Teemco

[TU 'cane]

I couldn't agree with this more. Old media still has a hugely important role to play. I just wish that their focus was bringing in readers with journalistic excellence, instead of (mostly) clickbait style articles. I've actually been considering buying a subscription to the Tulsa World because their investigative reporting seems to be a lot better than the Oklahoman.

Everything around Tulsa has been bought by Warren Buffet/Berkshire. Pretty much all of the "major" local newspapers with the exception of some of the smaller and more political oriented pieces.
Not sure if The Oklahoman underwent the same buyout as up here or not.

If you're thinking about TW, I've seen something called the Frontier or Tulsa Frontier, which apparently is made up of some former TW personnel.
Any way, what I'm saying is, based upon what I've heard, it's relatively newish and they are starting up a subscription service and tend to offer better quality stories with real depth. Just something to consider.

[Canoe]

Is there any other newspapers in OKC beside our Oklahoman? How many papers should a city our size have in print? I have never really thought about it before.

[Pete]

The Gazette and Journal Record, but they aren't full-featured publications.

The Oklahoma Journal was a direct competitor to the Oklahoman but folded in 1980.

Almost all the biggest cities are down to one main paper these days.

[baralheia]

Everything around Tulsa has been bought by Warren Buffet/Berkshire. Pretty much all of the "major" local newspapers with the exception of some of the smaller and more political oriented pieces.
Not sure if The Oklahoman underwent the same buyout as up here or not.

If you're thinking about TW, I've seen something called the Frontier or Tulsa Frontier, which apparently is made up of some former TW personnel.
Any way, what I'm saying is, based upon what I've heard, it's relatively newish and they are starting up a subscription service and tend to offer better quality stories with real depth. Just something to consider.

I appreciate the information, thanks! I personally don't have much problem with conglomerate-owned papers, as long as their journalistic standards are still high. That said, I'll see if I can find the Frontier - I wouldn't mind giving it a read.

[gopokes88]

The Oklahoman should just admit they missed this story despite it being pretty easy to see. Brianna Bailey was wrong for the story and it should have been on the energy desk. A lot of my friends in the energy industry only knew of teemco from the gold dome purchase and sponsorships. They said they have never encountered them in the course of business.

[Pete]

The Oklahoman is now owned by Philip Anschutz; Gaylords sold out out to him a few years ago.

Anschutz is one of the richest men in the world and and extremely right-wing in his political views, which is why you see the Oklahoman linking to a lot of stories from the ultra-slanted Washington Examiner, another Anschutz publication.

[Urbanized]

Again, I honestly think there should be a separate thread dedicated to dissection of The Oklahoman's news coverage. I understand why this thread keeps deviating in that direction; the paper's coverage here has obviously been lacking.

But the last six or seven posts have had basically zero to do with TEEMCO, the topic of the thread and the reason I bother to visit it. The same with dozens and dozens of other posts in this thread over its history. But it's not just this one; other threads routinely turn into Oklahoman-bashing. I get it; their coverage is lacking in many areas and often frustrating. But just as frustrating is coming to a thread hoping to hear new info or discussion on a stated thread topic and seeing the same carping regarding the paper. No other off-topic discussion is so routinely tolerated or allowed to run unchecked.

[Rover]

Again, I honestly think there should be a separate thread dedicated to dissection of The Oklahoman's news coverage. I understand why this thread keeps deviating in that direction; the paper's coverage here has obviously been lacking.

But the last six or seven posts have had basically zero to do with TEEMCO, the topic of the thread and the reason I bother to visit it. The same with dozens and dozens of other posts in this thread over its history. But it's not just this one; other threads routinely turn into Oklahoman-bashing. I get it; their coverage is lacking in many areas and often frustrating. But just as frustrating is coming to a thread hoping to hear new info or discussion on a stated thread topic and seeing the same carping regarding the paper. No other off-topic discussion is so routinely tolerated or allowed to run unchecked.

Amen

[Pete]

Back to topic...

TEEMCO was officially locked out of its Edmond offices this week. Phones and website are still out of service. Judgments and lawsuits continue to pile up against them and owner Greg Lorson.

I can also confirm there is an on-going investigation, but I can't say more at this time.


I suspect things will be quiet for a while but I would expect multiple charges to be brought down the line. I was told by a friend at the FBI that in cases where there are multiple issues across various government agencies that a cross-functional task force is formed for collaboration purposes and so any indictments can be submitted to the district attorney at one time, and then everything is prosecuted as a single case.

I was also told a year or more is not unusual to do all the necessary investigation before anything is filed.

Lots and lots of issues here, some of which I've outlined in the articles but other things as well.

[hoya]

If I was Greg Lorson, I'd be getting on a boat to somewhere.

[Pete]

If I was Greg Lorson, I'd be getting on a boat to somewhere.

