Dear Al,

Since you do not mention it in your letter but rather thank Joel
Channing, I assume that you must not be aware that a check for $24,000
from the USCF to Jamie Anson bounced last week.

I asked Bill Goichberg about this at the Foxwoods tournament this past
weekend. Goichberg acknowledged that the check had bounced but said
that this was a clerical error caused when the clerk assigned
transferred the money from another account to the account on which the
check had been written did son on the same day that the check hit the
bank, but not in time, as the check had already bounced.

At the same tournament in Foxwoods, I asked Joel Channing, who is
supposedly the VP of Finance, about the bounced check, in the presence
of Don Schultz and Jerry Hanken. Channing did not respond to me but
instead said to Hanken, "If you keep responding to statements like
this, then he will have won".

So, it seems that neither Bill Goichberg nor Joel Channing consider
the matter of the check bouncing for $24,000 to be a very serious
matter. Goichberg told me that never fear, the USCF has $300,000 in
the bank and so Jami will get her money some day soon.

Dona Alarie says that Channing and Goichberg have shown an amazing
ability to do magical tricks with numbers and she is waiting to see
their trick on this one.

As you may be aware, Barbara DeMaro was in the same situation but did
finally get her money but only in large part due to my harassing the
board and the office about this. We were told that with the DeMaro
case settled, all pension issues dating from New Windsor had been
resolved.

With regard to your other point about expense money from the August
2003 US Open in Los Angeles, the notorious often told story is that
Jami Anson went on what amounted to a paid vacation during the US Open
in Los Angeles, when she received a call from Tim Hanke, the newly
elected VP of Finance saying "You're Fired", Donald Trump style. Hanke
told her not to return to New Windsor.

When Tim Hanke and Beatriz Marinello arrived at the USCF Offices on
August 20, 2003 to determine the true statement of USCF Finances, they
found that the laptop computer that had been sitting on Frank Niro's
desk and which contained all correspondence about USCF Finances was
missing. They did not know what had happened to it but we now know
that Polgar and Truong had taken the laptop out the door just a few
minutes before Hanke and Marinello had arrived.

Polgar and Truong later demanded that the USCF pay them in excess of
$15,000 for verbal agreements that they asserted that Frank Niro (who
by then has moved out of your house in New Windsor and was secretly
hiding out in Polgar and Truong's building in Forest Hills, Queens)
had allegedly made with them.

Here is the invoice as posted by Bill Brock:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.g...2e9994ab02f1fd

As you can see they were demanding very excessive amounts of money
such as more than $4,000 for a celebrity appearance at a National
Scholastic in Nashville and per diem allowances of $50 per day for two
persons for 14 days in Los Angeles, for a total of $1400. (Why Mr.
Truong was entitled to be paid a per diem allowance is beyond me.)

Although Tim Hanke, the VP of Finance, stated that they should not be
paid a penny, Bill Goichberg, when he became Executive Director in
December 2003 amazingly paid Polgar and Truong $13,358.36 on this
claim.

I for one want to see a complete review of the events of August 2003
including the disappearance of Frank Niro, the large checks he wrote
to himself on his last day in the office, the moneys he paid to Polgar
and Truong (who are now candidates for election) and of course your
claim that moneys are due to Jami Anson, the former USCF Art Director.

I find it amazing that Goichberg paid $13,358.36 to Polgar and Truong,
who had been calling themselves "volunteers", but did not pay whatever
was due and owing to a 13-year employee like Jami Anson.

However, do not hold your breath waiting for Mr. Goichberg and crew to
provide answers to any of these questions. The first thing that needs
to be answered is that we need to recover the missing laptop. Polgar
and Truong have refused to return it and Bill Goichberg's lapdogs have
not been pressing for its return. However, I have called the Orange
County DAs office to ask that the matter of the missing laptop be
investigated.

Please note that it is a crime to destroy corporate records less than
seven years old. Therefore, if the hard disk on that laptop has been
erased, then a crime has been committed.

In furtherance of their conspiracy to cover up these crimes, the board
majority consisting of Goichberg, Channing and Hough have upheld the
suspension of my posting to the USCF Forums.

Sam Sloan

PS I forwarded your email to Randy Hough, whose address is


http://groups.google.com/group/rec.g...2e9994ab02f1fd

Dear Al,

Since you do not mention it in your letter but rather thank Joel
Channing, I assume that you must not be aware that a check for $24,000
from the USCF to Jami Anson bounced last week.

I asked Bill Goichberg about this at the Foxwoods tournament this past
weekend. Goichberg acknowledged that the check had bounced but said
that this was a clerical error caused when the clerk assigned
transferred the money from another account to the account on which the
check had been written did so on the same day that the check hit the
bank, but not in time, as the check had already bounced.

