Near Intelligence On Epstein Island
This company tagged everyone who came and went to the infamous pedophile paradise. Now, its top executives are charged in an unrelated accounting fraud.
“We are often criminals in the eyes of the earth, not only for having committed crimes, but because we know that crimes have been committed.” – Alexandre Dumas
Prosecutors on Thursday charged the top executives of a bankrupt location data broker called Near Intelligence in an alleged round-tripping scheme.
Overlooked in this genuinely stupid alleged accounting blunder is another set of round-trips we’d all like to know a lot more about.
Last year, Wired reported that Near Intelligence had collected precise data on more than 200 mobile phones belonging to wealthy and influential people visiting Jeffrey Epstein’s creepy island.
The data runs from July 2016 to July 6, 2019, the day Epstein was arrested for sex trafficking underaged girls. We can’t jump to too many conclusions, but the data does reveal the digital footprint of those who continued to visit the island even after Epstein’s 2008 conviction in Florida.
So far, the names associated with these devices have not been publicly disclosed, but as they say in the shadowy realm of grand conspiracies, the truth is out there.
Wired’s reporting exposes just what a scary surveillance state we live in today where even billionaires can be tracked as they take the Lolita Express to the private island of a known pedophile.
I’ll leave the rest of the details to this video and transcript reviewing Wired’s investigation. But it looks like someone sure has the receipts.
What’s this round tripping about?
This stomach-churning Epstein saga may never go away because rich and powerful people who violate underaged girls should all be exposed, but so far they’re doing damn fine job of hiding.
Enough of this island intrigue for now, though.
I write about Business Blunders, not sex trafficking for the overprivileged. So let’s get back on track and talk about round tripping.
We’ll start with, of all things, Beanie Babies.
Let’s say I agree to buy your Beanie Babies for millions of dollars. At the same time, you agree to buy my Beanie Babies collection for millions of dollars, too.
Now we both have millions of dollars in revenue we can book on our financial statements in addition to our dubiously valued Beanie Babies.
We can now sell stock at a handsome price based on our growing multimillion-dollar revenue streams, even though nothing really happened.
Before Enron and Qwest famously imploded in the early 2000s, they were trading fiber-optic cable like baseball cards.
Enron sold inactive telecommunications lines to Qwest for hundreds of millions of dollars. Qwest then sold fiber-optic cable access back to Enron for hundreds of millions of dollars. It was just one of their many famously stupid accounting tricks.
Round-tripping is exceptionally dumb because it’s easy for accounting professionals to spot symmetrical transactions and asset swaps between companies. That’s why in the annals of accounting fraud, it’s a relatively rare corporate crime.
Once a round-tripper lands in bankruptcy, their fraud is sure to be detected. And so it went for Near Intelligence, which went public in March 2023 and filed bankruptcy just nine months later. (It continues to operate under a new name, Azira.)
Federal prosecutors announced an indictment against the company’s CEO Anil Mathews and CFO Rahul Agarwal. Also charged was Kenneth Harlan, the CEO of a privately held mobile advertising company called MobileFuse.
Together they allegedly jacked Near Intelligence’s revenue by $25 million to entice investors just before the company began trading on Nasdaq.
(Yes, Nasdaq lets garbage go public through SPACs, or Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, which circumvent the rigors of an initial public stock offering. That’s how even dubious round-trippers like Near Intelligence can make it big … until they blow.)
As if that weren’t enough, Mathews and Agarwal also stand accused of embezzlement.
“These defendants not only allegedly recycled more than $25 million through each other’s businesses, but two of them also stole even more funds to maintain their personal lifestyles,” said FBI Assistant Director in Charge Christopher Raia. “These defendants allegedly manipulated their executive positions … to create a mirage of financial success and attract prospective buyers.”
So far, none of the defendants have entered pleas or made public statements regarding the allegations. So they’re presumed innocent for now and we’ll have to see where this goes.
You’d think, though, that if these guys had a list of every cellphone ping on Epstein Island, they’d be worth a lot more than the $25 million they allegedly concocted with round-tripping deals.
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As I've been fond of frequently telling friends, based on decades of police reporting and later, financial reporting: "There are no secrets. Only cover-ups."
No two people anywhere can keep a secret. Sooner or later, one brags, or one confesses. What good is a secret that no one knows, except the risk of exposure? And what good is keeping a secret, except it's potential power over someone not wanting it exposed? It's how blackmail comes into being, and bribery, and extortion, and a host of other crimes. Remember the polaroids often found at Meth labs?
Of course, the 'truth is out there.'
I have to laugh, personally, at all the indignation and apparent surprise of people who somehow believe most of the information in "The Epstein Files" isn't already publicly available, from his Florida trial, in which he was defended by Alan Dershowitz and prosecuted by then-US Attorney and later Trump's first Labor Secretary, Alexander Acosta.
Or, and here's a thought: believe the victims?
Of course, some want Grand Jury testimony, which is supposed to be sealed, to be unsealed. So they can get names of everyone involved in his second arrest, and trial. Which all occurred under the first Trump administration, with the Attorney General William Barr, whose father first hired a young Jeffrey Epstein to teach at the Dalton School.
It takes only two people to enter into a conspiracy.
There are a lot more than two people involved in the Epstein cases.
Like 'Near Intelligence,' which apparently used the same 'intelligence gathering' technique, coincidentally, as '2000 Mules.' Though, pinging on a pedophile's private island is probably more likely to be accurate than pinging in the proximity of a ballot dropoff box.
But for the intelligence to have value (unlike 2000 Mules'), it has to be deciphered - who are the phones/phone number registered to that pinged? Were they 'burner' phones? I mean, doesn't anyone watch "Law & Order" any more?
Hope they saved at least $100k for a pardon. Isn’t that the minimum price today?