He just sold the yacht and all his cars have been repossessed, so it would more likely be a bus.

Or I should say he's been trying to sell the yacht for a while, but he had wrecked it and did not have current insurance, so it's not worth nearly what he paid for it.

[ultimatesooner]

He just sold the yacht and all his cars have been repossessed, so it would more likely be a bus.

Or I should say he's been trying to sell the yacht for a while, but he had wrecked it and did not have current insurance, so it's not worth nearly what he paid for it.

lol, the one on Texoma - I'd like to see this story

[bombermwc]

So should we start counting the days before his butt gets put back in jail? I mean obviously this guy isn't able to operate a business legally and spent time in jail once (but didn't learn anything). Maybe he's due for a longer term this time. Too bad you can't put some sort of flag on a person to prevent them from being able to operate their own business or even be an executive. It would be like having the Enron team come back out and start up another energy company.....something just isn't right about that.

[Easy180]

If I was Greg Lorson, I'd be getting on a boat to somewhere.

Cuba maybe?

[Pete]

So should we start counting the days before his butt gets put back in jail? I mean obviously this guy isn't able to operate a business legally and spent time in jail once (but didn't learn anything). Maybe he's due for a longer term this time. Too bad you can't put some sort of flag on a person to prevent them from being able to operate their own business or even be an executive. It would be like having the Enron team come back out and start up another energy company.....something just isn't right about that.

When you research white collar crimes, you see that it usually takes a year or two for charges to be filed even in the most obvious and egregious cases. The wheels of justice grind slowly and they also want to be as thorough as possible so they can be sure to account for all the various crimes, and that is a long and arduous task often involving multiple government agencies.

Flagging a repeat fraud offender -- and Lorson has served two long prison sentences -- is an interesting subject.

It's rather amazing that the government requires someone who urinated in public to register as a sexual offender but seems to not be aware or track those with long white collar criminal pasts.

In the case of TEEMCO, the two main parties met while serving long prison sentences and all this started over 5 years ago. There will be much more on this later but the company and the principals only were investigated after being reported multiple times and after our series of articles. They actually ran themselves out of business, otherwise they would still be operating today. The depth of everything they have done will be shocking when it all comes out.

I've also talked to friends of mine at the FBI and psychologists. Both say that people like this are sociopaths to a certain degree; that they have little capacity for seeing right and wrong. Most come from a place of great anger and feeling 'owed' and thus take whatever they want without concern about laws, morals and the impact on others.

With Greg Lorson, I put together a timeline that shows an uninterrupted spree of crimes (both large and small) starting in early adulthood and dozens and dozens of court judgments for defaulted promissory notes, unpaid debt, foreclosures, evictions, paternity suits... Most people don't have one such incident in their past he has probably 50 or 60, starting from the time he was in his early 20's until now. And those are just where he was caught and prosecuted or sued. I know there are dozens and dozens of people who aren't bothering to sue him now because they don't want the association and also know he has no assets.

If we know that once someone reveals themselves to have sociopathic qualities -- and I'd argue anyone convicted of white collar crime fits this category -- they are very, very likely to keep repeating this pattern. So why on earth aren't we tracking this sort of thing better?

After Enron and the mortgage meltdown the government created all these new laws that are supposed to provide much tighter control over fraud. But IMO it's all be a bunch of political posturing because the issue is the people doing these sorts of things, and they often reveal themselves to have that type of mind set at an early age.


I really want to write in detail about this subject once the TEEMCO stuff hits the courts. It's fascinating and scary at the same time.

And personally, I've now seen several examples of outrageous fraud and can look back and clearly identify the people involved as sociopaths. I hadn't really thought about the lifelong implications of all this until very recently.

[Pete]

One other story that really helped me understand the depth of deception white collar criminals operate under...

When I was in MBA school, we took a trip to Lompoc Federal Prison to meet with several white collar criminals. It was more or less a 'Scared Straight' for business students and veyr forward-thinking by Pepperdine, as this was before all the more recent corporate scandals.

It was also in the early 90's, so there was no real Internet where you easily research just about anything.

First of all, that prison was scary as hell. It was less secure than the huge, scary hard-core prison right next door, but it was no country club. Tons of razor wire, big locking gates and lots of the inmates had committed violent crimes but were placed in the lower security block due to good behavior in the Big House. We actually ate lunch there and it was harrowing.

One of the guys that spoke was the former CFO for ZZZZ Best Carpet Cleaning. Some of the more mature readers here will remember it from 60 Minutes in the late 80's, as it was a huge Ponzi scheme before most people even knew what that was.

This guy went on and on about how it's easy to make a small mistake and end up where he was. That he got caught up in the CEO's scheme (Barry Minkow, who recently got out of prison, became a pastor, then was promptly convicted for bilking a church out of millions) and that he was basically an honest guy who became entwined in something nefarious.

The whole thing rattled me and I still remember it clear as day.

