AiG has demanded that I take down this post, so I have.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
AiG has demanded that I take down this post, so I have.
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They’re religious types so it could also be sexual tourism. Is there an island of children in the Caymans? Where was Epstein’s island?
To convert the heathens to bitcoin. I mean Jesus, definitely to Jesus.
I imagine Ken will soon start Christian outreach programs in Vegas and Aspen.
Ham et al. are big fans of the Kingdom of Haven.
No, that doesn’t make sense… That sort of tax evasion generally doesn’t require regular visits – or indeed, any visits at all. If all of the people using the Caymans for tax purposes had to actually go there, they’d need a much bigger airport.
The only reasons I can think of are that they want to discuss things with their local lawyers which are so flat-out illegal that they daren’t discuss them over the phone, or they’re running drugs.
John Grisham explained everything you need to know about why AiG is taking quick trips down to the Caymans. The book is great and the movie is surprisingly great too. You just need to ignore that Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise.
Dunc, #8,
One possibility I can think of is that perhaps the plane is actually registered as operating out of the Cayman Islands for some kind of tax purposes, and to maintain that fiction it has to visit every so often.
I imagine they’re flying down there with sacks of the cash from donations (well they’re certainly not making a profit as a business) that they say they’re spending on infastructure. Wouldn’t do for there to be a traceable electronic trail….
Hmm. And, it totally would have no impact at all if, say some authorities asked for one, there was “no paper trail at all”, and they couldn’t show how vast amounts of money got spent, or if it was spent at all, right? lol That is the thing with con artists, they think that because they have scammed and confused gullible people with there genius ideas that everyone else is also an idiot, then… they discover that they are no where near as smart as they thought they where, and when the wrong person takes notice none of their bullshit works. But then, this is the point of electing con artists to political office, then having those con artists appoint other con artists to things like courts…
cartomancer, @ #9: No, the registration number tells you where an aircraft is registered. The “N” prefix means it’s registered in the USA.
If I was a rich villain, I would go full Zorin and get an airship instead.
The aircraft needs vectored thrust engines, so it can hover and land vertically in the volcanic lair.
@ #11 birgerjohansson
Wouldn’t in this case an ark be more on theme?
strangerinastrangeland @ 13
An ark in space, like Hugo Drax in Moonraker!
Taking up where Epstein left off?
Do you remember the mob boss birthday scene from The Godfather Part II? BTW, that’s how it really was in Cuba before Castro cleansed the country of the Italian-American mafia.
Anyway, now imagine the same scene but with the dons replaced with various televangelists. It’s Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen and other various grifters who were flown down on private jets sitting at a table with Ham at the head. They’re plotting something nefarious.
Do you remember the mob boss birthday scene from The Godfather Part II? BTW, that’s how it really was in Cuba before Castro cleansed the country of the Italian-American mafia.
Anyway, now imagine the same scene but with the dons replaced with various televangelists. It’s Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen and other various grifters who were flown down on private jets sitting at a table with Ham at the head. They’re plotting something nefarious.
I’m not sure how I managed to double post that.
Are the US tax breaks a rebate on what they don’t pay in the Caymans?
This has already been answered above.
You don’t want to send tens of millions of dollars of cash US currency through the mail. Especially mailing that money from Kentucky to the Cayman islands.
The most obvious explanation is that they are taking bags of cash from the Ark Park to the Cayman islands and depositing it in their Cayman islands bank accounts. To evade taxes and oversight.
Which BTW, is probably totally illegal.
All bank transactions over $10,000 dollars are supposed to be reported to the Federal government.
That is how Kent Hovind got caught.
He made a lot of cash deposits just under the $10,000 limit, which in itself was suspicious.
I actually knew someone who is now living in the Cayman islands.
He was a guy married to a friend’s daughter.
Who ran a dodgy hedge type fund that made a huge amount of money a few decades ago. I don’t know how much exactly but a lot, millions of dollars.
Much of which ended up illegally in the Cayman islands.
It worked but there were a few problems.
He is living there now and can’t come back to the USA. Because there are Federal arrest warrants out on him.
That ended his marriage. His wife and kids didn’t want to be trapped on the Cayman islands.
Last I heard, he was drinking alcohol heavily and was probably going to have a hazy but short life. The Cayman islands are small and boring and there isn’t a lot to do there but hang around the bars and casinos.
I don’t understand the flight record linked to in the OP. There’s something screwy about it. I think it shows four flights on the same day, unless those are the date the records were pulled.
Still, there’s a question of why he needs to go to the Cayman’s at all. Tax haven I get, but as said earlier, there’s no reason to go there unless they are ferrying contraband of some sort.
Epstein’s private island was in the Virgin Islands, not so ironically.
raven @ #20 — So the implication is that he is ferrying contraband in the form of undocumented cash donations. I wonder if he actually goes himself or just sends it in his private jet with some underlings.
Aw, come on PZ, we all know faux Christian avarice knows no bounds.
robro: the records show, bottom to top, flight from Hamilton OH to Vero Beach, then to Grand Cayman, then to Cincinnati, then back to Hamilton.
The flight Grand Cayman to Cinci shows they could make it in one go (Hamilton is in the suburbs) but jet fuel is expensive in Hamilton so they probably just went as far as they could with the fuel they had on the way down, then coming home they refuelled in Cinci to save $0.50/gallon.
So yeah: they’re doing something shady, and also trying to be cheap on gas.
The main two reason would be money or sex (or both).
