During the press conference at the end of Operation Avalanche in America, the scene was set with a proud presentation of the real home page of Landslide. Nearly a year later, the UK's Operation Ore launched in the media with a fake one.
Michael Mead of USPIS was shown a version of the real home page when giving evidence to a UK trial via video link on 05/10/2005. This is part of the transcript:
Q. And what I'm putting to you is that prior to the 1st May if you had visited that web page, "landslide.com" that is what you would have seen. You would have seen a Landslide picture with the word "Landslide" in it and you would have seen the words "Are you looking for AVS? or Keys". Are you able to agree with that?
Michael Mead: No sir, I never saw that on the home page from my recollection. I've never -what you've just showed up, I've never seen that document.
Once again we have a problem, as Sharon Girling issued a sworn statement by way of correction on 05/02/2003 as follows:
Further to my statement dated 29th January 2003 I also produce the front screen of the Landslide website as my exhibit SAG/08. This page was stored on the cd rom supplied by Postal Inspector Michael MEAD as exhibit MM/4.
MM/4 was given to Sharon Girling on 02/10/2002, which contained the sites visited when Dallas Detective Nelson subscribed to and others during his investigation, and Michael Mead never saw it before, despite the fact he alleged to have seen other pages in the same evidence, to have been investigating this evidence, and the US media showed the real home page.
What Michael Mead gave to Sharon Girling and had never seen, was shown at the USPIS press conference at the end of Operation Avalanche on 08/08/2001, the mountain scene being part of the real Landslide home page. Michael Mead attended the Landslide trial, and the real home page was shown there too.
Lies can be denied, but can a contradiction be true?
Michael Mead (USPIS) and Detective Steve Nelson (Dallas Police) provided sworn testimony which was used in Operation Ore trials. The statements were no less than a farce, littered with easily evidenced lies, contradictions and incompetence. An example known contradiction below:
Steven Nelson Dallas PD (2002)
'Clients had requested refunds directly from Landslide.com. Rather than provide refunds to the clients, Landslide.com, in reply, directed the clients to a site called PUSSIES 4 U.'
compared with
Michael Mead USPIS (2002)
'Landslide, Inc. policy was to refund monies to any person who requested, regardless of the reason. They would rather lose an individual client then incur the cost of a chargeback.'
and
David Cruz Landslide employee turned prosecution witness (2002)
'It was Landslide's policy to refund any person who asked for whatever reason, even those who requested such after almost completing their access time.'
and known by
Sharon Girling SOCA / NCS (2002)
'At this time I interviewed Detective Steven NELSON, Postal Inspector Robert ADAMS and Postal Inspector Michael MEAD, and took their written statements.'
Michael Mead made an extraordinary statement, on 05/10/2005, when giving sworn testimony to a UK court room:
Michael Mead USPIS (2005)
'I don't personally know of any verified instances when someone stole a credit card and utilised it and gained access to a website.'
Michael Mead tended to contradict himself rather often.
Michael Mead sworn testimony (2002)
'During the time that we monitored the website, the banners did not alter in any way.'
and then
Michael Mead sworn testimony (2005)
'From the initiation of our investigation through an unknown date which is somewhere around the 1st May, every time we logged onto the Landslide home page that banner was there for that period of time. Subsequent to the 1st May it was not there.'
That is despite the fact that in the original Landslide trial, the video that verified this evidence had gone missing and the web capture evidence investigated by Dane Ritcheson, the forensic examiner for USPIS, told a different story, as the banner wasn't there.
Michael Mead told many stories. It all started with a whole series of lies, so the story had to change as each lie was uncovered, the old game of moving targets. The fact he committed perjury in a UK court is enough, it is simply a matter of public record that he lied in order to incriminate innocent people, perverting the course of justice.
US child porn investigator (Mead) briefs Curtin committee.
http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/topstories/8873600?view=Eircomnet
Michael Mead of USPIS testified on oath in a UK court, he had never seen a single case of evidenced credit card fraud ever. If Michael Mead was telling the truth, his current job with the online fraud department of Blockbuster is rather a waste of time.
28/12/06 More Mead Lies
We now have technical evidence and testimony to support our assertion that US expert prosecution witness, Michael Mead, deliberately lied about the Landslide evidence and thus helped to falsely incriminate thousands of people worldwide.
His evidence was vital in the mounting of national programs, such as operations Ore, Amethyst and Snowball. He also tried to repeat some of his evidence at the Judge Brian Curtin parliamentary committee ‘trial’ but it collapsed because of the new information we produced concerning his false testimony.
Here first is some technical background. When you store multiple records in a file, it is typically called a database, for example the subscriber database at Landslide which stored one record per credit card transaction.