So clearly in fact, that when the Internet became fully-realized I looked this guy up and read about his case. And of course, it was completely different than what he had portrayed. He was instrumental in everything and had falsified hundreds and hundreds of documents over a long period of time, costing people millions. He was far from an average guy who just made a turn down the wrong road.


I later realized that even while serving hard time, he was still not taking responsibility for what he had done, even though the evidence was irrefutable. Just another bunch of lies and attempts to con people, even when it really did him zero good. Clearly, a complete sociopath.

[Bellaboo]

I worked for a man who was in this same boat back in the early '80's. No names here, but if it was easier to tell the truth he'd still tell a lie. His forte was bilking money out of investors on cutting edge technology (that really didn't exist). He had big money thrown at him and he'd take it and rent a motorhome for 10 grand and take his family on vacation. To keep his few employees happy, occasionally he'd pass out 'share awards', usually 5,000 shares at a time of the company. Well, we all knew what was going on after a while and it closed down when the FBI or someone had chased this guy to Phoenix. He also started going by a similar but different name. Not sure about the ending since it came after I left, but he was a master of the con game.

[Jim Kyle]

I worked for a man who was in this same boat back in the early '80's. No names here, but if it was easier to tell the truth he'd still tell a lie.

So did I, but my brush with this was back in 1962. The con artist was publishing several magazines at the time, and to my knowledge he never paid a printing bill. When he had run one printer into bankruptcy, he would find another (usually a one-man shop, never one of the big boys) and convince him of the profit to be made.

He finally, I think, decided that I was asking too many questions, and fired me in 1963 (thank goodness). A few months later, there was an amazingly convenient fire that destroyed his offices (and several other businesses). Next thing I heard, he was on an island in the Caribbean, stealing TV signals from a satellite and selling them to the island's inhabitants. Most recently, he seems to be in New Zealand.

I later ran into some others, who were top executives in a firm that ostensibly manufactured mainframe computer equipment but which actually manufactured only stock value, and shipped unfinished hardware to its customers. It, too, is now defunct. It's flatly amazing what sociopaths can do before they're exposed.

Good work, Pete. I look forward to your details once it becomes possible to publish them!

[soonerguru]

What about the MLM craze? Geez. Just show up at a Zig Ziglar convention and you'll see all sorts of con artists in attendance. Some of the worst ones I encountered would often flout their religiosity -- just another way to get people to trust them and give them money.

[catch22]

Pete, you should get in touch with the people from "American Greed". If you have not heard of it, it is a show on CNBC sharing stories of these con artists.

[dankrutka]

Sounds like you've got a great subject for a book... TEEMCO could serve as an illustrative example for a larger problem. You even named a solution too. Write it up.

[Pete]

Pete, you should get in touch with the people from "American Greed". If you have not heard of it, it is a show on CNBC sharing stories of these con artists.

I know the show well and they even have a form on their website where you can submit story ideas.

However, they only do stories about people who have already been prosecuted, so it's still early in this saga. But I agree, it's exactly the type of stories they produce.

[Pete]

Sounds like you've got a great subject for a book... TEEMCO could serve as an illustrative example for a larger problem. You even named a solution too. Write it up.

I've already started to outline a series of in-depth articles that could easily become a book.

Lots and lots of issues, such as this company being reported multiple times by employees with no action taken.

And the IRS knew they weren't paying their employment taxes because they denied the tax refunds of several employees. How on earth does that happen without any further action?

Then, you have the Thunder and OU and OSU continuing to promote the company even though they defaulted on their endorsements almost from the very beginning; only paying a tiny fraction of what was owed, yet continuing to provide great tickets and promos during the games. And none of them ever sued TEEMCO for millions -- literally, millions -- that they did not pay.

It's all fascinating and disturbing at the same time. It's hard to believe a company could be so completely corrupt with so many people knowing about it, and absolutely nothing done.

And I will also say that Lorson is hardly a criminal mastermind. He's not very smart and made a ton of huge, obvious mistakes and still nobody did anything about it. You can't talk to anyone who interacted with him or TEEMCO who wouldn't say they knew something was very wrong.

This will sound self-promoting but it's also true: They would still be in business and without any formal investigation if not for our reporting. I'll document all this as well when the time is right.

[Teo9969]

. . .

And the IRS knew they weren't paying their employment taxes because they denied the tax refunds of several employees. How on earth does that happen without any further action?

. . .

WOW!

Unreal. Just unreal.

[Pete]

Here's another little tidbit...

A person who was working for TEEMCO at the time wrote an anonymous letter to the OK DA's office about a bunch of the crazy things happening at TEEMCO, and the DA's office merely forwarded it to Greg Lorson (!!) without taking any action.

And at least two different employees reported them to the IRS. There were also complaints to the labor board, the state tax commission, the insurance commission, social security and the FBI.