At the same tournament in Foxwoods, I asked Joel Channing, who is
supposedly the VP of Finance, about the bounced check, in the presence
of Don Schultz and Jerry Hanken. Channing did not respond to me but
instead said to Hanken, "If you keep responding to statements like
this, then he will have won".

So, it seems that neither Bill Goichberg nor Joel Channing consider
the matter of the check bouncing for $24,000 to be a very serious
matter. Goichberg told me that never fear, the USCF has $300,000 in
the bank and so Jami will get her money some day soon.

Dona Alarie says that Channing and Goichberg have shown an amazing
ability to do magical tricks with numbers and she is waiting to see
their trick on this one.

As you may be aware, Barbara DeMaro was in the same situation but did
finally get her money but only in large part due to my harassing the
board and the office about this. We were told that with the DeMaro
case settled, all pension issues dating from New Windsor had been
resolved.

With regard to your other point about expense money from the August
2003 US Open in Los Angeles, the notorious often told story is that
Jami Anson went on what amounted to a paid vacation during the US Open
in Los Angeles, when she received a call from Tim Hanke, the newly
elected VP of Finance saying "You're Fired", Donald Trump style. Hanke
told her not to return to New Windsor.

When Tim Hanke and Beatriz Marinello arrived at the USCF Offices on
August 20, 2003 to determine the true state of USCF Finances, they
found that the laptop computer that had been sitting on Frank Niro's
desk and which contained all correspondence about USCF Finances was
missing. They did not know what had happened to it but we now know
that Polgar and Truong had taken the laptop out the door just a few
minutes before Hanke and Marinello had arrived.

Polgar and Truong later demanded that the USCF pay them in excess of
$15,000 for verbal agreements that they asserted that Frank Niro (who
by then had moved out of your house in New Windsor and was secretly
hiding out in Polgar and Truong's building in Forest Hills, Queens)
had allegedly made with them.

Here is the invoice as posted by Bill Brock:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.g...2e9994ab02f1fd

As you can see they were demanding very excessive amounts of money
such as more than $4,000 for a celebrity appearance at a National
Scholastic in Nashville and per diem allowances of $50 per day for two
persons for 14 days in Los Angeles, for a total of $1400. (Why Mr.
Truong was entitled to be paid a per diem allowance is beyond me.)

Although Tim Hanke, the VP of Finance, stated that they should not be
paid a penny, Bill Goichberg, when he became Executive Director in
December 2003 amazingly paid Polgar and Truong $13,358.36 on this
claim.

I for one want to see a complete review of the events of August 2003
including the disappearance of Frank Niro, the large checks he wrote
to himself on his last day in the office, the moneys he paid to Polgar
and Truong (who are now candidates for election) and of course your
claim that moneys are due to Jami Anson, the former USCF Art Director.

I find it amazing that Goichberg paid $13,358.36 to Polgar and Truong,
who had been calling themselves "volunteers", but did not pay whatever
was due and owing to a 13-year employee like Jami Anson.

However, do not hold your breath waiting for Mr. Goichberg and crew to
provide answers to any of these questions. The first thing that needs
to be answered is that we need to recover the missing laptop. Polgar
and Truong have refused to return it and Bill Goichberg's lapdogs have
not been pressing for its return. However, I have called the Orange
County DAs office to ask that the matter of the missing laptop be
investigated.

Please note that it is a crime to destroy corporate records less than
seven years old. Therefore, if the hard disk on that laptop has been
erased, then a crime has been committed.

In furtherance of their conspiracy to cover up these crimes, the board
majority consisting of Goichberg, Channing and Hough have upheld the
suspension of my posting to the USCF Forums.

Sam Sloan

PS I forwarded your email to Randy Hough, whose address is


http://groups.google.com/group/rec.g...2e9994ab02f1fd

At 07:47 AM 4/10/2007 EDT, wrote:
Dear EB members-- A little intro: I understand that Joel Channing has
stepped in to put things right in the matter of Jami Anson's pension fund
odyssey. I want to thank him. I apologize for the occasional formality of
the following, but I want to be clear that my request is a formal one. And
I should note that Randy is omitted from this email only because his
address is not on the USCF EB site. Thanks in advance for reading.

I respectfully request that the EB investigate the status of the
employees' pension moneys going back to August of 1996, when I had
personal knowledge of their status. The EB should determine the
following: Have the proper amounts since been deposited and maintained
separately in an appropriate manner? Have the proper records been
maintained and provided to employees? Have the proper transfers been made
in a timely way?

I submit that the recent mishandling of Jami Anson's partial pension-fund transfer, resulting in a bounced check to her account, should concern all of you on a number of levels. Additionally, you should be aware that she states that she was asked by a member of the USCF finance department to "settle" for $12,000 to clear up the matter. (The let's-make-a-deal approach to pension funding!) Apparently, she was further told by the same spokesman that the employees' pension fund had long been under-funded and improperly reported. If the EB determines that there is any truth to those allegations, it should raise concerns about our auditing process.

