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We have been covering convicted felon Ali Akbar’s activities for two years at BU. Today, we can report that after a year of trying to get in touch with Akbar, the state of Texas has finally revoked his business license for the National Bloggers Club over nonpayment of franchise taxes.

As we have said before, Akbar is not actually very good at what he does, and his business acumen ends at startup. Akbar loves to throw parties, but he seems contemptuous of the responsibilities of ownership. Having created corporate properties through a lawyer specializing in off-the-shelf business paperwork, Akbar never updated his address with the Texas Secretary of State, allowing his registrations to lapse. The NBC lost its right to transact business in the state of Texas last October, but the NBC has still raised funds in the organization’s name to pay for the annual Blog Bash party, which was held again last night at CPAC.

Akbar has also made false claims about his ownership of other properties, then announced co-ownership or partnership with individuals under business names that he no longer actually owned. Akbar’s partners are potentially on the hook for unpaid taxes and fines as well as other consequences for their fundraising frauds with Akbar, who they all knew to have a prior record of fraud.

“Team Akbar” has engaged in systematic harassment and/or defamation of everyone who has reported on this story, and even tried to put one of our writers in jail. All of that ends today.

The National Bloggers Club no longer belongs to Ali Akbar

Here is the letter in which Akbar announced the creation of the NBC, asked for donations, and called it a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. In fact, he incorporated the NBC in Texas as a non-profit, and collected donations as a non-profit, but he has never actually applied for legal non-profit status with the IRS.

NBC Fundraising Letter

On February 21st of this year, Akbar lost control of the National Bloggers Club business licence after a year of delinquency. Texas is hardly an anti-business state, so the Secretary of State’s office made several attempts to contact Akbar before they ordered the forfeiture. Given all his attempts to dodge legal process, perhaps Akbar thought that he was being clever by never updating his address? Here is the official forfeiture document from the comptroller:

NBC Forfeited

According to the state of Texas, the National Bloggers Club did not belong to Akbar while it was fundraising for the 2014 CPAC Blog Bash party at the organization’s Rally.org page. Held last night, and hosted by Akbar associate Bill Murphy, the party featured Texas Governor Rick Perry and Tea Party Patriots President Jenny Beth Martin, also of Texas. We hope the attendees enjoyed themselves, because even though Akbar tried to publicly spin off the franchise, last night’s event was probably the last time that any organization called “the National Bloggers Club” will ever hold a party at the premiere conservative conference.

To make things even more embarrassing, Akbar already lost two of his other companies a year ago, but has spent that time conducting business under their names, too.

Vice & Victory Agency has not belonged to Akbar for over a year

In 2012, Dan Backer’s Conservative Action Fund gave Akbar’s Vice & Victory Agency $44,000, and billionaire Foster Friess also sponsored V&V to the tune of $25,000 at startup. Although we do not know Akbar’s receipts for 2013, we do know that V&V was still involved with Akbar’s BlogBash party at CPAC in March of last year, and that Akbar continued accepting donations even though V&V was no longer his company. Here is the official forfeiture document from the comptroller.

Vice & Victory Forefeiture

Like the more recent NBC forfeiture, this was only issued after the Texas Secretary of State’s office spent a year trying to contact Akbar for overdue fees and taxes. You will note the is dated weeks prior to Blog Bash 2013, an event sponsored by V&V. We do not know yet whether V&V sponsored last night’s party, too.

Akbar made false statements under oath about Pundit Syndication, LLC

Last year, our correspondent Bill Schmalfeldt filed a DMCA takedown request against Robert Stacy McCain’s web host over some photographs that Schmalfeldt owned and that he believed McCain was misusing. Ali Akbar filed a counternotice in which he claimed ownership of Pundit Syndication, LLC and a business partnership with McCain. Here is that document:

Akbar's DMCA Counter Notice to Schmalfeldt

But Akbar had already forfeited Pundit Syndication, LLC months before he made that sworn statement. Here is the official forfeiture document from the comptroller. It is dated the same as the one for Vice & Victory because the Texas Secretary of State had been trying to contact Akbar about overdue franchise taxes on both companies for an entire year.

