May 24, 2007
The friends of Bill and Hill
Dick Morris and wife Eileen McGann reveal highly questionable ties of Mr. and Mrs. Bill Clinton to a company which has knowingly profited from enabling scam artists to find their marks. From their New York Post column today:
EVERY year since he left the White House, former Presi dent Bill Clinton has been paid by InfoUSA - an Omaha, Neb., company now identified as a key provider of databases that enable criminals to defraud the unsuspecting elderly.
Senate rules don't require Hillary Clinton to reveal exactly how much - or for what - the company has paid her husband over the past five years. But former presidents - especially Bill Clinton - don't come cheap. And, just months after he left the presidency, InfoUSA paid Bill Clinton $200,000 to give a speech in Omaha. Since then, it has paid him an undisclosed amount each year - listed only as "more than $1,000" for "non-employee compensation" on Sen. Clinton's financial-disclosure forms. (Her latest Senate disclosure isn't yet public, so we don't yet know if the firm paid him anything last year.) [….]
As The New York Times reported on Sunday, InfoUSA compiled and sold lists of elderly men and women who would be likely to respond to unscrupulous scams. The company advertised lists such as: "Elderly Opportunity Seekers" - 3.3 million older people "looking for ways to make money "Suffering Seniors" - 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer's disease; "Oldies but Goodies" - 500,000 gamblers over age 55. It described one list: "These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change."
Internal e-mails show that InfoUSA employees were aware that they were selling this data to firms under investigation for fraud - but kept on selling the information, even as the scammers used the lists to bilk millions from the elderly.