"The Sharon Gans/Robert Klein cult has been able to get its most critical blog, Esotericfreedom.com thrown off the internet.
Under the auspices of one of its wealthy members, Joseph Stilwell they have had Google shut it down.
Does anyone know what is going on?
This is very disturbing."
*******
"Stilwell thinks THIS is a travesty????
from June 8 American Banker
"Stilwell Files Suit to Reverse Outcome of Washington Bank's Proxy Fight
Activist investor Joseph Stilwell has stepped up his campaign to oust the chief executive at First Financial Northwest (FFNW) in Renton, Wash.
Stilwell disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday that he has filed a lawsuit against the $1 billion-asset First Financial seeking to invalidate the results of the company's recent board elections in which the CEO, Victor Karpiak, defeated Stilwell's nominee, Spencer Schneider.
Stilwell maintains that the results were bogus because the company did not count 8 million votes that he claims were properly cast for Schneider. Had they been counted, Schneider would have handily defeated Karpiak, Stilwell said in the lawsuit filed in King County (Wash.) Superior Court.
"This is a travesty of corporate governance," Stilwell said in the suit. "And the result is that an incumbent director that a majority of shareholders sought to evict from his position will instead now illegitimately continue to be in a position to make fundamental, irrevocable decisions about the corporation's path and future, against the shareholders' wishes."
Stilwell, who owns about 8.5% of First Financial's shares, wants his own representative on the board to pursue his agenda of ousting Karpiak and pressuring the board to put the company up for sale.
But First Financial argues that the 8 million proxy votes cast for Schneider were invalid because Schneider himself failed to sign a master ballot. The decision was confirmed by the proxy tabulation service Carl T. Hagberg and Associates.
Stilwell has filed the suit against the bank, Karpiak and the proxy service's inspector, Raymond Riley. He claims that Riley had preliminarily declared Schneider the winner but later backtracked under pressure from bank officials.
"Riley chose to do an about-face and treat those valid proxy votes as 'non-votes' at the self-interested urging of First Financial's management, solely because there was not an additional piece of paper — a so-called master ballot — redundantly reiterating what was already clear from the tabulations," Stilwell said.""
"Dissident shareholder Stilwell sues First Savings Bank NW
Puget Sound Business Journal by Greg Lamm, Staff Writer
Date: Friday, June 8, 2012, 11:06am PDT - Last Modified: Monday, June 11, 2012, 11:32am PDT
S
Staff Writer- Puget Sound Business Journal
Email | Twitter
Updated with comment from bank CEO Victor Karpiak
Dissident shareholder Joseph Stilwell has sued the holding company of First Savings Bank Northwest , the Renton bank that Stilwell has been wrestling for more control over because he thinks it is poorly run.
The lawsuit, which Stilwell announced in a SEC filing Friday, comes after Stilwell failed to have his representative put on the bank board in a shareholder election.
Stilwell, an investment manager who owns about 8.5 percent of the shares and wants to push for a sale of the bank, apparently missed a deadline to turn in ballots he controlled at the bank’s May 24 shareholders meeting.
Now, Stilwell has sued the bank, CEO Victor Karpiak and Raymond Riley of Carl T. Hagberg and Associates, who oversaw the bank’s proxy vote. Stilwell says the targets of his lawsuit are responsible for “disenfranchising” the proxy votes he controlled.
In a phone message, Karpiak said the bank plans to defend itself against the lawsuit, which he said is a needless distraction for the bank. Karpiak said the bank acted on the direction of the independent election inspector, which everyone had agreed to beforehand.
“We will be defending our position and trying to minimize the distraction it is to the bank,” Karpiak said.
In the lawsuit, Stilwell says he wants to remove Karpiak from the board and replace him with Stilwell representative Spencer Schneider.
Here is further explanation of the lawsuit, from Stilwell’s SEC filing:
We ran the election on the basis that Mr. Karpiak be removed from the board and the Company. We asked shareholders to only vote for us if they believed Mr. Karpiak should be removed from the board and the Company and that the Company be sold. We received a substantial majority of the shareholder vote. The Company urged Mr. Riley to invalidate our votes, which he did.