Pundit Syndication Forfeiture

This is awkward. When Akbar announced that R.S. McCain was taking over as editor of his ViralRead website and called it a property of Pundit Syndication last March, Pundit had already been someone else’s property since the day before. By the time Akbar posted his Pundit Syndication “troll policy” on McCain’s blog in August, Velvet Revolution had already owned the company name for five months.

Pundit Syndication belongs to Velvet Revolution

All Akbar’s base are belong to Brett Kimberlin

The most charitable explanation Akbar could possibly offer for all of this — the best excuse we think he might possibly muster — is his own utter incompetence, and perhaps even criminal neglect. In letting these licenses lapse, he has allowed his companies to become the property of Brett Kimberlin, who is currently suing Akbar and all his friends under federal RICO law. Mr. Kimberlin will include all of this information in his amended complaint today. He charges that “Team Akbar” has engaged in racketeering activity to conceal fraud, and now he has very compelling evidence that the NBC, like Pundit Syndication and Vice & Victory, is an ongoing fraudulent enterprise.

At startup, each of these companies could be used to create a bank account and start collecting donations under a corporate name. The simplest, but least charitable explanation for Akbar’s neglect is that he has not been filing taxes or paperwork on any of these business properties in order to hide the assets accrued in those business accounts from the IRS. As we have reported, Akbar is an associate of the Leadership Institute, which trains conservative activists in “how to beat the IRS.” He also ran the Groundswell email listserv that propelled the fake IRS scandal in Congress. We have said all along that Akbar is a feature of the conservative movement, not a bug, and that conservative politics are rife with fraud.

Has Akbar taken his anti-tax belief system all the way to its logical conclusion by evading taxes? We do not know yet, but we look forward to reporting on that question soon enough.

65 thoughts on “Texas Shuts Down The National Bloggers Club”
    1. The epicenter of all the head-popping is CPAC. We hear last night’s party was the biggest and most-successful ever, with Ron Paul on stage as well as Rick Perry and other luminaries, so there is quite a bit of embarrassment to go around today.

          1. That bastard @VinceintheBay scooped my #ironTroll prize last year by IRL trolling judge Preska at Jeremy Hammond’s sentencing. I’m getting too old to compete with such dedication to the craft. I’ve got my 2012 gold, my 2013 silver, and I announced that Conspiracy Brokers was done at the beginning of the year. I just didn’t want Ali Akbar to get blindsided by news of his forfeiture of all of his companies.

  1. UNREAL!!!! This guy is a complete and total fraud. And to think that Governor Rick Perry was at his blog bash. Someone should ask the governor what he thinks of attending an event sponsored by a debit card felon who is still continuing his frauds on the public, not to mention his private donors who donated to him thinking he was actually a business.

      1. Seriously, I wonder if Akbar might not be in some physical danger. No doubt there are some wealthy, powerful people who won’t him to start singing like a little “boidie” if he gets nabbed. I would think now would be a good time for Akbar to protect himself.

          1. I don’t think he knows yet. He has us all blocked and won’t know anything until one of his “friends” tells him. McCain isn’t even up yet, and this news will NOT sit well with a hangover.

  2. “The work @stranahan has been doing exposing the frauds and hucksters of the tea party movement is first class and so appreciated.” – Erick Erickson

    So Backer donates to Democrat David Price and Price writes an amicus curiae on behalf of the McCutcheon v FEC case, in which Backer is Counsel. This is just $1,500 and the McCutcheon case is like the Citizens United case, more one dollar/one vote stuff. This is a benefit for the GOP and I’d say the response from the grassroots is proof positive the Tea Party has come unzipped from the money men who breathed life into it in the first place.

    The outrage of the Tea Party sheeple is funny to behold. How could they not know TheTeaParty.net was the GOP machine controlling their impulses? It was hosted at SmarTech in Chattanooga, Todd Cefaratti’s partner was Donna Weisner-Keene, wife of NRA president David Keene, and Backer couldn’t be any more of a machine guy if he tried.

    The left had this same experience in slow motion from the 2010 midterm through 2012. D.C. expected us to act like a wonky slot machine, occasionally yielding big payoffs for small investments, and to carry the message they crafted. Business as usual had to be protected at all cost, and this is why the spectrum of efforts from the Coffee Party through Occupy Wall Street appeared. The Democrats are as lost as the GOP, their position – “vote for us, we’re less evil” – is still pretty evil.

