The Shuster Project

Tobacco Industry Fraud & False Claims Issues

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On the morning of 11/17/00, Richard Blumenthal, the Attorney General of Connecticut, made an odd and ambiguous presentation of assertions that Connecticut was somehow not adequately addressing the sufficient dispersion of tobacco settlement moneys towards the cessation of smoking among youthful smokers and other limited programs along similar, narrow lines.

Yet, since 5/14/1999, the award-winning “The Shuster Project” has, in a methodical and consistent manner, made factual presentations to Richard Blumenthal and every other Attorney General across the country as to the vast issues of tobacco industry Fraud & False Claims crimes.

These presentations of 6 Press Releases can be reviewed on this page of our web site, The Shuster Project, at:

http://rxshuster.org/news.htm

Those presentations include precise documentation of tobacco industry State Income Tax fraud, tobacco industry Antitrust violations including ethnic minority contract discrimination, sales and promotion discrimination, consumer targeting tactics that lure young boys and girls to smoke and much more.

 In addition, Price and Cost manipulation used by the tobacco companies effectively snag the elderly and other financially vulnerable communities of citizens to smoke and our organization presented to the Attorneys General a plethora of other non-health related Fraud and False Claims crimes perpetrated by the tobacco industry.

We have drafted a series of programs that, once adopted by the states, will dramatically and effectively reduce the ranks of smokers among the youthful community, women, men, the elderly, ethnic minorities, the financially vulnerable community and others.

Among our initiatives is an across-the-nation increase in the enforceable Sales Tax on cigarettes to a uniform $2.00 per pack.

This accomplishes two things immediately…

1.)     The immediate removal from the ranks of “smoker” of our most “health-issues vulnerable” communities – Children and the Elderly / financially vulnerable.

2.)      The establishment of a dedicated Income Stream that can be directed towards specific Health-oriented programs of smoking cessation / prevention education and the needed health services for the “smoking-diseased.”

Among the legislative initiatives The Shuster Project has drafted in Connecticut is Raised Bill 6942 - An Act Concerning the Connecticut False Claims Act – originally submitted to the Connecticut Judiciary Committee in it’s February session of 1998 as House Bill 5602 - AN ACT CONCERNING QUI TAM ACTIONS.

Connecticut remains only one of a handful of states without such a set of powerful “Whistleblower” statutes such as we have presented in our original Bill, HB5602.

The eventual passage of our legislation will give the state of Connecticut a potent and powerful platform by which to obtain the very secretive and elusive “inner” knowledge of the methods and crimes those businesses and industries utilize that defraud the states of hundreds of millions and Billions of dollars in Tax Revenues and other income streams that, in the absence of such legislation, the state of Connecticut and others would never otherwise obtain.

To his credit, Richard Blumenthal did speak in favor of our Bill in February of 1998 and, to our knowledge, did write in his support for our Bill in the 1999 session of the Legislature, as well.

Beyond that he has done little else to secure it’s passage and his rhetoric is ridiculous in the face of having close access to a considerable, Connecticut-based resource that he continues to ignore, The Shuster Project.

From our organization he can draw numerous, workable, legal and logical approaches with “insider knowledge” to resolving and correcting the crimes of tobacco industry Income Tax Fraud and False Claims, Antitrust violations, smoker-cessation models and initiatives and dozens of other business fraud and other non-health related tobacco issues initiatives but that remains completely ignored by him.

With New York state and others expressing keen interest in our work, we at The Shuster Project are confident that some other state Tax Official, some other state Attorney General who really means what he says and really says what he means and then will converts those words into actions, unlike the rhetoric of Richard Blumenthal, is going to utilize The Shuster Project’s established, factual, credible resources with our workable, broad-based initiatives with our “insider” advantage and realize considerable, tangible results for the good of their states citizens.

It would have been irresponsible on the part of The Shuster Project to let the ambiguous assertions made by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to stand unchallenged in the face of the considerable efforts we have made both to him, the other Attorneys General, the Connecticut State Legislature and it’s Judiciary Committee, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Senate, the President of the United States, the Vice President, candidate George W. Bush, the media in this state and across the country and many others to focus on the non-health related business fraud aspects of the tobacco industry.

The Shuster Project web site, on average, receives between 7,000 to 18,000 page hits, and more, per month so we are reasonably convinced that the American people are beginning to access our resource in ever-growing numbers and we also know now that it is only a brief matter of time before our efforts and these issues are brought center-stage.

We have historically documented our efforts, since 1995 and on, as to our measured approach to the elected and appointed officials both in Connecticut and across the nation both with original tobacco industry documentation illustrating these crimes and also presenting the proper initiatives utilizing “insider” tobacco industry knowledge to effectively correct these crimes and assist in restoring the vast, defrauded Tax Revenues and Income Streams back to the states.

It’s time for the rhetoric from Richard Blumenthal to end and for him to utilize the resources he has had available to him in Connecticut, effectively since 1995, in order to dramatically accomplish both his goals of effective smoker-cessation funding and the recovery in excess of $290 Million Dollars, conservatively, in defrauded State Income Tax revenues, defrauded State Sales Tax revenues and other defrauded Income Streams in the state of Connecticut.

As is our custom, this letter will be placed into our Correspondence 2000 section for Public review.

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