Vinod Gupta wikipedia
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Vinod Gupta is the former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chairman of infoGROUP (previously known as infoUSA[1]). Mr. Gupta served as CEO of the company from the time of its incorporation in 1972 until September 1997 and from August 1998 to August 2008[2]. Borrowing $100 from a bank to get started, it has grown from a one-man operation to a global employer of over 5,000 with revenues of $750 million.

He was recognized in Bill Clinton’s book Giving, describing the company as one that “has made a concerted effort to hire people who were on welfare, as well as people who are disabled or who have to support themselves after getting out of unsafe domestic situations.”

He was appointed by President Clinton to serve as a Trustee of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. He is the director of a mutual fund in the Everest mutual fund family. Mr. Gupta was also nominated and confirmed to be the United States Consul General to Bermuda as well as nominated by the President to be the United States Ambassador to Fiji[3]

Billary's ugly buddy payments from scandal tied firm
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This is a more detailed version of a column that was published in The New York Post on May 24, 2007.

Since he left office in 2001, former president Bill Clinton has been paid by InfoUSA, an Omaha, Nebraska company that has been identified as a key provider of specially designed databases that are sold to criminals who use the detailed information to defraud the unsuspecting elderly.

Because Senate financial disclosure rules do not require Hillary Clinton to reveal exactly how much — or for what — the company has paid her husband over the past five years, we don’t know all the details. But we do know this: former presidents – especially Bill Clinton – don’t come cheap. And, just months after he left the presidency, Bill Clinton was paid $200,000 for a speech given to InfoUSA in Omaha. Since then, he has been paid an undisclosed amount each year, listed only as “more than $1000″� for ‘non-employee compensation“� on Senator Clinton’s Senate financial disclosure form.

Hurd scandal pushes HP back into middle of public crossfire
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1) Rajiv Gupta
Director since Jan. 2009
Age: 64
Senior adviser to New Mountain Capital, a private equity firm, since July 2009; Gupta was chairman and CEO of Rohm and Haas, which produces specialty materials, from 1999 to 2009; he also is a director of The Vanguard Group and Tyco International

2) Tuesday, attorneys for a Massachusetts municipal retirement fund filed an investor lawsuit accusing the HP board of allowing Hurd to misuse corporate assets.

Echoing Minow and other critics, the lawsuit noted that five of the 10 current directors were on HP's board when it was rocked by a different scandal in 2006, when the company admitted using private investigators to obtain the phone records of reporters and directors under false pretenses.

Bradley J. Bell

Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
Nalco Holding Company
Naperville , IL
Sector: BASIC MATERIALS / Synthetics
Officer since November 2003

Director , Compass Minerals International, Inc.
Overland Park , KS
Sector: BASIC MATERIALS / Agricultural Chemicals

Director , Idex Corporation
Northbrook , IL
Sector: INDUSTRIAL GOODS / Diversified Machinery

57 Years Old
Bradley J. Bell has been the Company's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer since joining the Company in November 2003. From 1997 to 2003, Mr. Bell served as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Rohm and Haas Company, a $6 billion global specialty chemicals manufacturer. There, Mr. Bell played an active role in the company's strategic portfolio review, including substantial acquisitions, divestitures, and development and implementation of post-transaction cost-elimination programs exceeding $500 million. Prior to that, Mr. Bell served as Vice President and Treasurer of both the Whirlpool Corporation, from 1987 to 1997, and the Bundy Corporation, from 1980 to 1987. Mr. Bell is a director and chairman of the audit committee of IDEX Corporation and a director and chairman of the audit committee of Compass Minerals International, Inc.

2 Firms Tied to Phone Lists Will Review Their Policies
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Published: May 22, 2007
Two companies accused by state and federal regulators of doing business with suspected telemarketing thieves released statements yesterday pledging to examine and change their business practices.

Golden Opportunities: Bilking the Elderly, With a Corporate Assist (May 20, 2007) The two companies — InfoUSA, one of the nation’s largest compilers of consumer information, and Wachovia Bank, the nation’s fourth largest bank — were identified in an article in The New York Times on Sunday as having made it possible for thieves to defraud millions of elderly and other Americans.

Bonner associates coached employees lie generate letters -Will Congress reign such astroturf
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28 August 09
Bonner & Associates Coached Employees To Lie To Generate Letters to Congress - Will Congress Rein In Such Astroturf?
Tags: american coalition for clean coal electricity (ACCCE), Bonner & Associates, bonner astroturf, General, Waxman-Markey
An interesting and potentially explosive attachment was included with a letter sent to Congressional investigators by Steven R. Ross, an Akin Gump attorney working to defend his client Bonner & Associates, the D.C. public relations firm embroiled in an embarrassing scandal over forged letters sent from its offices to at least three Democratic lawmakers claiming to represent opposition to the Waxman-Markey climate and energy legislation from nine community groups.

Wachovia and InfoUSA
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InfoUSA advertised lists of “Elderly Opportunity Seekers,” 3.3 million older people “looking for ways to make money,” and “Suffering Seniors,” 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. “Oldies but Goodies” contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: “These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change.”

As Mr. Guthrie sat home alone — surrounded by his Purple Heart medal, photos of eight children and mementos of a wife who was buried nine years earlier — the telephone rang day and night. After criminals tricked him into revealing his banking information, they went to Wachovia, the nation’s fourth-largest bank, and raided his account, according to banking records.

Mexican drug cartels laundered money through Wachovia and Bank of America
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Wachovia and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) have been helping Mexican drug cartels launder money for years, Bloomberg reports.

Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), the new owners of Wachovia, admitted in court that Wachovia helped Mexican drug dealers clean drug money, including cash that was used to buy four planes that were used to ship a total of 22 tons of cocaine.

Wells Fargo agreed to pay $160 million in penalties after the DoJ charged Wachovia with violating the Back Secrecy Act.


Bloomberg -Banks financing Mexico's drug cartels admitted in Wells Fargo
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The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue.

This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers -- including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.