Each record is further divided into fields – that is, one field for name, one for credit card, one for address and so on, 21 fields in the case of the Landslide database.
The key issue concerning Mead is that one of the fields in the database was used to record that the webmaster got paid, if he got paid. If Landslide became aware that he had defrauded a client, he did not get paid (except in the cases where Landslide was so incompetent that it even paid fraudsters). It was the 'referer_paid' field. In his sworn testimony, Michael Mead said that this field was not maintained by Landslide. That assertion by Michael Mead was not true, and the question this now raises is why did he lie about it? The importance of this little field is that where it did indicate ‘not paid’, that usually meant fraud, including stolen credit card identities. As we have now identified that virtually all of the individuals who have asked our help to clear their names had fraud signalled by this field, an admission by Mead that the field was working could have saved thousands from ruin through police raids.
Landslide had already determined that many transactions were fraudulent, subject to complaint by chargeback or refund or simply completely bogus. In these cases, the webmaster’s commission (about two thirds of the transaction value) was not payable, so the 'referer_paid' field was set to N. The webmasters were those supplying images through the Landslide portal. Although Landslide recognised only some of the fraud, and only a small portion of the fraud was reported, this field was an important indicator that gave an indication of whether or not a transaction was valid.
Within the two main subscriber databases at Landslide, we have established that there were respectively 171,444 and 85,284 transactions showing that the referrer would not be paid, which is truly enormous. The fate of thousands of innocent men and their families could have been different had Mead acknowledged that just a single byte in a database established the integrity of thousands of transactions, as it said N rather than Y. It was Field 18 in the database, which Michael Mead decided to re-interpret and he has almost gotten away with it.
This is what he said in his first sworn testimony: “This column was originally designed to designate payment to the appropriate AVS webmaster, but was not maintained by Landslide.”
And in connection with the second database: “This column was applicable to the AVS side of Landslide, but was not maintained by Landslide.”
And this is what he said at the beginning of his sworn statement: “I HEREBY DECLARE THAT THIS STATEMENT IS TRUE TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF AND THAT I MAKE IT KNOWING THAT IF IT IS TENDERED IN EVIDENCE I WILL BE LIABLE TO PROSECUTION IF I STATE IN IT ANYTHING WHICH I KNOW TO BE FALSE OR DO NOT BELIEVE TO BE TRUE.”
He repeated his claim about Field 18 (calling it 17 in error) to the British authorities for their launch of Ore and signed another sworn statement with a similar pledge concerning his liability for prosecution.
The Irish spin-off
After his success with the British, Mead quickly became an important witness in both Ireland’s Operation Amethyst and its most celebrated victim, Judge Brian Curtin, even attempting to give evidence at the final meeting of the Curtin Parliamentary committee in late 2006, which collapsed after we sent the committee our evidence, although the committee has refused to acknowledge this as the reason. Had Mead appeared, one Oree intended to seize him in a citizen’s arrest.
Here he is in his sworn statement to the Irish police, known as the Gardai, on the third of September 2002
“On September 8, 1999 I took part in the search with a number of other officers on the premises of Landslide Inc, 1124 Seaman Street, Fort Worth Texas, 76111. Bob Adams my partner had the warrant for the search of this premises and I accompanied him, with a number of other agencies.”
That statement was made with a pre-text:
“I HEREBY DECLARE THAT THIS STATEMENT IS TRUE TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF AND THAT I MAKE IT KNOWING THAT IF IT IS TENDERED IN EVIDENCE I WILL BE LIABLE TO PROSECUTION IF I STATE IN IT ANYTHING WHICH I KNOW TO BE FALSE OR DO NOT BELIEVE TO BE TRUE.”
He has been doing so much talking and succeeding in being a key witness in so many ruined lives that perhaps he cannot always remember what he has said even under oath. Let us repeat from the above: “On September 8, 1999 I took part in the search with a number of other officers on the premises of Landslide Inc, 1124 Seaman Street, Fort Worth Texas, 76111. Bob Adams my partner had the warrant for the search of this premises and I accompanied him, with a number of other agencies.”
He swore this in September 2002. Since then, and out of the blue, he has revealed that together with Steven Nelson he began an undercover investigation of Landslide starting 28th of April 1999, over four months before what now transpires to be a second visit, sworn to above to the Irish police.
There are further problems, as we have both the FBI records and the video of the Landslide raid and the actual sign ons and offs of the officers arriving – with their handwritten times and signatures. Michael Mead is not recorded as having arrived at Landslide's office until after USPIS case officer Bob Adams had already left, so he was not his partner on this day.
Basically Michael Mead is a postal officer and they say that the postman always knocks twice.
Michael Mead visits this page regularly whilst at his place of work, Blockbuster Entertainment Group. He works in their fraud department, can you believe that? |
