Diebold “regularly manipulated earnings to meet forecasts,” the SEC said in the complaint filed today in federal court in Washington. The agency is seeking an unspecified civil penalty in the case.
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The case is U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission v. Diebold Inc., 10cv908, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).
But wait! There’s more…
From Forbes today. That was quick (and relatively painless for Diebold, if not some of their executives)…
The SEC filed civil charges against former Diebold ( DBD – news – people ) executives Gregory Geswein, Kevin Krakora and Sandra Miller, alleging they manipulated the company’s accounting to meet earnings forecasts from 2002 through 2007.
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Diebold’s former chief executive, Walden O’Dell, agreed to pay back about $470,000 in cash, plus stock and options. He was not charged with fraud but the government was allowed to recapture his compensation under the so-called “clawback” provision of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley anti-fraud law.
“We are pleased that the settlement with the SEC is final,” Thomas Swidarski, Diebold’s CEO, said in a statement.
Deep into work on another story, so no time to offer full background on the above. But you’ll find plenty of it in our March 2009 coverage when Krakora, Diebold’s Chief Financial Officer stepped down as the SEC investigation heated up. That reports offers links and details on various DoJ and SEC investigations of Diebold, as well as to our own 2007 investigative exclusive on what appears to have been insider trading at Diebold. Hoping the SEC has looked into that report as well, since Krakora was the largest inside trader in the August 2007 deal we exposed, taking place just two days before the announcement of the spin-off of Diebold’s election division, and a huge stock-price plummet accompanying it, from which it’s never recovered.
For the record, late last year, Diebold’s failed election division (renamed Premier in 2007 after years of embarrassment over their voting systems) was purchased for a pittance by ES&S, which was subsequently forced by the DoJ to sell off the assets due to anti-trust concerns. Two weeks ago, ES&S finally found a buyer they approved of (yes, the DoJ gave them that right, for some reason, in their settlement). The new owner of whatever is left of Diebold Voting System’s assets is now a Canadian-based firm with an insanely totalitarian name: Dominion Voting [PDF].
While there was much (appropriate) outrage and concern, particularly from the Right, over the foreign-ownership of the nation’s third largest e-voting company, Sequoia — whose parent company, the Venezuelan-based, Chavez-tied Smartmatic was forced Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) into what appears to have been a sham sell-off) — we’ve yet to hear a whimper of concern about the control of the U.S.’ second largest voting machine company having its roots in Canada.
At the time of the sale, Dominion CEO John Poulos ominously stated: “We are extremely pleased to conclude this transaction, which…will allow Dominion to expand its capabilities and operational footprint to every corner of the United States.”
[Hat-tip Joyce McCloy of Voting News]
Damn, that is an ominous statement. Sounds almost…evangelical!
Dominion. Evangelical.
Faith-based Voting.
Ahhh, now I get it!
Yesterday I stopped a couple on the street to have a friendly discussion about why local “blue dog” Jim Matheson has been concerned about redistricting, but has never had a concern about the voting machines purchased by partisan Republican, (now governor, Gary Herbert, (who will be using the machines to conduct his upcoming election.))
It became obvious the couple were right wingers, because, as always, the discussion turned to stolen elections in Chicago over 40 years ago and how Nixon had the election stolen from him by Kennedy. I’m not really up on how Kennedy was supposed to have done that, but I told them I was sure the Republicans were stealing elections nationwide in recent times. He told me Kennedy did the same thing. I replied, “that makes you a conspiracy theorist”, and he said “no it doesn’t.”
The conversation ended in a friendly way, but I asked them why we were voting on machines on which the name has changed two times since they were purchased and who sold their entire voting machine division for 15 million while Utah paid 25 million originally and has spent many more millions since then.
Today,I find out they’ve changed the name THREE times, and it’s now owned outside the US!
Earth calling Jim Matheson!
Coupla quick fact-checks to your comment, Larry.
1) Kennedy would have won the election even without Chicago. On the other end of the nation, Hawaii was apparently stolen for Nixon. Either way, hopefully your friend wasn’t in favor of stolen elections because he believes “Kennedy did it, so we can too”, right?
2) Diebold sold their entire election division for 5 million dollars! Not even the 15 million you erroneously suggested! Ya think maybe they wanted to get rid of that thing for some reason? Mission accomplished.