    Akbar is tragicomic to me. His early twenties were rough, I understand that at a deep, personal level. He comes to, he cleans up, he takes stock. He’s young, he’s handsome, he’s ambitious. He looks good in a suit. If I spoke to someone with his pluses and minuses I’d suggest a sales job, college classes as he can afford them, finding some online activity to polish his writing, and probably Toastmasters. Being in the middle of Texas, he found another path, not realizing just how ugly and polarized U.S. politics have become.

    National Bloggers Club tried to make Kimberlin the Bill Ayers of the 2012 election. Finding the match between Brandon Darby’s voice and the political swatter turned that into a total debacle and the dismissal of Aaron Walker’s LOLSUIT put on the finishing touches. They really should have found something new to do at that time – bothering Brett is clearly a losing proposition.

    If Kimberlin is the legitimate owner what right does he have to the assets of Akbar’s enterprises? Can he close bank accounts? Seize web sites by sending the registrar a notarized document proving ownership?

    1. To somewhat answer your question, our understanding is that Rally.org and other outlets will be receiving cease and desist letters in the coming days. Bank accounts will take longer, and probably require a judge’s order as part of the discovery process.

      1. So the entire fundraising effort is sunk. Akbar has to start from scratch, build a new brand, and this time he’ll get his paperwork done in a timely fashion. Too funny.

  3. I am not shocked by this development but I do urge all of you to contact not only the IRS criminal division but also the FBI to report this. Your documentation is very good evidence of fraud.

    This is outright fraud and Mr. Akbar committed it with the help of a lot of other people. Now they are all subject to a criminal investigation and several of them will get indicted. I believe that it will be Mr. Akbar and whomever is on his board or executive staff. My advice to all of them is to retain a lawyer as soon as possible and make no public statements to anyone. If they believe they are subject to criminal liability, they need to try to make a deal to testify against the others. Remember the adage, the first one to make a deal remains free to make other deals.

    1. We have already copied the NBC’s fundraising page for “Bomber Sues Bloggers” and noted that KU seems to thank everyone who donates heavily.

    2. I don’t know that this is a plea bargain kind of environment. The only real concealment was the deception around the identity of Kimberlin Unmasked, and that’s pretty well stripped. The account creator was Lynn Thomas (Caoilfhionn Malone), the Texas residential IP used likely belongs to Bettina ‘Beth’ Haper, and the only head scratcher is the Detroit area IP. There is a rabbi in the right area with some tantalizing public links to various things, but it’s not sufficient for me to say his name here.

      The rest of what has happened seems to be a combination of the usual disorder that comes from a young person’s first business coupled with right wing disdain for any taxing authority. The FBI can probably get everything it needs for indictments from the bank paperwork alone, and it looks like Kimberlin will have access to that without much of a discovery fight.

      If I were Ali Akbar I would be really worried about the IRS. He was part of Groundswell, the group that launched the anti-IRS conspiracy theory, and now there he sits, with hundreds of thousands in unaccounted for revenue. If Akbar gets indicted John Dennis Pedrie‘s switch from using his middle name to his first name will not begin to conceal his income from the government. I think Devon Wills had already distanced himself, but the financial liability remains.

      They indicted Diana Durand. They indicted Dinesh D’Souza. They indicted Russell Adler. They indicted Harvey Whittemore. They indicted Paul Rogers. They indicted Ravi Singh and Ernesto Encinas. There are a flood of stories like this, just Google “illegal contributions”. The search terms are a bit more complex for fraudulent non-profits, but they are also getting a lot of attention.

      Even so, I disagree with Roger’s assessment that the criminal liability will land on Pedrie and Wills, too. I think they distanced themselves from Akbar after his troubles stared in mid 2012 and they were just too inexperienced to realize they needed to forcefully break any ties, rather than just walking away. This is not the sort of thing that gets one indicted, they’ll likely get questioned and then sent on their way, so long as they haven’t been making deposits or signing checks.

  4. Well, after Ali “Tames his Hair,” he’ll make a little jinglty-ting to his corporation lawyers and they will straighten everything out. Just you wait!

