- Costco CFO says that only a ‘really small percent’ of members misuse their cards, ‘but when you’re dealing with millions of transactions’ it adds up Yahoo! Voices
- New Way Costco Is Cracking Down on Membership Sharing Clark.com – Clark Howard
- Costco is taking a page out of Netflix’s playbook and cracking down on shared membership cards. Wall Street is thrilled. Yahoo Canada Shine On
- Have You Been Sharing a Costco Membership? Here Are Your Options Now That Costco Is Cracking Down The Motley Fool
- Costco Just Made Some Life-Altering Changes And Customers Are Outraged Delish
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: misuse
Pharmacist warns of ‘misuse’ of viral weight loss drug – KOIN.com
- Pharmacist warns of ‘misuse’ of viral weight loss drug KOIN.com
- Diabetes medicines being used for weight loss, professor says WSFA
- La Crosse area pharmacist says diabetes drug shortage eases, but those using diabetes medications for weight loss won’t getting permanent results News8000.com – WKBT
- Nutritionist Questions Use of New Diabetes, Weight-Loss Drug VOCM
- La Crosse area pharmacist says diabetes drug shortage eases, but those using diabetes medications for weight loss won’t be getting permanent results News8000.com – WKBT
- View Full Coverage on Google News
How WWE’s Vince McMahon ruthlessly got his job back despite allegations of sexual assault and misuse of company funds
Washington
CNN
—
Professional wrestling is known for its outlandish, dramatic stories that have captivated generations. It’s an athletic soap opera built on emotional drama with wrestlers sometimes scheming in the background for months only to make their move at the opportune moment, drawing crazed reactions from arenas packed with fans who have followed every beat.
But the real-life saga playing out in World Wrestling Entertainment’s corporate office over the last several weeks surpasses even what most of what those performers and their backstage colleagues could dream up.
Vince McMahon, the longtime force behind WWE at the corporate and creative levels, made a shocking return to the company on January 10, nearly six months after announcing his retirement. McMahon was alleged to have used company funds to pay millions to multiple women in order to cover up infidelity and allegations of sexual misconduct.
But over a series of just a few days last week, McMahon engineered his return to the company’s board of directors, reshaped it by forcing out some members, replaced them with his own allies, and used that new boardroom power to install himself in his old job as executive chairman. His own daughter – the heir apparent to the company who had appeared groomed to take the job for years – resigned.
The stunning and swift developments have the wrestling world reeling, with rumors of a sale burning up Wrestling Twitter and people inside and outside the company wondering what it all means for the future of WWE and professional wrestling itself.
In July, Vince McMahon – an ever-present force in WWE and professional wrestling, the man who remade the business in service of a vision that upended generations of tradition, creating his own hegemony – retired. Or he resigned, depending on who you ask.
It was a moment many wrestling fans and observers never thought would come. The longtime chairman and CEO of WWE was such an intense micromanager that he barely slept, rarely took vacations and almost never stopped putting his own spin on every single aspect of the company’s output. Many longtime followers of the company simply assumed he’d die in the role rather than retire.
But a series of revelations first reported in The Wall Street Journal about hush money payments to multiple women to cover up infidelity and allegations of sexual misconduct seemed to bring McMahon’s legendary run as the head of wrestling’s most important company to an end. Additional reporting came in December, with additional women accusing McMahon of sexual assault, seemed to cement his status as being permanently gone from WWE.
WWE has always been a family business – Vince McMahon, Sr., handed over the reins to his son in the 1980s – and it seemed set to continue that way. Vince McMahon’s daughter, Stephanie, who only weeks before had taken a leave of absence from the company, stepped into the role of co-CEO with Nick Khan, a longtime executive in the entertainment and media industry.
And Paul Levesque – Stephanie McMahon’s husband and a Hall of Fame professional wrestler himself and better known by his ring name, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, or Triple H – assumed the job as the head of creative, putting him in charge of WWE’s storylines and in-ring action, which his father-in-law had long managed.
That moment last summer signaled a sea change in the professional wrestling industry.
Vince McMahon was more akin to a king than a business executive in the world of WWE, his fingerprints on everything. Through his ruthless business practices, he had molded the industry in his image, running most of his competition out of business and turning his company into the destination for pro wrestling. For most of two decades, he had a monopoly on the business.
But his creative output cratered in recent years. Stars who left WWE described a frustrating creative process dominated by McMahon that stifled their visions and led to a homogenized product that felt miles away from the company’s peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
With the vast majority of company revenue coming from TV rights, instead of fans spending money on tickets or pay-per-view events, the need to give the people what they want was replaced by content production. Sometimes it seemed as if Vince McMahon’s creative decisions were meant to antagonize and annoy his audience, appearing to ram home his vision of “sports entertainment” whether they liked it or not.
A turning point for many was the 2015 Royal Rumble event. Fans were clamoring for their favorite Daniel Bryan, one of the most gifted wrestlers on the planet, to win the event’s namesake. To many fans, Bryan’s run symbolized hope that the company would promote their favorite wrestlers instead of McMahon’s chosen ones.
