Rarity: A Charlatan exposed and convicted

[doc_strange]

I wasn't sure how to title this post, since there's something of interest to almost everyone on my friends list.... Here's some of the ones I thought about:

"Crime lecturer busted for impersonating FBI employee."
"Behavioral Scientist and terrorism/gang expert pleads guilty to impersonating FBI employee."
"Anti-Pagan lecturer exposed and arrested for impersonating FBI employee."
"Fundamentalist lecturer who links many non-Christian religions to gang crime and terrorism convicted of impersonating FBI employee."

You get the idea.

There's this "FREEdom Flyer Ministries" gang/crime speaker (President, CEO, etc.) who was lecturing around the country and for something called the National Gang Crime Research Center. (NGCRC itself is an interesting operation, and this speaker was also their "Director, Behavioral Sciences Division.") The guy's polymorphic. At heart, his own organization says it ministers to inmates. But he goes around lecturing on some . . . um . . . interesting theories at various conferences. Also, his credentials keep changing. At one point, he listed himself as having a pile of degrees including a "Juris doctorate." Some of his ideas... like gang activity is linked to paganism? Good stuff.

Well . . . He was. . . Busted.
http://www.kwqc.com/global/story.asp?s=2175326&ClientType=Printable

And he's plead guilty . . .
http://www.dailysouthtown.com/southtown/dsindex/23-ds4.htm

Of note:

Rizzo has twice been convicted in Cook County of impersonating a police officer — first in 1976 and again in 2003, according to his written plea agreement with prosecutors. He also has prior convictions for check fraud in New Jersey, reckless driving in South Carolina and drunken driving in Cook County. When he was arrested for impersonating the FBI agent, Rizzo still was under court supervision for the most recent impersonation conviction, as well as the DUI rap.

--From the Daily Southtown article, above

This is the guy people trusted to analyze Iraqi mob activity?
(“The Chaldean Mafia: Some Field Lessons From the Analysis of an Iraqi Gang,” Mark Rizzo, Behavioral Sciences Unit, NGCRC" -- see this conference program: PDF or the Google HTML).

Here's one discussion of him from a Pagan point of view:
http://www.witchvox.com/whs/kerr_apts.html
Yes, Mr. Rizzo published a "Witchcraft and Occult Manual."

Take a looksee at his bio on a conference page...
Before (via Wayback machine)
After

Yep. They've carefully edited history. Did NGCRC do any background check on this guy? Or... did they know?

He boldly listed himself with a lot of puffed-up titles at conferences, but not so much on his main website:
http://www.freedomflyer.org/
Check it out through the Wayback Machine ('cause it's been edited).

Still, he comes off as sanctimonious as hell for a multiply-convicted fellow who's not let up on the naughty acts. See this article (via Google cache, because... GOSH... the original's disappeared). Note how his life history in that article doesn't even dovetail with his conviction record reported in other articles.

Amazing.

Comments

[awfulhorrid.livejournal.com]

What really concerns me is that while this fraud has been busted, he'll most likely get off without much of a punishment and his articles, etc., will still be taken as fact by many law enforcement departments across the country. So what if the author was convicted as passing himself off as an FBI instructor (again, apparently), his prejudices support their own!

*sigh*

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

Yeah - charlatans usually have more resilience (because they have no shame) than do people with real credentials. Those who have worked to earn their creds (social and/or paper) are horrified by blemishes; those creds mean a lot to them -- they worked to get them! But, I figure those who've lied or faked credentials (positions in associations they themselves created, inflated titles, mail-order diploma-mill degrees) already know their trappings are tarnished; to them a blemish is no big deal. They'll just bluster on and thereby make it hard for even such tarnishing events as above to take them off the circuit.

I really hate charlatans, in case that hadn't become clear by now.