    Depressing to thing about how many ______’s he’s going to have to ______ to raise the money to pay those back taxes and penalties.

  5. I would like to take this opportunity to inform Mr. Kimberlin that if he’s looking for someone to run one of his new acquisitions, I’d like to submit my name for control of Viral Read.

    The thought that R. Stacy McCain is working for me now gives me the warm fuzzies.

          1. Okay, if I’m going to be the Editor-In-Chief of Viral Read I need to be completely serious about this gig as it’s the most important thing to happen.

            Robert Stacy McCain is welcome to continue writing for Viral Read under my regime AND he may continue to write about conservative politics.

            My position isn’t so weak that I am wholly intolerant of dissent.

            Yes, you read correctly – Robert Stacy McCain can continue to write articles in the vein of his political leanings.

            But he will do this as something he’s never been before: AN ETHICAL JOURNALIST.

            That means no more hate-mongering, race-bating, misogyny, playing fast and loose with the facts and he damn sure isn’t going to be allowed to cover stories of which he is personally involved in.

            In other words, this won’t be The Moonie Times.

            And if he helps me make the site profitable, I’ll give him a cut.

            And if he really proves himself capable of the task of which I set out for him, I would be open to making him the managing editor.

            But I’m gonna watch him really close.

  6. I think that the National Blogger’s Club should transform into a coalition specifically focused on young (college-age ?) bloggers learning the basic tenets of journalism ethics and learning how to blog with integrity and how to vet research, etc.

    1. As far as we know you were the first blogger to write about Mr. Akbar, so thank you as well for that.

      Did you like the wrapping and the bow we put on this one?

    2. It’ll be interesting to watch the rebuild effort. Nasty public flameout right in the middle of CPAC, eight months until the 2014 election, RICO suit hanging over him. He’s got to basically start over, get it right this time on the paperwork front, and do so with the IRS likely to apply liens to any account he tries to open. That’s just ugly.

      Anything he tries to do for 2014 is going to be a disaster. He needs to step back and do nothing but get clear of that RICO suit, then start clean and keep it clean.

    1. We did not realize that Mr. Akbar was holding a meeting of anti-IRS Republicans in the NBC suite today. The irony burns, it burns…

      1. Well, he’s already put one obvious lie out there. I seriously doubt if that little chisler is paying an “incorporation lawyer”- and if he is the guy should be fired and disbarred for incompetence. What kind of bungler would let his client go more than a year without filing vital paperwork and not at least warn him to get on the fucking ball? Ali was caught completely flatfooted on this.

        1. I spent a month trying to get an EIN out of Mr. Akbar in 2012 during which time I contacted the people in Texas who did the incorporation. They 100% ignored me. Someone else did get a response, something to the effect of “Yes, we set it up, but he’s not an ongoing client, please leave us alone.”

          1. It’s funny to watch them conflate every single thing out there into some huge conspiracy. Brett Kimberlin funds everything, anyone writing under a pseudonym is clearly Neal Rauhauser, or maybe Bill Schmalfeldt, and any Twitter account that gets under their skin must be the elusive MissAnonNews.

            The latest round of this is happening due to a WordPress blog called BVfiles and an associated Twitter account, @BV_Truth. I first looked at the blog on 3/4/2014 after the noise crossed a certain threshold and I checked out the Twitter account last evening. Looks like someone with good oppo research skills has decided to exercise their 1st Amendment right to anonymous free speech.

            One of the Recorder Wranglers noticed @BV_Truth some time before February 23rd, I see there is a file in the Splunk directory with that date stamp. They’ve all gotten really diligent about sock puppet tracking after the @Prison4You fake report scheme last September.

            There are 538 federal elected positions and at least half that number of positions for each state. Figure roughly fifteen thousand races every election cycle that need at least the level of research that went into that site. Small groups of individuals with lots of baggage blunder into this realm, pick fights with some of the people who got Glenn Beck booted off TV and wiped out Rush Limbaugh’s advertiser pool, then they act genuinely surprised and hurt when someone just cold erases their entire operation with one deft move.