#26
That’s exactly what I’m thinking and believing. Dumb Idiot Ham traveling to the Cayman Islands every day to engage in drug, sex, labor, human trafficking, engaging in drug money, oil lobbying. It’s getting clear that Dumb Idiot Ham is using the Christian ministry he founded in 1994 as a cover up for his criminal operations, which he spent years moving Heaven and Earth to cover up from his gullible, ignorant followers by publishing books, film, and other forms of media and literature promoting young earth fantasies and falsely painting Darwin as an “enemy of God” who exposes the scientific fact that White-skinned mankind descended from dark-skinned primitives.
Why the “Dumb Idiot Ham” moniker? He’s not up for election. Why not “piece of shit” or “human garbage”? I’ve overheard the daycare preschoolers next door call each other far worse things than “dumb idiot”…
Has anyone given the heads-up to a journalist about this? Surely someone would be interested in asking the question of AIG, at least. I can’t find any reference to the matter that doesn’t point back to this blog post.
There could be a legit explanation — some owners lease out their private jets to defray costs, so they might have a regular customer who flies to the Cayman Islands — but then again, we won’t know until we see what AIG have to say for themselves.
“robro: the records show, bottom to top, flight from Hamilton OH to Vero Beach, then to Grand Cayman, then to Cincinnati, then back to Hamilton.
The flight Grand Cayman to Cinci shows they could make it in one go (Hamilton is in the suburbs) but jet fuel is expensive in Hamilton so they probably just went as far as they could with the fuel they had on the way down, then coming home they refuelled in Cinci to save $0.50/gallon.”
I doubt that the local airport in Hamilton is international so it would have no customs/immigration officials. He probably has to return via a US airport with a customs office (you can get preclearance at a few international airports such as some in Canada but the Caymans airport is not one of them).
First guess: money laundering.
Second guess: money laundering.
Third guess: tie between money laundering and child porn.
Taxes are not the point. Being a tax-exempt nonprofit is useful for many things, but bad if you want to hide money. The financial records of nonprofits are open and available to the public. So, I’m thinking like AstroLad, money laundering. I wonder about the frequency of the trips, though – those private jets are not cheap to run. Which raises the possibility that AIG’s money may not be, ah, the only money involved.
This is not an original idea. Nonprofits have been set up for such purposes in the past. But, of course, I’m just speculating wildly. Maybe someone has a fetish for over-ocean flights.
Just curious if anyone knows how often the jet makes such one day trips to the Caymans and back?
Meh.
He rips off the credulous, he grifts off government grants, he pretends to be religious.
Obs, all a scam. Quite overt, but quite legal. Thus it is.
In the scheme of things, barely makes the grade. Small beer. Little fishy in a big pond.
cf. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/02/12/taylor-swift-private-jets-super-bowl/
Robro:
The answer is ‘Yes’.
Someone most definitely knows.
That’s why I am very doubtful there’s anything overtly criminal going on with the flights. Unlike Kent Hovind, who was a sovereign citizen who deliberately avoided paying taxes for over 20 years before he was finally brought to justice, I think Ham is more than happy to live off the income from his Ark Park scam and the government handouts and tax breaks his properties have received over the years.
If he, his family, or staff are availing themselves of regular jaunts to the Cayman Islands for personal reasons, that would be more than enough scandal in itself to warrant a resignation in any normal non-profit, but for outfits like AIG, it’s just business as usual and the donors and supporters will be far more likely to defend him than demand dismissal.
Intrinsic racism? They do have a preference for whiteness?
StevoR, nope.
You are as much as asking if racism is the very same as creationism, and implying you think it actually is.
(It ain’t)
@ ^ John Morales : It might not be identical but I’m pretty sure there’s a very big overlap on the Venn diagram with those.
I’d be surprised if there wasn’t.
John Morales @ #35 — Thanks, John, just the info I was looking for.
Lots of fact-free speculation in this thread, including PZ. The facts are:
– AiG is a fractional (25%) owner of a 29-year-old Citation Jet N190JK (just google the registration). I could not find the other owners, though a 25% state was for sale (see https://www.aircraft.com/aircraft/198951549/n190jk-1995-cessna-citation-v-ultra )
– The aircraft is legally owned by ‘Answers Collective’ in the name of attorney John E Pence. Likely this is the same guy who was political advisor to Donald Trump. Mike Pence is his uncle: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pence. See also https://www.bizapedia.com/ky/answers-collective-inc.html
– The flight log shows 12 trips in the past 2 months, two of them to the Cayman Islands. Most of the trips are to Allentown, PA.
– Since it is partial ownership we cannot conclude that those Cayman flights were for AiG. The flights to Allentown more likely carried Ken H.
“Third guess: tie between money laundering and child porn.’
why so exclusive? we should be inclusive.
it’s both, of course.
“Lots of fact-free speculation in this thread”
we’re still falling FAR short of AIG and Ken Ham though.
COME ON BOYZ! SPECULATE HARDER!
“To convert the heathens to bitcoin. I mean Jesus, definitely to Jesus.”
Where’s my NFT Jesus? come on! there are still avenues left to exploit, er I mean “explore” out there!
“The book is great and the movie is surprisingly great too. You just need to ignore that Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise.”
The scientologists holding up the creationists!
It’s grifters, all the way down!
” ‘Why are creationists so pasty pale at Answers in Genesis?’
Intrinsic racism? They do have a preference for whiteness?”
Was the vampire angle mentioned? They ARE bloodsuckers after all.
” The financial records of nonprofits are open and available to the public. ”
Uh, hate to tell you, but for the last, oh, forever in the US, the IRS VERY rarely investigates the records of those registered as church groups. I literally had a girlfriend whose entire job working for the IRS was investigating churches. She was the only one in her entire group whose job that was. 90% of the potential cases she submitted were simply tossed without comment. 90% of the cases that were accepted for investigation were never actually investigated. of the remaining 1%, she had a 100% conviction rate on. that was… 2 cases in 5 years.
kinda put things in perspective for me.