Sound Off Louisiana – Page 183 – Providing Louisiana citizens, from VIPs to the "little guy," a chance to sound off regarding Louisiana government issues of concern to them.

Presenting Robert Burns’ payroll fraud deposition video as a means to let subscribers know he’s still alive.

Former Louisiana Auctioneer Licensing Board attorney (and former Louisiana State Senator and convicted felon) Larry S. Bankston, whose questioning of Robert Burns in a deposition on February 6, 2014 is the most-watched video ever published by Burns even though it has never been published on his Sound Off Louisiana blog .

A most gratifying event transpired last week. Two very dedicated Sound Off Louisiana blog followers called founder Robert Burns by phone and asked if everything was all right and expressed concern that no post had been published for a little while.

Obviously, those were inquiries for which we are most grateful. The reality is that, on Wednesday, October 24, 2018, Burns experienced a “toothache from hell,” which resulted in him scheduling an immediate visit to his dentist. Upon inspection of said suspicious tooth, his dentist immediately issued antibiotics and scheduled root canal surgery for the following Wednesday, October 31, 2018 (last Wednesday). The root canal was a success; however, to say that the ensuing pain thereafter was excruciating would in no way be an understatement. Accordingly, as most can imagine, it’s not very conducive to appear in front of a camera to publish a feature even for a short one which would be overshadowed by the pain of a tooth, especially when that intense pain had radiated both to the jaw and the right ear.

Rest assured, however, Burns will be back making posts in short order, and we’ve got some intriguing posts to distribute! In the meantime, we’re sending out this feature just so folk can know Burns is okay, and we’re going to kill two birds with one stone.

We’ve been asked numerous times what our most watched video in our history is. We’ll provide a two-part answer and, in the process, provide one video to debut for the first time ever on Sound Off Louisiana.

1. The most-watched video originally issued as a Sound Off post is the infamous hostile exchange between Louisiana State Police Commission members Jared Riecke and Lloyd Grafton, which can be viewed as the THIRD video on this feature (the action got heated at the 1:20 mark of the video). As of this publication, that video had 1,685 unique views. The second most-watched video entailed the recent Coach Goode feature, for which there are 1,080 unique views as of the publication of this feature.

2. Videos referenced in # 1 notwithstanding, BY FAR, and we certainly mean BY FAR, the most watched video associated with Sound Off Louisiana posts, even though we’ve never even posted it to Sound Off Louisiana because the video was produced 15 months before the Sound Off blog was formed, entails a segment of the payroll fraud deposition regarding the Louisiana Auctioneer Licensing Board (LALB) wherein Burns was deposed and questioned by the LALB’s hired gun, convicted felon Larry S. Bankston. It’s about a seven-minute clip, and we’ll let it make its Sound Off debut at this time because of the sheer number of unique views by the general public. which stands at 42,327 at the time of this publication (easily tens of thousands of views higher than the next-closest video) as well as the public comments beneath it, which stand at 72 as of this publication:

Six-minute excerpt of payroll fraud deposition wherein Robert Burns is questioned by convicted felon Larry S. Bankston on February 6, 2014, only 59 days after the Inspector General’s Office issued this damning report wherein Edmonds was cited as “being paid while out of the office performing no public purpose.”

Regarding Mr. Bankston’s constant harping on whether Burns had ever made a Facebook friend request to Edmonds’ husband, Matthew, who is an interior designer himself and Edmonds was investigated for payroll fraud entailing that agency as well (and the above linked report is equally applicable for the Interior Design Board as it is for the LALB), it’s an open question why Bankston would redact out the top of a screen shot he asserts is one of a list of Matthew Edmonds’ friend requests. When he indicated to Burns in the video above, that he “is representing to you (Burns) that this is a screen shot of his Facebook friends requests,” Burns came incredibly close to responding: “Well, you are a convicted felon who has served 33 months in Federal prison for accepting a bribe as a sitting Louisiana State Senator, so forgive me, Mr. Bankston, for my unwillingness to accept ANY representation you make as being truthful!” As is evidenced by the video, Burns opted not to hit Bankston right upside his forehead with a two-by-four.