The lawsuit has been filed in King County Superior Court, according to Stilwell’s SEC document.
Stilwell’s lawsuit followed announcement of the results of the May 24 proxy vote. Carl T. Hagberg and Associates determined that shareholders re-elected three bank board members, including Karpiak.
According to a previous SEC filing, a shareholder vote report prepared by the Carl T. Hagberg firm determined that Stilwell failed to turn in a proxy-holder master ballot prior to the closing of the polls on the morning of May 24.
The dispute surrounding the proxy vote has been a public distraction for the small Renton bank that struggled during the recession and came under increased scrutiny from bank regulators.
The bank has been slowly pulling itself up since losing a total of about $95 million over 2009 and 2010. Last year the bank posted net income of $4.2 million. In the first quarter of 2012, the bank reported net income of $622,000."
******
"Joseph Stilwell was born in 1962. He is one of four brothers and was raised in metropolitan Pittsburgh. He graduated from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science in Economics. Mr. Stilwell has been married twice. His current wife is Monika K. Stilwell. He has four sons. He currently lives in Manhattan where he owns a condo at 205 East 85th Street currently valued at $841,352. Stilwell maintains a summer home in Saltaire on Fire Island and owns a 125 acre property at 480 Route 164 in Patterson, NY.
A former Bear Stearns trader, Joe currently runs hedge fund vehicles which invest in the U.S. community banking sector. His strategy goes under the formal name of "maximizing shareholder value." Joe targets undervalued community banks, acquires a significant portion of the outstanding common stock, then uses the position to force changes in control of the institution – usually a sale to another bank. Joe’s SEC filings track those investments, and his creation of ever-larger hedge fund vehicles -- with names like "Stilwell Value Partners VIII" to carry out his business strategy. SEC filings for the funds show that Spencer Schneider serves as Stilwell’s attorney for these registrations.
Stilwell says he has taken part in over 200 bank conversions during the past 20 years. At the moment, Stilwell is battling with two banks for control. They are Harvard Savings Bank and First Financial Nothwest in Renton, Washington.
Joseph Stilwell has made 52 SEC Filings since 2001. Some of the banks that he has tried to take over are:
HARVARD ILLINOIS BANCORP, INC.
WEST END INDIANA BANCSHARES, INC.
POAGE BANKSHARES, INC.
FEDFIRST FINANCIAL CORP
JACKSONVILLE BANCORP, INC.
CENTRAL BANCORP INC /MA/
SUNSHINE FINANCIAL INC
EUREKA FINANCIAL CORP.
HOME FEDERAL BANCORP, INC. OF LOUISIANA
ALLIANCE BANCORP INC OF PENNSYLVANIA
WILLIAM PENN BANCORP INC
GS FINANCIAL CORP
FIRST SAVINGS FINANCIAL GROUP INC
GS FINANCIAL CORP
ALLIANCE BANCORP INC OF PENNSYLVANIA
KINGSWAY FINANCIAL SERVICES INC
MILLENNIUM BANKSHARES CORP
NORTHEAST COMMUNITY BANCORP INC
COMMUNITY BANCSHARES INC /DE/HCB BANCSHARES INC
COMMUNITY FINANCIAL CORP /IL/
American Physicians Capital, Inc.
Kingsway Financial Services, Inc.
FedFirst Financial Corp.(the holding company for First Federal Savings Bank) in Monessen, Pa.
SCPIE Holdings
Provident Financial Holdings, Inc.
Atlas Financial Holdings, Inc.
Security of Pennsylvania Financial Corp
HCB Bancshares, Inc.:
Prudential Bancorp, Inc. of Pennsylvania:. "
William Penn Bancorp, Inc
Malvern Federal
Synovus Financial Corp.
Community Bancshares Inc/DE
Sound Community Bank.
