MAN WHO POSED AS DOMINICAN
DIPLOMAT PLEADS GUILTY IN NY SCAM
DIPLOMAT PLEADS GUILTY IN NY SCAM
www.washingtonpost.com - A Maryland man who posed as a diplomat from the Dominican Republic to solicit donations for a bogus charitable project admitted on Monday it was a scam. Francisco Alberto Gautreaux Calcano pleaded guilty on Monday to grand larceny and scheming to defraud, prosecutors said. He “preyed upon the generosity of immigrants who wanted to help fellow Dominicans in need,” Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said in a statement. Calcano, 43, solicited donations to transport utility vehicles to the Dominican city of Salcedo, but the vehicles didn’t exist, prosecutors said. The Frederick, Md., man falsely told some victims he was a Dominican embassy staffer, prosecutors said, and claimed to be former Dominican Ambassador to the United States Roberto B. Saladin, who now represents his country at the Organization of American States. Calcano pretended to be a former Dominican Ambassador to the U.S., prosecutors say. He then solicited donations - including some from a New York state senator - to transport utility vehicles to the Dominican Republic. Those vehicles did not exist, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. The suspect stole $15,000 in all, according to the AP.
Calcano defrauded his victims in New York City and the Dominican Republic by telling them he was collecting money to ship donated utility and emergency vehicles to municipalities and charities in the Dominican Republic. On Dec. 30, 2010, Calcano contacted New York state Sen. Adriano Espaillat, claiming to be calling on behalf of Roberto Saladin, now-former Dominican ambassador to the U.S., to solicit money to send the vehicles to the Dominican city of Salcedo. The senator referred Calcano to a constituent with ties to Salcedo. Within days, three people wired Calcano more than $11,500 via Western Union, Vance's office said in the news release. Video footage taken from a Western Union location near Calcano's apartment showed him getting the money. A search of his apartment yielded Western Union receipts and cellphones used in the scam, the release said. Espaillat became suspicious of Calcano's activities a few weeks later after a conversation the senator had with Saladin and tipped off authorities, said Ibrahim Khan, a spokesman for the senator, in a phone interview Tuesday. Calcano is scheduled for sentencing on Sept. 4. He faces a possible sentence of 11Ú2 to 21Ú2 years in a New York jail.
WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?
This is called samsāra-dāvānala. Even in ordinary transactions between two people, there is invariably cheating because the conditioned soul is defective in four ways - he is illusioned, he commits mistakes, his knowledge is imperfect, and he has a propensity to cheat. Unless one is liberated from material conditioning, these four defects must be there. Consequently every man has a cheating propensity, which is employed in business or money transactions. ... One may profess a high philosophy, but when one is in need of money, he becomes a cheater. ... Unless one can find a person transcendental to the four basic defects, one should not accept advice and become a victim of the material condition. The best process is to take the advice and instructions of Śrī Krishna or His bona fide representative. In this way one can be happy in this life and the next.Śrīla A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda :
Śrīmad Bhāgavatam - Canto 5: “The Creative Impetus”
Chapter 14: “The Material World as the Great Forest of Enjoyment”
Verse 26 - Bhaktivedanta VedaBase
Published by dasavatara das - "Vedic Views on World News"
http://www.vedicviews-worldnews.blogspot.com.ar/
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