organized crime in Toronto.
Upon his return to Toronto, Antonio Commisso was arrested and deported to Italy, at which point he appointed Cosimo Commisso to be the top boss of the Siderno Group.
As you will recall from Chapter 1 of this article, Cosimo Commisso is now widely regarded as the top boss of the Italian Mafia’s operations in Toronto, and he also attended that party that Yank Barry hosted in the Bahamas back in 2005. If you doubt it, see the following photographs, all of them taken during the three-day party.
These photographs were taken by a man who attended Yank’s party. The man was, at the time, a close associate of Yank, and later became an important source of information for DeepCapture.com.
Some of the photographs were taken at a villa where Yank held his party, and one of the photographs was taken at the Crystal Palace casino, where the gang headed on one of the three nights. The manager of the Crystal Palace casino, a man named Douglas Payne, was, at the time of the party, another principal with NorMexSteel (soon to be known as Biochem Solutions). The below photograph, at the Crystal Palace, you have already seen:
Yank Barry and Cosimo Commisso, a top boss of the Italian Mafia in Canada
That, we know, is a photograph of Yank Barry with Cosimo Commisso, now boss of the Italian Mafia’s operations in Toronto. One of the people who attended Yank’s party says that Yank and Commisso discussed their mutual mob acquaintances at the party. This same person says that Yank discussed with Commisso the possibility of Commisso investing in Yank’s litigation scheme, the People Against Tobacco Foundation, though it is unclear whether Commisso actually invested.
Here’s another photo from the three day party:
Buzz Alrdin at Yank’s party in the Bahamas
I won’t name all the people in that photo, but the photo shows Yank Barry (second from the right) with Buzz Aldrin (in the center) and Charlie Flynn (just left of Buzz Aldrin). At the time, Flynn had recently invested a large sum of money in the NorMexSteel deal. Flynn had previously been a trader with Mayfair Securities, financed by DeCavalcante Mafia capo Phil Abramo (“The King of Wall Street�) and Thomas Quinn (an associate of the Genovese organized crime family).
In yet another of our phone conversations, Yank Barry told me that he didn’t know Flynn well, and that he had only met him on a few occasions. One of Yank’s associates, however, told me that Yank definitely knew Flynn well, and that Yank often greeted Flynn as “Charlo,� which was Yank’s affectionate pet name for Flynn.
At the time when the above photo was taken, Charlie Flynn had just paid for Buzz Aldrin’s 75th birthday dinner, and Buzz Aldrin had just become another member of the Global Village Champions Foundation’s advisory board. Buzz Aldrin was a former astronaut, famous for being the second man to walk on the moon.
What an American hero like Buzz Aldrin was doing associating himself with Yank Barry and the mobsters who attended Yank’s party, I do not know, and what Buzz Aldrin was thinking when he agreed to be a member of the Global Village Champions Foundation’s advisory board, comprised largely of imposters and frauds, I also do not know. But so long as Buzz Aldrin continues to describe the Global Village Champions Foundation as a legitimate charity that has fed nearly one billion hungry people, most of them children, we can assume that Buzz Aldrin has been duped, suggesting he has such an abundance of human empathy that it is impossible for him to believe that anyone would perpetrate a scam so cynical as to exploit the plight of hungry children.
Alternatively, Buzz Aldrin is knowingly helping Yank perpetrate his fraud. However, we consider that a remote possibility.
Of course, some people say that Buzz Aldrin’s claim to have walked on the moon was a fraud, that the Apollo moon landing was faked, and that Americans never actually went to the moon. I have no opinion about the moon landing, but having spent a lot of time investigating Yank Barry, I am almost prepared to say that the moon itself is a fraud. If Yank Barry says the moon is real, then surely it must be nothing more than a hologram projected from the Bahamas or some other off-shore money laundering center.
In any event, here are some more photos from Yank’s party in the Bahamas:
Yank Barry and Charlie Flynn at Yank’s party
That’s Charlie Flynn in the center, and Yank on the left, sitting at the bar on the balcony of Yank’s house in the Bahamas. I won’t name the man on the right. We will return to Charlie Flynn momentarily because he was almost murdered a few weeks after the party in the Bahamas, as were other people involved with NorMexSteel, the company established by, among others, Yank Barry and Terry Hunter, the latter a convicted narcotics trafficker (who was also at the party).
First another photo:
Charlie Flynn and Jay Gottlieb at Yank’s party
That photo is taken outside of the villa in the Bahamas where Yank held his party. Charlie Flynn is on the left. In the center is Jay Gottleib, the fellow who had just invested $3.3 million in Yank’s “charity� scheme, the People Against Tobacco Foundation. Recall that Gottleib was formerly involved with Mayfair Securities, one of the brokerages financed by Quinn, an associate of the Genovese Mafia family, and DeCavalcante Mafia family capo Phil Abramo. Recall also that Abramo and Quinn were earlier involved with brokerages linked to the BCCI enterprise, while other organized crime figures involved with those brokerages included Antonio Commisso and his son Cosimo Commisso.
Here’s that photo again (in case you missed it):
Yank Barry and Cosimo Commisso, a top boss of the Italian Mafia in Canada
That’s Cosimo Commisso, one of the world’s top Mafia bosses, with Yank Barry, who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by three members of the U.S. Congress.
* * * * * * * * *
Another person involved with the NorMexSteel/Biochem deal was a financial operator named Stephen Bailey, also known as Billy Bailey. The precise nature of Bailey’s involvement with the NorMexSteel/Biochem deal is not entirely clear, but his name was menti