Sold Short In America. Richard A. Altomare
same Department of Justice wouldn't remain consistent.
My company was attacked ten years before we all read, just recently, about Bear Stearns and our stock financial meltdown caused by what is today called naked short selling. Naked short selling is the counterfeiting of a public security with no intention of ever buying or delivering that stock certificate. Naked short selling results in more shares trading than actually exist or that have been issued by the company. The stock normally devalues and more often than not the company goes out of business. Over six thousand developing companies have failed during the past few years.
Those traders who have sold what they did not own pocket the profit. They do not even have to cover their sale (or produce the certificate) because the company is then out of business. No taxes are paid on the pure profit made by the counterfeiters. Such companies are normally "attacked" as well by vicious lies on the uncensored internet during the process.
We took our case to the Florida courts. Although highly unusual, we were the only American company able to identify some of the crooked counterfeit sellers. We were able to prove the existence of naked short selling to two Florida juries and were awarded approximately $700,000,000 USD for our shareholders. We were finally able to explain why our stock price was decreasing while the company was continuing to grow and improve. More on this to be discussed later, but for now let me continue my prison expose′ while I am being wrongly incarcerated.
As I was watching the steel cell doors close today, I had to think of claustrophobia. How horrible that problem would be for an inmate confined as I and others have been.
Take away my legal visits, my writings, my books, my self-created games and it's easy to understand some of the literary stereotypes of prisoners from Papillion to Shawshank Redemption and to “Escape from Alcatraz”. We really haven't improved the process of rehabilitation and healing. It appears that these are buildings of societal confinement and other forms of socialistic welfare. We justify inconsistent law enforcement, unconstitutional legal court processes and we keep the prisoners in the same type of place as we did in the Eighteenth century.
The constant yelling and bantering during the daytime is more annoying than my evening symphony of psychopaths. Trying to read, pray, concentrate, even exercise is constantly interrupted by the immature "playing", "teasing", "yelling" and childlike bantering which replaces actually working as the guards daily activities. I wonder how long a sensitive, intelligent, caring officer remains that way before they either acquiesce or shut down. It seems to me that the better doctors should be where they are needed most. The better psychiatrists are really not here. I look in the inmates’ and guards’ eyes. The guards are part of that welfare and political patronage cycle of intellectual poverty that we have permitted to exist in our society.
It's been many days and my nails and hair are beginning to make me look like Howard Hughes!
These two grooming services are not permitted without the counselors or a CO presenting a request. You get on the "list". This "list" seems like a "permanent record" in high school. I believed in that high school list - I am having some difficulty believing in these prison "lists".
Some of the guards do nothing and they don't hear, or choose not to hear you screaming at the cell door because that is the only way you may dialogue with them.
Still no first phone call. Today I met, during my post legal visit strip search, a young man who couldn't call anyone to even tell them where he was. He wanted to speak to someone but the same counselor told him he can make one call every thirty days. So much for being able to inform family and legal defense. The system is designed to house criminals and it shouldn't be a hotel, but with Sixty Billion Dollars budgeted annually, an effective prison system should prevent more criminals. Do they want that? There are many questions to be asked like eight salaried “suits” discussing the moving of a bunk bed and not enough Counselors (or at least caring ones). Believe me, I would tell both sides of this story if there was another side. It's broken.
Everything that you have read, from the night screaming to the lost and overwhelmed guards to inmates appearing even brighter than the guards, are my heartfelt observations. I may be here longer - so I will report positive or professional actions when they occur. There just hasn’t been that many to report. Therefore, I decided to write a letter to myself.
Dear Me - On the eve of your second week anniversary in solitary what are your thoughts?
Dear You - What have I learned? Well I'm stronger and more resolved than even I thought I was. I haven't found religion or taken an oath to say what I don't believe. I guess if others can do it - so can I. Whether it was growing up in 1950's Brooklyn, Marine Corps training, multiple businesses, politics, sports ownership or simply being almost sixty - that combination, coupled with complete confidence that the forces of God must have a reason for giving this opportunity to me, convince me that this is an opportunity . When I win the Appeal, my life will shift into tenth gear.
I say tenth gear because, to date, I have lived what others would explain to be a very full life. This legal victory can activate me to a new level permitting me to act as a positive enabler for so many regulatory issues and so many worthwhile causes.
In two weeks I've learned I can absorb what others could not. I believe that God is present in every religion and that they are all connected and not different. I know that someone really loves me in this dimension and the next. Upon reflection, I am happy with my journey to date, and have no painful regrets from these SEC events, that have not crept into the silence of solitary. I have been given time. I am not doing time.
I have learned that previously I, like most of us, ate too much and I can get by with less. I have learned that I can survive easily on basics and adjust as quickly as anyone else, despite my privileged life style.
I have flourished in solitude due to my belief in the righteousness of my actions prior to that solitude.
I feel sorry for those who have made prison their world - that now includes staff, inmates and Judges. Guards actually report to prison every day for twenty or more years.
I have found I can live without things I didn't think I could live without.
I have realized the depth of the love and attachment I have to my family and friends.
I do not fear the unknown of this experience and I find this solitude to be similar to a religious retreat. I appreciate the "time" life has given me. It certainly stopped my familiar world and introduced me to an unknown one. That unknown world has required a resetting of who I am and what I will do.
I didn't lose my optimism, my sense of humor and my expectation of my personal performance. Hence my disputes with prison employees and the Judge who wrongly put me here continue to be presented in this diary.
I am hopeful if the Judge continues his persecution based on his loyalty to the SEC and not to the law, his personal goals and dreams will be stopped, not by his judicial limitations, but by the will and actions of this writer and his supporters.
Today my stay in MCC (which I am told by the guards means more charges coming) took an unfortunate but expected turn of events. My frustration with my three (3) named counselor, Mrs. Andrews or Mrs. Compton or Mrs. Johnson, who has accomplished nothing except to frustrate or confuse this already broken system, heard that I had told another CO that "anything she was paid over a dollar for her services was a waste of taxpayer's money". She told me today, "Remember your $1 dollar statement and see how much help you get now."
This level of bullying behavior is reprehensible. I guess for telling the truth, I was put in here by a Judge thinking the Constitution was his alone to interpret and I now have a psychotic three named counselor teaching me a lesson for expressing my frustration at her inefficiency, inactivity and her professional burnout. It's just like the organization I sued. Remember I was the plaintiff in this silencing effort of the SEC regarding my naked short selling expose’.
Whatever the consequences of this truth, I will deal with it, just as I am forced to deal with the ignorance of this punishment. Over a thousand financial pages have been presented to the Judge. Civil Contempt is not an inability to understand the documents but a person's unwillingness to cooperate with the