Including information about his associates
Liberty Lobby Chief Under Investigation for Theft of Millions From Institute for Historical Review
By Mark WeberOn the morning of March 22, a 50-man SWAT team raided the southern California estate of Liberty Lobby chief Willis Carto, seizing a large quantity of evidence for a criminal police investigation of theft of millions of dollars belonging to the Institute for Historical Review.
At the same time, another San Diego County Sheriff’s SWAT team raided the nearby estate of Henry Fischer, a Carto crony whom police suspect played a major role in the crime.
The two estates are a few miles from each other in northern San Diego county. Each is surrounded by a chain-link fence topped by barbed wire. Among the items seized were firearms and some 15 boxes of documents.
Police are sorting through evidence linking Carto and Fischer with the embezzlement of more than seven million dollars bequeathed to the IHR and its parent corporation, Legion for the Survival of Freedom, Inc., (LSF), by Jean Farrel, a grandniece of inventor Thomas Edison.
In charge of the investigation is Larry Rooker, a detective with the economic crimes unit of the Costa Mesa, California, police department. For 27 years he served as senior investigator for the Los Angeles County District Attorney. During most of those years his primary responsibility was the investigation of major fraud cases.
A sensational front-page article about the raid in the April 10 issue of The Spotlight, the Liberty Lobby weekly controlled by Carto, provides a grossly distorted account of the facts. Absurdly calling investigator Rooker a most willing patsy
of the IHR, The Spotlight falsely asserts that he is a friend
of IHR attorney William S. Hulsy. In fact, Rooker and Hulsy have never even spoken with each other.
Curiously, the Spotlight account entirely ignores the police search of Fischer’s mansion. Throughout the Carto-IHR dispute, in fact, Carto and The Spotlight have carefully avoided any mention whatsoever of Fischer, even though this secretive man transferred large amounts of money from an LSF/IHR account in Switzerland to Liberty Lobby.
In keeping with its ongoing campaign against the IHR, the Spotlight article repeats the outrageous lie that a reputed agent for the [Zionist] ADL has been the prime mover behind the IHR takeover from the start.
Likewise untrue is the Spotlight suggestion that FBI or other federal agents were involved in the police search.
In the Statement of Probable Cause
for the search warrant issued for the raid, Rooker declared that he was acting in part on the basis of a complaint of embezzlement against Carto brought by LSF/IHR officials. Copies of documents provided by LSF/IHR were attached as exhibits to the search warrant.
As Rooker noted in his warrant statement, a court had already found that Carto had exercised substantial control over LSF, without any legal authority, by the manipulation of LSF Directors Lewis and LaVonne Furr (an elderly and infirm couple who had subsequently resigned from the board).
Rooker also noted that Carto had arranged for himself and Fischer to be given power of attorney to take control of millions of dollars meant for the IHR from the Farrel estate.
Rooker went on to cite information from the San Diego Sheriff’s office:
Willis Carto previously lived with Fischer on the Pine Heights Way estate [of Fischer] for two or three years. During that time another man, Michael Brown, also lived there. (Brown is the former bodyguard to [American Nazi Party leader] Lincoln Rockwell. Brown was convicted of possessing explosives while trying to blow up the United Nations building.)
There were numerous complaints to the Sheriff’s Department from neighbors on Pine Heights Way about being harassed and intimidated by the residents of Fischer’s estate.
Fischer is a notorious international traveller who was previously implicated in the disappearance of $500,000 in funds from the government of Iraq intended for the Victorian Labour Party in Australia. Fischer disappeared, along with the money, and the scandal was widely reported in the Australian and European press Henry John Fischer also uses the name[s] Henri Fischer, Ken Wilson and D. Staples.
Based on my education and experience,
Rooker wrote, I have formed the following opinions:
Willis Allison Carto and Henry Fischer each, as an agent for LSF appointed specifically to handle assets for LSF, had a fiduciary responsibility to LSF within the meaning of Penal Code sec. 503.
Willis Allison Carto and Henry Fischer diverted more than $7,000,000.00 of LSF assets to their control and use, outside the reach of the management of LSF.
Willis Allison Carto and Henry Fischer have transferred substantial sums of LSF monies to other entities without the knowledge, permission or authority of the management of LSF, to wit: the Liberty Lobby.
Willis Allison Carto, Henry Fischer and others conspired to unlawfully seize custody and control of the premises and records of LSF for the purpose of concealing or destroying evidence of their crimes and preventing exposure to law enforcement authorities and the courts.
We're in the infancy stages of the investigation because of all the paperwork we have to go through,
says Costa Mesa police Sergeant Jerry Holloway. We're looking for a paper trail. We're finding what we're looking for.
(Orange County Register, April 2)
Last July LSF/IHR brought a lawsuit against Carto and Fischer to recover the stolen bequest. In this civil case, Carto is taking the Fifth,
refusing to answer questions on the grounds that the answers may tend to incriminate him. Fischer refuses to cooperate in any way, even to acknowledge the lawsuit. As a result, he has been declared to be in default
in the case.
To conceal his role in the theft of LSF/IHR funds, Carto has lied under oath, fabricated documents, and now conducts a vicious smear campaign, above all in The Spotlight, against the IHR management and IHR supporters.