Amazing and they were trusted with making voting machines – unsurprising and yet will be repeated.
Five Million?
Well, now I AM mad! I guess, as a Utahn, I didn’t want to think we were THAT duped.
If I could only get Utahn’s mad. It seems to be a lost cause. This is the issue that’s “too big” to be discussed in any state or county in the entire nation.
All I know, is that before we started using the hanging chad machines, Utah voted Democrat. I am positive of that! Why can’t we just put our mark next to the name of the guy/gal we’re voting for and have that vote counted in public?
Thanks for writing this. Funny how things come to a full circle if you stick around long enough, eh?
There’s a special place in Hell for Diebold after what Diebold tried to do to/in North Carolina. Diebold almost got away with gutting North Carolina’s verified voting law.
NC owes the Electronic Frontier Foundation from preventing Diebold from doing that.
In spite of Diebold’s chicanery, they were certified in our state, but our activists fought the vendor off county by county, with bi partisan hate for Diebold abounding.
Using Occams razor, was Diebold DESI/PESI run by incompetents, criminals, or arrogant execs who figured that they could do whatever they wanted?
The guy I talked to said he had read a book which told about the John Kennedy election theft and I asked him who wrote the book, “was it Glen Beck; Bill O’Reilly?) He said no.
The conversation pretty much ended there, and I’m sure the couple wanted to continue their walk on a perfect spring night, but a short time later on MY walk I thought it was most likely John Fund.
I wouldn’t read John Fund’s book if you paid me good money, but I’ll just bet that’s where it came from.
If their job is to fix elections, you don’t they’re going to fix their books too?
Interesting, isn’t it, how they can be involved in the complete destruction of our electoral system but it’s the book cooking that takes them down. NOTHING said about how they did their part in a huge right wing coup, but if their books aren’t cleverly cooked enough, THAT is what will hurt them. What a joke.
I will never forget their CEO telling everyone in the crowd (including the idiot bastard son himself) that his job was to deliver the 2004 election to George W Bush. That alone sounded like more than enough to have him and his company investigated as well as kicked out of the running to even GET gov’t contracts.
NO computers should be allowed in elections. It’s FAR too easy to corrupt the code, and a computer can be made to do anything the programmer wants. It can print out what you’ve put up on the screen, and store a whole different set of results. Even the counting software can be altered to make it say whatever you want it to say. Even with open source software, it’s too easy to sneak something in later, especially with the “security” measures taken by elections boards in this country.
What a shame that we have to use the Capone technique to get something on these crooks. But if that is what it takes, then so be it.
Sy Hersh had some pretty damning evidence that of the Kennedy’s use of the mob in Illinois to to deliver that state and thus the election in 1960. The Kennedys were a ruthless bunch. They set the precedent for rigging elections, and the Rethugs have been carrying the ball ever since.
The Kennedy and Bush families were total opposites. Joe Kennedy made his fortune in the shady great depression wall street and then alcohol in prohibition. A really crooked guy. The Bush family made its money from Prescott Bush being a banker for Hitler During WW2. Bush family was treasonous. Now the Kennedy boys however were good people. JFK was elected was determined to take us out of Vietnam(he had a brother die in WW2 and he was injured in war himself) and also dropped suport for the attacking Castro. Both of these got in the way of George HW Bush. He and the mafia had been booted out of oil field in Cuba by Castro (hence the 1000s of attacks on Castro by the Bush lead CIA even with some mafia help) and also had defense contractors making money in Vietnam (he still owns a defense contractor/oil company/insurance wall street firm The Carlyle Group). RFK tried to follow up on was killed (just like the anti war MLK). Yes the Kennedy family had the Joe Kennedy very crooked guy but his sons tried to keep the wealthy like his dad from stealing from the poor. The Bush family has made the poor fight the wars while they made money from them, even W had his first oil company supplied by a combination of Bin Laden and his grandfather’s Hitler made funds. The Bush’s whole family are war criminals.
cdt3:
Yep! If all the Kennedy boys were still alive and had not met with a very unlikely series of deaths at young ages, we would all be better off.
Robert Kennedy Jr. has even helped expose the modern day election theft we are experiencing NOW, not 40 years ago! Sadly, nothing seems to help the story get legs.
NOTHING!