Mr. Stilwell has been a regular contributor to conservative organizations such as the Cato Institute, whose four-person board includes Charles and David Koch. He serves on the board of U.S. Term Limits, alongside Ed Crane (director of the Cato Institute), William Wilson (president of Americans for Limited Government, and Howard (Howie) Rich (board member of the Club for Growth). Howard Rich, in turn, sits on the board of Stilwell’s Margaret de Fleur Foundation.
It should interest you to note that hostile takeover expert Joseph Stilwell is reputed to belong to a very controversial “new age” spiritual group, known best by the name of its leader: Sharon Gans. In operation for nearly 40 years, under various names, this group has been accused of racism, child abuse, financial impropriety, and homophobia. The New York branch of the FBI has looked into the activities of this group, though no charges have yet been filed.
You can find out some things about this group by going to the website [www.esotericfreedom.blogspot.com]. If you would like to read articles about the San Francisco origins of this group, you can go to[www.survivorshandbook.com], where you will see links to a series of investigative newspaper articles. If you would like to photo-verify the identities of some individuals with whom you might be familiar, you may also go to[stopsharongans.blogspot.com].
Stilwell led the “Work & Money” sub-group for Sharon Gans for many years, and he has made his Patterson, NY country home – a former hunting preserve – the site for Country Retreat use by the New York branch of the cult. Extended construction on that property has at times provided long-term employment for valued cult members such as Tim McGillicuddy. Joe’s leadership role in the Gans cult is primarily behind-the-scenes, as a financial backer for the group and a personal business partner of Sharon Gans.
The financial structure of the Gans organization operates at three levels, and Joe is integrally involved with the second and third of these levels. At the lowest, most common level, large unreported cash flows are generated by monthly tuitions ($300 to $450) levied on all “school” members, in New York and Boston. There is deliberate avoidance of centralized bookkeeping and paper trails. A selected numbers of personal checks written to Odyssey Study Group establishes some evidence of bona fide operations and reported cash flow. OSG is set up as an LLC to minimize tax reporting and tax scrutiny. Joe is not involved at this level of cult financial activity.
The systemic diversion of cash tuition payments for personal use by Gans in fact causes frequent operating expense shortfalls, and in the middle tier of cult financial activity, school” is privately presented as an organization constantly “on the brink.” Ad-hoc appeals to wealthy students are common, with the understanding that their subsidies “help keep the lights on.” Each of these “extra” contributions is known only to the requestor, the donor, and a few others; the tax implications of these gifts are unclear. (As one example, according to an informed source, “Montana retreat” contributions cover only half the annual maintenance expenses for the Falls Creek Ranch in Condon, MT; “voluntary” donations made up the rest.) The second “tier” of financial activity also includes significant, tax-declared contributions for major “school” initiatives. Joe contributed nearly $100,000 to the construction of the Pawling, NY retreat complex the cult acquired, improved and sold in the late 1990s and early 2000s, through the Margaret de Fleur Foundation, on which Joe and his brother John sit as directors.
At the third, innermost tier of financial activity, the Gans cult operates as an unvarnished wealth accumulation machine for Sharon Gans and a few trusted lieutenants. Real estate sales between members, cross-investment of portfolio income, and large cash transfers are routine. As one example of these activities, Joe is the registered agent for Plaza LLC, the entity which owns Gans’ Manhattan residence (value $8.2 million.); it is not yet clear how the tax advantages of this arrangement is leveraged, or for whose financial gain. It is the practice of the Gans cult to steer investment capital from wealthier students to cult member financial professionals: While Joe was at Bear Stearns, a number of wealthier Gans cult students were encouraged to invest with him, with minimums set at $100,000 (in 1990 dollars); in one case, Sharon Gans brought such a student to Joe’s office at Bear. When Joe embarked upon his hedge funds, wealthy students were similarly encouraged, again with $100,000 minimums; one student recalls a joint “sales pitch” with Stilwell and fellow cult member Graves Kiely of Pacific bridge Associates LLC. [graveskiely.com] "
Source of Joseph Stilwell Post
http://forum.rickross.com/read.php?12,111525,111675
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