But Bryan was unceremoniously eliminated in the first half of the match. The crowd in Philadelphia booed throughout the second half, chanting Bryan’s name and refusing to celebrate when Roman Reigns – widely seen as McMahon’s choice to be the future of the company despite fan apathy – won.
Shrinking viewership numbers reflected that loss of hope. While TV ratings overall have dropped in the last several years, with some exceptions, WWE’s drop outpaced the general decline in overall viewership and in the key 18-49 demographic, according to Wrestlenomics, a website that tracks the business side of the industry.
Once considered a wrestling genius, critics have more recently come to consider Vince McMahon a creative liability. The elevation of Levesque and the Stephanie McMahon-Khan duo appeared to signal hope that a new era was dawning over the WWE and that its creative system would finally get the long-needed injection of new ideas, new faces and new energy.
In December, The Wall Street Journal reported McMahon was eying a comeback – the first rumblings that the new era might be on shaky ground.
According to the Journal’s reporting, McMahon was telling people around him that he had received bad advice to step aside after the paper reported he used company funds to pay more than $12 million in hush money settlements to women to cover up “allegations of sexual misconduct and infidelity.”
The WSJ also reported McMahon believed the controversy would have blown over if he had just stayed on as head of creative and chairman of the company’s board of directors.
Then, in early January, McMahon made his move.
As revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, McMahon said he had to return to the company because negotiations over media rights and a “strategic alternatives review” required his “direct participation, leadership and support.” He told the SEC he was putting himself back on the company’s board of directors, along with two longtime allies – both of whom McMahon had fired from the company in 2020.
How could he do this, despite retiring in disgrace and ostensibly being away from the company for months? McMahon never sold his stock in the company and remained WWE’s controlling shareholder.
“The only way for WWE to fully capitalize on this opportunity is for me to return as Executive Chairman and support the management team in the negotiations for our media rights and to combine that with a review of strategic alternatives,” McMahon said in a news release. “My return will allow WWE, as well as any transaction counterparties, to engage in these processes knowing they will have the support of the controlling shareholder.”
Over the course of just a few days, he had gone from ostracized former wrestling executive to once again running the company that he had taken from a regional player to a global power. It just was the kind of swerve one might have expected from “Mr. McMahon,” Vince McMahon’s devious on-screen character, who served as wrestling’s greatest heel for years in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Just days after reinstalling himself on the company’s board, WWE’s board of directors unanimously returned him to his old job as executive chairman.
Not only that, his daughter, Stephanie McMahon – who had seemed groomed to take over the company for years and played prominent roles on screen and off – resigned as chairwoman and co-CEO of WWE, leaving it all together.
Nick Khan was left as the company’s lone CEO. But the corporate machinations over the last week showed that, once again, McMahon was the real power in WWE.
There are reports that McMahon is exploring selling the company, but it’s not clear if there’s any truth to them.
So far, all of McMahon’s statements about his intentions pertain to business negotiations. But Stephanie McMahon’s departure has cast a cloud over her husband’s future with the company.
As his father-in-law forced his way back into the company, Levesque was gearing up for his first major period in charge of WWE’s storytelling heading into its most important time of year. WrestleMania season kicks off with January 28’s Royal Rumble event and continues through the first weekend of April, when WWE runs a two-night WrestleMania event – its biggest shows of the year – at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. This was likely to be the first major test for Levesque’s creative vision for WWE and had been hotly anticipated by wrestling fans.
McMahon’s reemergence now leads to questions over how much influence the chairman will seek to exercise over the creative direction of the company, and how it might clash with Levesque’s own vision.
Upon taking control of creative, the WWE Hall of Famer re-signed scores of wrestlers who McMahon had released in recent years, including stars like Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman, and given priority to other wrestlers who don’t fit McMahon’s typical vision of a professional wrestler – someone taller than 6-foot-3 inches, muscular, good looking and with actual wrestling ability considered optional.
The futures of those Levesque favorites now seem less certain than they did just a few weeks ago.
There are real questions over how fans will receive the news of McMahon’s return. A man once seen as a legend in the business is accused of sexually assaulting multiple women, then using the levers of corporate power to escape accountability. Fans have already tuned out from the company in droves in recent years and some may decide not to spend their money, time and attention on a product helmed by McMahon.
And then there’s the question of how McMahon’s return affects the pro wrestling industry as a whole.
All Elite Wrestling (AEW), an upstart promotion begun in 2019 by Tony Khan – the son of auto parts billionaire Shahid Khan and no relation to the WWE CEO – and several of independent wrestling’s biggest stars, has become the second-biggest wrestling company in the world by simply being what WWE is not.
Its focus on long-term storytelling, great matches, charismatic stars and less sanitized production has allowed AEW to break WWE’s monopoly on the wrestling industry and become a verified player in the business.
