Monday, September 25, 2006

Anon, Anon, Anon....speak to me

Thanks to a shoutout AZ got in the Gambit, I've been getting a lot of posts rolling in regarding the Meffert scandal. These, I believe, are the most pertinent. I have verified this through two separate sources aside from this Anon's post.

Anonymous 1 said...

Dambala, you are right on the money!!! My sources tell me that, during the time that Kimberly Butler was being ousted from the Nagin administration (around March, 2002), the Meffert "Dream Team" discovered that all the email traffic being sent via their Blackberries was being saved in the Microsoft Exchange Server in the city's server room. They also determined that, if you send your messages to the recipient's Blackberry PIN instead of their email address, then the message bypasses the Exchange server. Armed with this information, they could no longer be traced via an email history and could circumvent the "Public Record" problem.

Which would totally explain why they went in at exactly that time period and performed a "system upgrade" and "accidentally" erased the email archive. I wonder....I just wonder.....if some IT employee was sly enough to copy any of those email exchanges before they erased them. Wow....if you're out there man...please contact me. AZ will protect your anonymity and publish whatever you have....because if you do have something, it's public record. The city deserves to see what we were paying for.

and then there's this one

Anonymous 2 said...

In addition to Continuous System, you should also check out www.netmethods.com. This company is also owned by Mark St. Pierre as well and has only one product; The NetMethods Intelliport. If you look closely, you'll see that the NetMethods Intelliport is the same portal used for the City of New Orleans website (cityno.com). Yes, that's right, it was developed by, you guessed it, Imagine Software on the City's nickel. Oh, and apparently, it's all perfectly legal as the contract for Imagine Software with the City of New Orleans states that anything developed by Imagine Software for the city becomes the property of Imagine Software. And who wrote the contract for Imagine Software? Yes, Greg Meffert. And who signed the contract for the city? Yes, Ray Nagin. What a nice little gig... the City of New Orleans is Imagine Software's R&D department!!

I'm not sure I really have any issues with Imagine retaining ownership of any software appz they write for the city. That's not unreasonable. However, the reason I really think this post is pertinent is because it introduces us to NetMethods, St. Pierre's company. I can assure you there will be more info forthcoming on this.

Also,

Anonymous 3 said...

Blinging-est kickback - a Yacht!

in addition to unlimted tabs at LOA, Ricks on Bourbon St, free rooms for romps at International House, straw poker games where Meffert always won and the Imaginary guys always lost. . . Did the Imagin-ary guys really believe they could give Meffert a yacht paid for with their dirty money profits from no-bid deals with City Hall, and get away with it?

Am I the only one who thinks that the special executive order to exempt from RFP requirements so Imagine could corner the market on city IT work amounts to a criminal conspiracy involving Nagin, Meffert, Kurt and Imagine to send all the work and money to a company that Meffert (and maybe Nagin) shared in the profits of -- through the yacht, straw poker games where Meffert always won and the Imanginary guys always lost, unlimited tabs at posh watering holes, private entertainment by "professional" dancers, etc.

Meffert has been a fraud all along. .. his vaunted private sector success was underwritten by a govenrment program that allowed insurance companies in louisina to invest in new businesses in lieu of paying premium taxes (CAPCO). Meffert got millions to start his company, sucked out the money, sold the company to some suckers and what was left of his firm moved to Virginia or somewhere.


One thing I want to mention is that AZ is not interested in stories of sexual indiscretions....unless they involve the misuse of public money. I've got a lot of those comments which have come in that I've deleted as I didn't feel they were pertinent to the real issues. However, the more information I've gleaned, the more suspiscious I've become that there are issues revolving around their "partying" which may be considered as kickbacks....the post by this Anon broaches that issue, particularly with the poker games where Meffert always won. I'm not sure if that's money laundering, a kick-back scheme, or both. Regardless I feel this Anon comment deserves attention on AZ.

As to the legality of the procurement, I concur, sir. I'm curious as well. That stinks as bad as a post-K fridge....as bad as the meat department at the Sav-a-Center on North Carrollton...as bad as...ok, you get the point.

I am even more curious about AFO investments, which I believe is potentially THE ethical issue at the moment, but I'm the only one who seems to be interested. If we have a mayor investing in real estate in this city with his campaign manager, David White, who was also appointed to the BNOB commission....we have a serious ethical breach. I am still calling for full disclosure from Nagin about what AFO investments is actually investing in and where their money is coming from.

4 comments:

Ray said...

"I'm not sure I really have any issues with Imagine retaining ownership of any software appz they write for the city. That's not unreasonable."

That's actually not an uncommon practice in the software world, where a company is providing both licensed software and services along with it. It's not always done, but it's often at least part of the negotiation; certainly it's in a software vendor's best interest to retain ownership of at least some of the code in order to roll it into new versions of their product suite.

The fact that they did this is not by itself evidence of anything crooked going on.

Jason Brad Berry said...

Yeah, I agree completely, Ray. But I wanted to post the comment because there's a teleologic goal behind mentioning Netmethods.

Stay tuned....I will try to draw the map in future posts.

Anonymous said...

LOA and International House, aren't they owned by Sean Cummings? Isn't Sean the Interim Executive Director of the New Orleans Building Corp? Is he putting up rooms and alcohol for city officials to party?

Anonymous said...

when writing software for a public entity, the software automatically becomes public domain. The company however can resell it, but if anyone wants the source code, you can request it from the city. If they refuse, then thats another story.