The bottom line is this: Burns never made a Facebook friend request of Matthew Edmonds (or certainly not knowlingly), and he did not do so for a specific reason! It was Matthew Edmonds who was posting Facebook accounts of the Edmonds family on various excursions such as vacationing in Disneyworld, visiting relatives in Kansas, going sightseeing in New York, etc., all while his wife, Sandy, was simultaneously reporting being “on the clock” (with BOTH boards) for those same time periods! It was also Burns who turned all of that documentation over to the Office of Inspector General after that office began an investigation of Edmonds after Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera turned the matter over to the IG’s office after his own office’s review of her payroll practices resulted in a report point-blank stating that both boards needed to recover monies improperly paid to Edmonds [Sidebar: Neither board recovered a penny from the overpayments Purpera asserts transpired; furthermore, the LALB, at its next meeting after the report’s public release actually granted Edmonds a pay raise, citing “all she had to deal with regarding public records requests” (for her own timesheets)].

Hence, it would have been utterly stupid for Burns to have Facebook friended Matthew Edmonds because such an act on Burns’ part would have tipped Edmonds off that Burns was monitoring his Facebook page! Burns kept waiting for Bankston to ask, “Have you ever visited Matthew Edmonds’ Facebook page?” to which Burns would have truthfully answered, “Yes.” Obviously, the reason for Burns visiting his page was to accumulate the aforementioned damning material. To this day, it remains a mystery to Burns why Bankston never asked that question (perhaps lack of understanding of Facebook?).

Interestingly enough, days after the Inspector General’s Office interviewed Edmonds about her payroll fraud, Burns was specifically blocked by Matthew Edmonds from visiting his Facebook page! Go figure!

So, sit tight. Sound Off Louisiana will have more intriguing posts in the days ahead once, and viewers won’t have to watch Burns reaching for his right jaw and menacing in pain! We give a special thanks to the two subscribers who called us. You know who you are, and we certainly appreciate your dedication and obvious strong interest in our blog!

In the meantime, if you have not voted early, don’t forget to get out and vote tomorrow!

If you would like to be added to our Sound Off Louisiana email list to be notified of future posts, simply go to our home page and scroll to the bottom (mobile devices) or to the top of the right-hand column (desktops). Supply your email address within the subscribe box. You’ll then receive an automated email from Word Press, and all you have to do is click on the blue “confirm follow” bar contained within that email, and you’ll begin receiving great posts such as the preceding one above.

DOA attorney Carlos Romanach testifies Commissioner Jay Dardenne, Gov. Edwards aid and abet Auction Board appointee Jacob Brown’s Ponzi scheme via green-lighting auction 39 days after $27,000 NSF check issued to state.

Disgraced former Edwards Louisiana Auctioneer Licensing Board appointee Jacob Brown.

In today’s Sound Off Louisiana feature, we provide irrefutable evidence that Louisiana Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne and his boss, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, aided and abetted the auction Ponzi scheme of Edwards’ Louisiana Auctioneer Licensing Board (LALB) appointee Jacob Brown. First, we’ll present a table timeline of how this transpired, and we’ll follow that up with a seven-minute video of testimony by Division of Administration (DOA) attorney Carlos Romanach, which provided the basis for the timeline:

Date	Event or Circumstance
Early 2017	Brown fails to pay numerous private-sector consignors instead diverting their money to fulfill a requirement by the State of Louisiana that $215,000 (the estimated gross sales price per auction) be provided upfront to auction state surplus property.
April 18, 2017	State awards auction contract to Brown.
July 8, 2017	Auction conducted. Balance owed by Brown: $26,920.58
July 18, 2017	Brown issues Whitney Bank check # 2502 dated 7/18/17 for $26,920.58.
August 1, 2017	Brown’s check returned NSF.
September 9, 2017	Brown is permitted to conduct ANOTHER auction for the state!!!!!!!! A FULL 39 days after obtaining knowledge of the above NSF check, Dardenne and Edwards permitted him to conduct ANOTHER FREAKING AUCTION!!!!!!!!!!!!
September 9, 2017	Auction conducted. Balance owed by Brown: $148,422.09.
September 21, 2017	Brown issues Whitney Bank check # 2514 dated 9/21/17 for $148,422.09. Why the state would think that check would clear given that the prior one had not been collected can only be described as utterly stupid accommodating on Dardenne and Edwards’ parts!
October 13, 2017	Brown’s check returned NSF (why did it take the state almost a month to deposit the freaking check — were they asked to “hold it” as a favor???).

We doubt anyone questions the entries on the preceding table but, just in case anyone wants direct verification, here is a 7-minute uninterrupted video segment of Brown’s July 9, 2018 hearing (which was uploaded by the LALB on October 8, 2018, a full 91 days after the hearing!!!!) wherein Romanach provides the material we present above:

Seven-minute segment of 7/9/18 LALB administrative hearing on former LALB member and auctioneer Jacob Brown (email subscribers may click here to see the video).

