Doesn't just seeing Anthony Hopkins make you feel warm and fuzzy?

One individual wanted to get into contact with another commenter, and so I helped him do so, and he also supplied me with some more information about Ingram.

Apparently, the guy that left a comment about having lunch with George in Chicago sparked the interest of the gentleman I was in contact with. According to him, George is violating the terms of his probation and he should still be under house arrest in San Antonio, TX.

He also led me to this write-up on George Ingram III in an oil industry newspaper. It's very revealing to say the least, but you'll have to pay five bucks if you want to read it. It discusses his attempt to take control of Petroecuador, Ecuador's state-run oil company, through some sort of ridiculous scheme where he would put 'no money down.' He also made very ambitious claims regarding potential future increases in oil production. Of course, if the deal went through, Ingram's Denver-based company Global Intelligence Corporation would receive a $155-mil contract to provide "data systems [based on] secretive decision software software supposedly in use by the US Department of Defense."

Central to all of his schemes are his ready promises of vast amounts of cash. However, this is cash that he doesn't have access to at the moment - because according to him it is tied up in illiquid foreign investments.

At least two Ingram relatives say his claims of great wealth and secretive government links are pure fantasy... "There was no big inheritance," says one cousin: "It's a fairy tale. The whole family is mystified."

"He's one of the biggest liars ever created, or he's a man of incredible means," says Texas lawyer Edward Watt. Watt won a $50,0000 judgement against Ingram in 2003 for unpaid legal bills, despite elaborate counter-claims Ingram raised, and lost. Watt says he does not expect to be paid, convinced Ingram is un-collectable.

MF Smith blasted [Ingram's claims of great wealth in his chapter 11 bankruptcy filing] as "incomplete, inconsistent, and unverifiable" and noted Ingram did not own a car, could not pay the $850 bankruptcy filing fee and his house had been foreclosed in 2000. "What is an individual with a net worth of $1.7-bil doing in bankruptcy?"

Edward C. Bahl

One commenter named 'Denis Robinson' with an e-mail address tied to globalintelcorp.com is most likely Ingram himself. Global Intelligence Corporation (GIC) is the fraud shell company that Ingram set up in order to facilitate the 'investments' he attempts to con out of people. The most amusing part as far as I am concerned is that the company purports to be an expert in 'Business Intelligence' - something I know more about than I would like.

This 'Denis Robinson' attempts to slag the name of a one Edward C. Bahl, who apparently was just another one of George's victims, along with such information-age stalwarts as Verizon and IBM.

Verizon was never paid [for funding a Global Intelligence Corporation operation] and the hardware disappeared. Ingram blamed his employees for stealing, says Edward Bahl, whose firm was stuck wtih $100,000 in unpaid consultant billings. . . "I should have known then that Ingram was a fraud," says Bahl, who went on to help Ingram found GIC in Denver, funding much of that development by maxing out his own credit cards. Ingram blames Bahl for GIC's downfall.

Ingram is often lucky in that his victims would rather not admit to their being conned out of lock, stock, and barrel and thus sometimes do not file formal complaints.

Oh yea, what about good old American PureTex Water Corporation that had such big plans to open the 'World's Largest Bottled Water Plant' in Texas?

PureTex's only "asset," says Bahl, may be the gold-plated board Ingram persuaded to lend their names to the venture. They have included former Space Shuttle pilot and Marine Gen. Charles Bolden, ex-NASA Johnson Space Center head George Abbey, president Michael Frazier of Houston Investment bank Simmons & Co, and Fulbright & Jaworski law partner Howard Wolf.

White Collar Psychopath? (a clinical definition)

some consider the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be a dyed-in-the-wool psychopath

Tax laws are often obscenely labyrinthine, and the publications that go along with your income taxes are no less so. For better or worse, the greater your knowledge of the tax code, the better off you'll be in this country.

So when I did my taxes this year, I went and looked for ways to reduce the amount I would have to pay. It turns out that I missed the one real gravy train I had - work that 401k! I contributed to my 401k a decent amount the past year, but I could have put more into it.

Instead of working my 401k harder this year, I elected to start a Roth IRA. Normally you only get the benefit of the Roth IRA when you take the money out, but I noticed an interesting credit that you can get for 'Qualified Retirement Savings Contributions' and Roth IRA contributions count towards this credit! (as well as 401k and traditional IRA contributions)

Unfortunately, as an individual earning over 26000 AGI (line 38 on the 1040) I cannot take this credit.

But my girlfriend could take pretty big advantage of this particular credit - mainly because she skated into the right AGI based on a student loan interest deduction.

It makes perfect sense to use a Roth IRA to take advantage of this credit, particularly if you are a young person that is currently earning a lower income, but a higher tax bracket is almost guaranteed later in life. Also, it's the only way to get an immediate tax benefit from a Roth IRA.

The thing is though, that the way they structure this credit, the only way you can get the maximum benefit (50 cents on the dollar more or less) is if your tax bill comes to at least $1000 and you contributed at least $2000 to your retirement account. However, the way it is structured, there is no way that any one person can achieve the full $1000 credit.

the retirement credit multiplier

I know that no one can achieve the full credit because I went through these forms in an attempt to achieve the full $1000 credit for my girlfriend, who due to various reasons earned a very low income for the year. Namely, after her student loan interest deduction, her income skated in under the $15,500 mark that is needed to get the maximum multiplier (0.5) that this credit uses. If you are over 15,500 in AGI, but under 26,000 the best multiplier you can get is .2! The multiplier is crucial, because this number essentially represents how much on the dollar (in reduced income taxes) the government will give you for each dollar you add to your retirement accounts - up to the first $2000 worth of contributions. So if my girlfriend contributes $2000 to a retirement account, she will be able to claim $1000 worth of retirement saver's credit.

However, her tax bracket means that she only owes $663 in taxes for 2007. Therefore, the maximum retirement saver's credit that she can claim is $663 - if she contributes at least $1326 to a retirement account for the 2007 tax year. This means she will pay no federal income tax for the 2007 tax year!

Not a bad deal! But considering the income levels that this credit is intended for, shouldn't they bump up their assistance a bit more? The only reason my girlfriend will be able to take advantage of this is because I'm willing to float her an interest-free loan (and I was willing to operate as her free tax professional).

our tax laws pay lip service to equality, while squeezing the little guy

What percentage of people eligible for this credit end up using it? Slim to none I imagine. How many people with incomes under 26k a year even have retirement accounts? How many people with these sorts of incomes are even aware of such tax possibilities? Considering that $1326 is about 8.5% of a 15,500 adjusted gross income, how could such a person contribute that much money to a retirement account, even if they knew they would get 100% of their withheld federal taxes returned to them?

I believe people at such income levels should be encouraged to save more money, and our government should be lending its assistance in any way possible. This is clearly not what is happening.

Either way though, if you're a starving-artist young person-type, you should really be looking at this credit with some dollar signs in your eyes! It's the government's form of 401k matching, more or less.