            This being said, I’m off to the store for even more popcorn …

    2. He has to deny it and keep himself together for today, Saturday, and the post conference networking that happens on Sunday. I think it’ll sink in tonight once he lays down to sleep. Are we seeing any reaction anywhere at all?

          1. Sadly, no. I find the imbecilic comments from the piglets even tougher to swallow than the HoggyBlog itself. At least Hoggy never writes more than a couple of paragraphs. One could spend all day wading through the verbal fellatio his butt kissers bestow upon him. Not worth it.

  7. What this says to me is Ali is so busy grifting that he can’t keep up with the declarations that he needed to do to keep his entities kosher.

    What this means for Ali is;

    1.) His liability limitation is lifted during forfeiture and he can be held personally liable for actions taken against his LLC’s
    2.) He cannot transact business as his LLC in the state of Texas during forfeiture.
    3.) Ali can’t BRING suit under the title of his entity. So all those empty threats about suing were just that.

    For Ali to reinstate his businesses it isn’t quite paying the electric bill. Ali will certainly need the help of his attorneys, come current on his taxes (plus penalties), and pay all of his filing fees. There would probably be some kind of grace period to get all of this processed, and tax clearance letter. So, hypothetically he’d be out of business for a while.

    I’m sure the most damning thing Ali would want to hide from is how much money he made, which will become public. I doubt he’s the “pay your taxes” type of guy.

    that’s at least my understanding of it. But geez, what a human cockroach.

    1. Ali can’t do any of those things to recover them, because on forfeiture they were reserved and taken by someone else. They’re gone forever.

  8. Interesting points XCitizen,

    1.) His liability limitation is lifted during forfeiture and he can be held personally liable for actions taken against his LLC’s

    Very true.

    2.) He cannot transact business as his LLC in the state of Texas during forfeiture.

    Yet he has been transacting business after his license to transact business was forfeited, both with the NBC, which was forfeited over 120 days ago, and with Pundit Syndication, which was forfeited on March 13 2013. Vice & Victory appears to have been forfeited during that same time period as Pundit Syndication. Once forfeited any business he transacted in the names of forfeited companies would be considered illegal and fraudulent. Noting also that he has never filed any paperwork, Public Information reports, or even paid taxes long overdue while having money to do so is also considered Tax fraud.

    3.) Ali can’t BRING suit under the title of his entity. So all those empty threats about suing were just that.

    And in that same process suits both civil and criminal can be lodged against him for many things.

    1. Tax Fraud. It appears he spent donated and raised money buying personal computers and paying personal bills, and if he ran them through his business bank account that would be fraudulent.

    2. If he had the money to pay the state of Texas and refused or neglected to do so that would incur heavy penalties to catch him up on all the back tax money owed for each entity he had forfeited, which based upon money ran through his bank accounts could be quite substantial.

    3. He cannot lay claim to The National Bloggers Club, Pundit Syndication or Vice & Victory ever again, or at least without the permission of the current registered name holder which now appears to be Brett Kimberlin.

    The Texas Business Code on names is very clear on that aspect.

    A proposed entity name is similar to an existing name and requires a letter of consent if any of the following conditions exists.

    (2) The first two or more words of a proposed entity name are the same as, or deceptively similar to, the first two words of an entity name on file, and are not frequently used in combination.
    (A) Example: Houston Service and Supply, Inc., would need a letter of consent from Houston Service, Inc.
    (B) Example: Sunset Oil Co. would need a letter of consent from Sunset Oil and Gas, Inc.
    (C) Example: First Texas Mortgage and Title Company would need a letter of consent from First Texas Mortgage Company.

    The other issues with Akbar are that he appears to have been running a very long term scam by mixing personal funds with business funds and vice versa. Texas is very clear on this point, on how that constitutes fraud. When you add in the alleged 501c3 scam that he perpetrated for two years on various donors, and then add the revoking of his licenses to transact business long ago, while at the same time raising money, and then running that money through entities that did not exist or were revoked, well, you have what amounts to a 1st degree felony in Texas if it reaches a certain limit, which I believe is something over 20k-100k. I would need to check the felony statutes for Texas to make sure, but certainly any act that gained over 100k through a given fraud would be a 1st degree felony in Texas.

