The first two stories regarding the prospective arrangement between the City of Hardin's public facilities corporation, the Twin Rivers (Port) Authority and the "American Police Force" appeared on September 10th. After reading the first few paragraphs I was convinced it was a fraud. Within two hours of reading it, I and a mostly virtual colleague, Alex Friedman, the Associate Editor of Prison Legal News, had fairly conclusively confirmed my initial suspicions. We discovered the mass of bogus material on the website, the recent (3/09) registration of the corporation with the California Secretary of State, and the even more recent registration (5/09) of the APF (or APPF) website with GoDaddy.com

We had also established that the corporation had no presence at the address it claimed was its East Coast headquarters, a building near the White House that rented small conference rooms to organizations that that were not located in the DC area, but had a need for the appearance of an office, a "mail drop" or the temporary need for a modest facility for an event.

I found the AP in Billings Montana to be helpful in that they were able to get an Orange county AP reporter by that afternoon to check on the supposed corporate offices in Santa Ana. We were correct in our belief that it was a small office in a strip mall. We had also determined that the corporation was registered at a private home where, it turned out, Hilton rented a room.

We pushed the media to follow our lead in investigating the apparent confidence scheme, but it was slow to respond. Finally I, then Alex, began using our rather limited resources to determine within hours that Hilton as a defendant had lost dozens of lawsuits brought against him for fraud, rescission (breach of contract), unlawful detainer (evictions), and had two bankruptcy petitions (designed to slow evictions) dismissed.

I sent them to the Billings media, which had never given the whole Hardin jail issue the true attention it deserved. I was convinced years ago that there was a very good possibility that fraud was involved in its siting and construction.

The rather timid press finally began to get it together to do a better story on the scam, but despite lack of any presence in either California or Alalska, we discovered as much as the major media organizations.

We are the non-profit Private Corrections Institute (Alex is our VP) www.privateci.org

We have been individually and collective in the vanguard in exposing the pervasive corruption and malfeasance in the dangerous for-profit prison industry for over a dozen years. We've provided major help in bringing many corrupt officials, executives, businesses and lobbyists to justice.

We've helped to keep dozens of communities which have sought our assistance or which we've outreached, to fight the economically debilitating sitings of for-profit particularly in impoverished rural locations where low wages can be paid and little oversight is present.

Ironically, our revelations have been resisted and resented by the rather backward elected and appointed officials in Hardin, as they have in many other venues. They still want to keep believing that there's got to be a pony if there's all that manure.

This has been another example of the potential and power of citizen activists who have been able to effect change in public policy through intelligent Internet and FOIA research and the enlistment of the cooperation of the media.

Frank Smith
Bluff City, Kansas
Field Organizer
Private Corrections Institute