Now, folks, we ask our subscribers, if someone had written a hot check for $26,920.58, would you entrust them 39 days after you learned the check was hot to continue performing services for you? To our subscribers owning small businesses, if that $26,920.58 hot check had been issued to your business, would you continue doing business with the issuer?

Notice how Romanach, at the 4:20 mark of the video, cavalierly states, “At a subsequent auction……,” as if that’s just SOP of Dardenne’s DOA and JBE’s administration notwithstanding the fact they were still out $27,000 from his last auction 52 days before! That’s the fundamental difference between our subscribers, the vast majority of whom are small business owners, and state government officials, who show reckless disregard for taxpayer funds and instead bend over backwards to permit politically-connected individuals like Brown to bilk us for as much money as they can rather than taking the political risk of saying, “We can’t continue doing business with you.” One has to also openly question if such aiding and abetting constitutes a crime on the part of one or more individuals who made the decision to permit Brown to conduct another auction knowing full well that the NSF check remained uncollected from the prior auction!

What about all the private-sector victims of Brown? Perhaps they now have a very plausible cause of action against the State of Louisiana for their losses. After all, Jacob Brown was present for the July 11, 2017 LALB meeting. He was present for the September 11, 2017 LALB meeting. He was present for the November 6, 2017 meeting.

That’s plenty of LALB meetings for Jacob Brown to be masquerading around as an upstanding member of Gov. Edwards’ Board given all that Dardenne and Edwards knew about what was going on behind the scenes. Surely a few attorneys for the victimized private-sector consignors may see fit to sue DOA for aiding and abetting this obvious Ponzi scheme, no?

Under such a scenario, the state may assert that, “Well, we filed suit against Brown on July 6, 2018,” (Note: Romanach simply read the entire lawsuit into the record as his “testimony”). If so, a plaintiff attorney can counter that action constituted mere “window dressing” (good luck collecting on a judgment and, to date, Brown hasn’t even been served and Romanach, near the end of the hearing said that nobody knows where he is). That plaintiff attorney can further assert that DOA, Dardenne, and Edwards all had a duty to act almost a year earlier to shut this Ponzi scheme down and remove Brown from the Board and mitigate private-sector victimization.

Instead, now the State of Louisiana is likely to obtain the lion’s share of the lousy $10,000 bond. That’s the case because DOA, through its irresponsible action of permitting the September 9, 2017 auction even with an outstanding NSF check inflated its loss needlessly. Since the $10,000 bond will likely be pro-rated, that means DOA is going to get the lion’s share of that $10,000.

For those curious (as the private-sector victims no doubt are), the entire hearing is available by clicking here. Also, again for those curious, here’s the LALB’s findings of fact spelling out the three claimants (one of which is DOA) for whom bond claims are being processed by the LALB. Apparently, East Baton Rouge Parish is simply going to be out the $29,000 in unpaid sales taxes Brown stiffed it on, but for which they too, like the state, are suing to recover. Note also that an astute and dedicated subscriber has contacted us letting us know that the cover letter mailed by Executive Director Edmonds still identifies Bobby Jindal as Governor nearly three years after he has left office!

One of the most disheartening aspects of this whole incident is that, without Sound Off Louisiana, nobody would have a freaking clue any of this transpired! WAFB, no doubt in an effort to shield Edwards from adverse news, declined to even reference the fact Brown served on Edwards’ LALB right up to the time this whole Ponzi scheme blew up! Further, other media outlets like The Advocate haven’t even referenced Brown’s arrest at all, and certainly not the alleged theft of the taxpayers of Louisiana by an appointee of Edwards. In WAFB’s case, however, we need not worry. They’ll be only too happy to air “Honor Code” commercials again next year going on the assumption that Edwards has the unmitigated gall to deploy them again!

Does a person’s affluence (e.g. an auction victim buying a home for $300,500 all cash with no mortgage) impact Auctioneer Board’s willingness to pursue violations or file a bond claim?

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, whose appointments to the Louisiana Auctioneer Licensing Board are coming under close scrutiny for their inconsistency in treatment of auction victims.

Sound Off Louisiana subscribers will recall the video we provided wherein State Rep. Johnny Guinn, R-Jennings, referenced that, “this same individual (Robert Burns, whom he declined to name but only referenced him as a ‘disgruntled auctioneer,’) tried to stir up a big mess inside the (auction) industry a few years back.” (For reference, see from the 4:52 – 5:10 mark of the video just linked).