    If you then look at his past record for fraud in Texas that can be enhanced on subsequent charges, so a 2nd or 3rd degree felony could be enhanced upward one range from 2nd degree to 1st degree, or from say the lowest 4th degree state jail felony to a 3rd degree felony, with added jail time and or harder time given for enhancement. Either way you look at it is that he could be facing some serious time in The Texas Department of Corrections due to his past issues with debit card fraud and burglary, which were separately committed felonies I might add. So he has two felonies on his record now that are separate, and a third felony could bump him up into a 3rd strike felony which could bump him up to a life sentence if the prosecution decided to hang him out to dry as an example.

    Fraud is fraud, and in Texas there are plenty of people who have learned the hard way how easy it is to wind up in TDCJ long term who had minor offenses that were on a smaller scale that what allegedly is at stake here. Mr. Akbar could face serious jail time once the authorities close in on him.

    The case could however get even worse if he has a federal issue: say with the IRS or via Tax Fraud. In that case the federal threshold for interest from the government is only 5000.00 dollars defrauded in any one given year to meet the federal threshold for a federal case.

    So I think Mr. Akbar could have some serious problems down the road, especially with how he has probably comingled his business funds into his personal bank accounts and vice versa. It is clear he never kept records, nor filed paperwork, and very clear he held himself out as a 501c3 many times which is a blatant charity fraud. So I assume once complaints are filed with various entities (if they haven’t been filed already) Mr.Akbar may facing some stiff jail time in his future.

    Once cases are filed or opened there is no real escape from them. They will hone in on his business accounts to see how much money went through them, and then look at the evidence of his alleged fake/fraudulent 501c3 claims and how much money came through after he made those claims. They would also look at funders and who vouched for him to see if they could have or should have known he was a fraud before doing business with him, or even who was pushing him towards other businessmen that could donate to him. So the close in funders to him could be pulled into it if the agencies investigating him decided to check into their activity. Either way Mr. Akbar at this moment in time is as toxic as you can get, and those who know real business will probably start distancing themselves from him pretty quickly, else they could suffer the same fate as him for continuing to vouch for him and his alleged fraudulent activities to others.

    These are only opinions on the options now facing him of course. YMMV given various circumstances in his orbit.

  9. Do any of the business functions that Ali is responsible for require bonding?

    Say, whoever the “treasurer” of his various corporations are?

    I know when I worked at a post office as a contractor, I was bonded by the retail store for up to $10,000 in case I went crazy and stole the cash.

    Does NBC even HAVE a treasurer?

  10. McCain is definitely going to need a drink, now. I just hope BK let’s Stacy keep his hobo hat, it’s all the man owns.

  11. Marci from the looks of the filings Mr. Akbar never filed one ounce of paperwork after paying Mr. Spradlin, who runs one of those out of the box start your own corp firms to set it up. In all these years he never filed business paperwork, never filed public information reports with the State of Texas, never filed or paid any taxes, be they franchise or otherwise, and according to the IRS, he never filed for any 501c3 or 501c4 or anything with the IRS for the National Bloggers Club. It was for all intents and purposes a paper tiger.

  12. Doesn’t Akbar own a server company where he hosts several blogs & websites for others? Are all those websites now seized?

    What about the Breitbart scholarship fund he started after Breitbart’s death claiming every dime would go to his family?

    1. I tried to post a comment containing the list of domains on Ali’s dedicated server, but the system apparently took it to be spam, which is a tiny bit ironic. Here is a pastebin with the domains active as of this morning. I think maybe a third have disappeared since I first looked at it. Do check out TeaPartyFund.com, if there is further fraud to be found that one will have played some role in the scheme.

      http://pastebin.com/M1K6Rb3u

  13. And the only comment I’ve heard yet is Akbar saying he had to tame his hair. Wants to look good for the mug shot, I guess. I did get a very nice photo from R. Stacy McCain who seems completely oblivious to the extreme danger of his current position. It is a picture of McCain, the crazy Dee from Houston, and the perhaps-soon-to-be-charged-criminal-harasser WJJ Hoge. But I can’t really talk publicly about that last part. http://nbc-bloggers-org.howardcountyexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/BiNlX0ACUAArrpa.jpg

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