I request that the EB see that former employee Jami Anson promptly receives her proper and full pension-fund transfer, with appropriate interest since 1993, according to her long-submitted request.

Additionally, I ask that Jami Anson's long-due work expenses be reimbursed. These expenses include money she paid out of pocket stemming from her last US Open (2003), where she was on assignment when she was fired by telephone. These expenses had been submitted to Frank Niro but were apparently misplaced.

It would be reasonable to reimburse at least the minimum expenses allowed for the trips and duties that can be reconstructed. Many people knew she was at the US Open when she was fired. There must have been some minimum USCF per diem established; the hotel rate was known, and there were others on staff who flew to that Open and turned in an expense amount for the air ticket. I understand that at that time, all employees were fronting these expenses. Jami used her personal credit card.

Jami gave 19 years of service to USCF. Every employee deserves to receive due pension fund transfers in a timely way. It is especially lamentable that Jami, who worked as hard for USCF as anyone I ever knew, has for too long been treated in this way. Perhaps you know that, on a separate matter, USCF has tried to block payments to her doctors for treatment and testing of a back injury she received falling down near her workstation when the lights were turned off one night by a supervisor at the old USCF CL office in New Windsor. This is a separate matter of course, but a context I can't help but note.

Thank you for considering this request. I would appreciate your letting me know your intention to consider these requests formally. I would be happy to answer any questions that I can by email or telephone. Although I'm in Hong Kong, there is a US number that will reach me: 305-515-8002. Please understand the 12-hour time difference--evening or morning your time is the best way to catch me.

Some of you may know that, while associate director of the USCF, I proposed the pension plan and was then put in charge of setting up the original paperwork when the Steve Doyle administration approved the idea. I consider it one of the many shining achievements of that administration, and regret that USCF can no longer look after its long-term employees in the same way.

Best regards,


Al Lawrence
Former USCF Executive Director

On Apr 10, 11:07 am, "samsloan" wrote:
At the same tournament in Foxwoods, I asked Joel Channing, who is
supposedly the VP of Finance, about the bounced check, in the presence
of Don Schultz and Jerry Hanken. Channing did not respond to me but
instead said to Hanken, "If you keep responding to statements like
this, then he will have won".

So, it seems that neither Bill Goichberg nor Joel Channing consider
the matter of the check bouncing for $24,000 to be a very serious
matter.

Alternate interpretation: they consider Sloan an insufferable pest
whose queries rarely merit an answer, as their intent is only to draw
attention to himself, rather than serve any worthwhile purpose.

At 11:01 AM 4/10/2007 -0400, Joel Channing wrote:


Actually, all I did was to ask Bill Hall for a memo about how this happened and how we could be assured it wouldn't happen again under his administration. By copy of this memo I am asking Bill Hall to put this on our May agenda and explain the status of the fund to us then.

Joel

On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 11:04:27 -0400, Joel Channing wrote:

This is so full of lies and distortions, that I don't know where to
begin, so I won't bother. Joel Channing

Dear Joel Channing,

I note that you cannot answer my questions, nor can you answer the
questions from Al Lawrwence, from the USCF LMA Committee, from the
USCF Finance Committee, from Donna Alarie, from Beatriz Marinello or,
it seems, from anybody else.

You keep telling us to wait until you complete your Phase II report,
which you plan to complete some day.

Telling Bill Hall to "write a memo" is certainly a good step, as I
would like to see a written explanation as to why a check for $24,000
bounced. Otherwise, we will just be told some day that the check has
been paid and there is to be no further discussion of this.

Meanwhile, Joe Lux says that he has called Bill Hall about this and
Bill Hall says that the issue is "complicated".

Just as I do not want any money withheld that Jami Anson is entitled
to receive, I also do not want her to get more of USCF membership dues
money than she is entitled to either.

It seems that you are in water over your head. You cannot answer any
question. You just keep telling all of us to wait.

I think you ought to consider resigning. You seem to be in water over
your head. You have been VP of Finance for nearly two years. I am not
aware of anything of a positive nature that you have accomplished in
that position in those two years. You seem to have just made matters
worse.

I had great hopes for you when you were elected in August, 2005. If
you will search you will find that I often stated that I see in you a
Future President of the USCF. I do not see that any more. I see a VP
of Finance who says, when a check for $24,000 bounces, that the
Executive Director should write a memo and we should discuss this
matter at a meeting next month.

Writing a check with no money in the bank is a crime and you cannot
suspend me from posting to the USCF Forums for saying that. I think
the time has come for you to resign.