Guinn actually gave Burns way too much credit because it was actually Guinn’s then-colleague, Rep. Damon Baldone, who, upon being convinced he was the intended victim of an illegal act of shill bidding who “stirred up a big mess.” How? By filing HB-1439 of the 2010 Legislative Session. Basically, Baldone, who felt there was an attempt at “down right theft” (quoting him verbatim) of $55,000 from him, sought to criminalize the practice of shill bidding at auctions with the penalty being equivalent to “theft by nonviolent means.” Of course, as all Sound Off Louisiana subscribers know by now, auctioneers, including members of the Louisiana Auctioneer Licensing Board (LALB), aren’t bashful about engaging in “down right theft” as evidenced by member Jacob Brown’s recent arrest by Louisiana State Police for writing $175,000+ in worthless checks to the state of Louisiana entailing auctioning of state surplus equipment.

Burns, who served on Gov. Jindal’s LALB at the time of Baldone’s proposal (Jindal would terminate Burns’ services soon thereafter at Guinn’s direct request), attended LALB meetings during which Baldone was the subject of much discussion. Suffice to say that Adolph Hitler was likely deemed to have better character than Baldone in the eyes of the LALB members once Baldone filed his bill. Interestingly enough, several comments were made along the lines of Baldone, “being born with a silver spoon in his mouth,” and that he really, “shouldn’t give a d— about another $55,000 given how much he was paying for the house,” for which his final bid was $675,000 (making the total contract price after buyer’s premium tally $742,500).

Well, Baldone did “give a d—,” as would just about anybody irrespective of how wealthy he may be. In making his arguments in support of his bill, Baldone indicated that such false representations of bids would never be permitted on the stock market, and he made an excellent point in that regard. We challenge anyone to log onto TD Ameritrade (or other online brokerage) and attempt to execute a trade without either having the cash to buy the security or marginable securities which enable a loan for the proceeds to buy the security. Sure, one can hit the “send” button, and it will take mere nanoseconds for the “order rejected” screen to appear staring at the individual who attempted to place the order. Let’s take a brief peek at Baldone posing these arguments and the blowback he got back, primarily from Rep. Barbara Norton, D-Shreveport:

Baldone explains why he has sponsored his anti-shill-bidding initiative.

As stated above, Burns observed first-hand the comments made both by LALB members and audience members at LALB meetings at the time concerning Baldone’s wealth. Burns found them disturbing because Baldone’s wealth is irrelevant to the question of whether illegal acts transpire! It’s that simple!

More recently, evidence has been supplied to Sound Off Louisiana that the wealth of Ms. Judy Fasola, who was victimized by notoriously-problematic auctioneer Ken Buhler, may be playing a role in the LALB’s adamant stand that it is not going to file a bond claim to partially recover her losses. If the LALB ran a search on her at EBRP Clerk of Court (which board attorney Anna Dow is known to have a high propensity to do), they are aware that Fasola, on November 21, 2017, purchased a new home and, in so doing, paid $300,500 in all cash (i.e. with no mortgage to finance her purchase). We have received concerns indicating that fact may have played a role in the consistent denial of her request that the LALB file a bond claim on her behalf.

Our first step in investigating the potential for the LALB to factor in Fasola’s wealth was to make our own independent verification at EBRP Clerk of Court, and sure enough, we uncovered this transaction (with NO corresponding mortgage) regarding Fasola’s home purchase:

Now consider LALB Executive Director Sandy Edmonds’ response, voicing the sentiments of LALB Chairman Jacob Warren, to Fasola’s most recent request for her bond claim to be filed, which was supplied a mere eight months after Fasola’s purchase:

The letter referenced in the above email follows:

Now, we find it very interesting that Warren provides the justification for the LALB declining to file a bond claim that, “the court has not yet adjudicated your case” regarding a lawsuit Fasola filed against Buhler. Notice what he says further: “the board is not in a position to act without some action by the court.”

Well, guess what, folks? The State of Louisiana has sued Jacob Brown for his alleged theft (though, thus far, they have been unable to serve him). That case too has “not been adjudicated;” however, the LALB has already commenced with filing a bond claim to collect on Brown’s actions!

Perhaps the State of Louisiana is deemed to be a little more “broke” than Fasola? That must be the rationale because, otherwise, using Warren’s justification to Fasola (and treating victims in the same manner), the State should have been told, “first fully adjudicate your case against Brown. If you get a judgment that cannot be collected, then we’ll file your bond claim.”

So folks, the moral of the lesson here appears to be that, if you have any level of wealth like Baldone or Fasola, don’t expect any LALB sympathy or action when you are victimized by an auctioneer!