Sam Sloan

At 01:23 AM 4/15/2007 EDT, wrote:
In a message dated 4/15/2007 12:34:21 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
writes:


Sometime between the Prisco problem and the Anson problem the pension funds
have apparently shifted from an outside, independent account, not in the
control of the Federation, to an account within the control of the USCF. My
belief in this matter comes from Mr. Goichberg's statements that he is a
signatory to those accounts and the fact that the alleged bounced checks
originated from the USCF and Mr. Hall stated that they would be taken care
of by the USCF.

I WOULD LIKE TO EMPHASIZE HERE THAT IN MY VIEW THIS SHIFT FROM AN OUTSIDE
ACCOUNT TO AN INSIDE ACCOUNT OCCURRED BEFORE MR. GOICHBERG BECAME PRESIDENT
AND BEFORE MR. HALL BECAME EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR. Nonetheless, they, and we,
have to deal with it.

If it did, it was prior to Dullea's term.

In my view, pensions are regulated by Federal Law. A shift of assets from a
pension account to a USCF account is, in my view, a violation of Federal Law.

It's still a pension or profit sharing account- managed by USCF, but not a
USCF account.

Further, if such a shift did occur, GAAP requires that a separate fund for
pensions and their liabilities be recognized on the audited annual USCF
statements, even if it is illegal. To my knowledge, no such shift has been
recognized in our statements.

I think that they once did give details.

Thus, in this lay person's opinion, the U.S. Chess Federation is operating
in violation of Federal Law.

I don't think so.

My recommendation is that we pursue this matter vigorously.

AT THE VERY LEAST, FULL BANK STATEMENTS FROM THE DELAWARE BANK ACCOUNTS
FROM THEIR INCEPTION MUST BE MADE PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE.

NOW.

Yes.

And we need to cooperate in pursuing appropriate criminal indictments
against those responsible.

NOW.

Not to do so is to become complicit with crime.

Almost certainly, there has been no crime. Bill Goichberg

Of course, I hope I'm wrong about this matter. I fear, however, that I am not.

Cordially,

Tim Redman


I am shocked by Bill Goichberg's statement above "Almost certainly,
there has been no crime" when it is perfectly obvious that there has
been a crime, for the simple reason that a check was written for
$24,000 signed by Bill Goichberg and Joel Channing with no money in
the bank. Writing a check with no money in the bank is a crime. I
realize that a public prosecutor is probably not going to be much
interested in this case now that the check has apparently been made
good after bouncing twice, but nobody should say that no crime has
been committee when a crime has been committed.

I am glad to see that now Tim Redman is weighing in with complaints
about this, with the result that Joel Channing has ordered an
explanation from Bill Hall stating "I want you to send a detailed
response to Tim's letter to everyone listed above no later than Monday
morning. I also want a memo no later than Monday afternoon ..." This
in spite of the fact that, this weekend, Bill Hall is at the National
High School Championship in Kansas City. (Remember that this is one of
the National Scholastic tournaments that is supposed to make us back
the $241,000 we were losing according to the January financial
statements.)

Previously, when it was just me complaining about the bouncing check,
Joel Channing had merely orderded Bill Hall to prepare a memo for the
May 19-21 meeting.

It is obvious that the bouncing check is a symptom of a much bigger
problem. This problem has been going on for a long time. I complained
about it in my first meeting of the board on August 14, 2006, but I
knew that there was a problem with the pension account nearly two
years before that. Now, we learn that there is a bank account in
Delaware that nobody previously knew about and for some reason money
must be moved from some other account to that account in order for a
pension check to be paid.

And nobody has mentioned the 800-pound gorilla in the room, which that
a lot of improper things are known to have been done while Frank Niro
was Executive Director, and the laptop computer Frank Niro used while
working for the USCF has gone missing, and neither Bill Goichberg nor
Bill Hall are taking appropriate steps to get that laptop back.

The fact that the Delaware account had Frank Niro's name on it should
raise some eyebrows since Frank Niro left the employment of the USCF
in August, 2003, nearly four years ago.

What about the fact that Bill Goichberg was Executive Director for 15
months from October 2003 to December, 2004? Why did not Bill Goichberg
do something about this during the 15 months when he was in a position
to do so?

I would like to ask Joel, our esteemed VP Finance, how a nonprofit
organization can have a profit-sharing plan!

The outside world does not know it yet, but I have just been censured
again on a motion by Channing and Goichberg for making remarks
critical of Bill Hall. There seems to be a pattern here. Every time I
uncover a serious problem and point it out, rather than address the
problem, the board majority immediately censures me. It happened in
the Tanner case and now it is happening with the bounced check. As
long as I do not vote on these repeated motions to censure me, the
board majority of Channing, Goichberg and Hough have enough votes to
censure me every day if they want to. That still will not cure their
problem of the bounced check.

I think that Bill Hall should have been fired months ago and Joel
Channing and Bill Goichberg should resign now.

Sam Sloan

Al Lawrence is my friend.