As such, it had become a home for some of the highest profile wrestlers in the industry who had been burnt out on WWE’s corporate culture and bending to McMahon’s whims. His departure back in July and Levesque’s ascension to the WWE creative throne led many observers to wonder if AEW stars would be looking to jump ship and head to WWE.
There were some hopes among WWE diehards that Levesque’s new regime might be successful enough to snuff out AEW’s rise. McMahon’s return may toss some doubt into the minds of AEW wrestlers who were thinking about moving to WWE in the future.
How WWE’s Vince McMahon ruthlessly got his job back despite allegations of sexual assault and misuse of company funds
Washington
CNN
—
Professional wrestling is known for its outlandish, dramatic stories that have captivated generations. It’s an athletic soap opera built on emotional drama with wrestlers sometimes scheming in the background for months only to make their move at the opportune moment, drawing crazed reactions from arenas packed with fans who have followed every beat.
But the real-life saga playing out in World Wrestling Entertainment’s corporate office over the last several weeks surpasses even what most of what those performers and their backstage colleagues could dream up.
Vince McMahon, the longtime force behind WWE at the corporate and creative levels, made a shocking return to the company on January 10, nearly six months after announcing his retirement. McMahon was alleged to have used company funds to pay millions to multiple women in order to cover up infidelity and allegations of sexual misconduct.
But over a series of just a few days last week, McMahon engineered his return to the company’s board of directors, reshaped it by forcing out some members, replaced them with his own allies, and used that new boardroom power to install himself in his old job as executive chairman. His own daughter – the heir apparent to the company who had appeared groomed to take the job for years – resigned.
The stunning and swift developments have the wrestling world reeling, with rumors of a sale burning up Wrestling Twitter and people inside and outside the company wondering what it all means for the future of WWE and professional wrestling itself.
In July, Vince McMahon – an ever-present force in WWE and professional wrestling, the man who remade the business in service of a vision that upended generations of tradition, creating his own hegemony – retired. Or he resigned, depending on who you ask.
It was a moment many wrestling fans and observers never thought would come. The longtime chairman and CEO of WWE was such an intense micromanager that he barely slept, rarely took vacations and almost never stopped putting his own spin on every single aspect of the company’s output. Many longtime followers of the company simply assumed he’d die in the role rather than retire.
But a series of revelations first reported in The Wall Street Journal about hush money payments to multiple women to cover up infidelity and allegations of sexual misconduct seemed to bring McMahon’s legendary run as the head of wrestling’s most important company to an end. Additional reporting came in December, with additional women accusing McMahon of sexual assault, seemed to cement his status as being permanently gone from WWE.
WWE has always been a family business – Vince McMahon, Sr., handed over the reins to his son in the 1980s – and it seemed set to continue that way. Vince McMahon’s daughter, Stephanie, who only weeks before had taken a leave of absence from the company, stepped into the role of co-CEO with Nick Khan, a longtime executive in the entertainment and media industry.
And Paul Levesque – Stephanie McMahon’s husband and a Hall of Fame professional wrestler himself and better known by his ring name, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, or Triple H – assumed the job as the head of creative, putting him in charge of WWE’s storylines and in-ring action, which his father-in-law had long managed.
That moment last summer signaled a sea change in the professional wrestling industry.
Vince McMahon was more akin to a king than a business executive in the world of WWE, his fingerprints on everything. Through his ruthless business practices, he had molded the industry in his image, running most of his competition out of business and turning his company into the destination for pro wrestling. For most of two decades, he had a monopoly on the business.
But his creative output cratered in recent years. Stars who left WWE described a frustrating creative process dominated by McMahon that stifled their visions and led to a homogenized product that felt miles away from the company’s peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
With the vast majority of company revenue coming from TV rights, instead of fans spending money on tickets or pay-per-view events, the need to give the people what they want was replaced by content production. Sometimes it seemed as if Vince McMahon’s creative decisions were meant to antagonize and annoy his audience, appearing to ram home his vision of “sports entertainment” whether they liked it or not.
A turning point for many was the 2015 Royal Rumble event. Fans were clamoring for their favorite Daniel Bryan, one of the most gifted wrestlers on the planet, to win the event’s namesake. To many fans, Bryan’s run symbolized hope that the company would promote their favorite wrestlers instead of McMahon’s chosen ones.
But Bryan was unceremoniously eliminated in the first half of the match. The crowd in Philadelphia booed throughout the second half, chanting Bryan’s name and refusing to celebrate when Roman Reigns – widely seen as McMahon’s choice to be the future of the company despite fan apathy – won.
Shrinking viewership numbers reflected that loss of hope. While TV ratings overall have dropped in the last several years, with some exceptions, WWE’s drop outpaced the general decline in overall viewership and in the key 18-49 demographic, according to Wrestlenomics, a website that tracks the business side of the industry.
Once considered a wrestling genius, critics have more recently come to consider Vince McMahon a creative liability. The elevation of Levesque and the Stephanie McMahon-Khan duo appeared to signal hope that a new era was dawning over the WWE and that its creative system would finally get the long-needed injection of new ideas, new faces and new energy.
In December, The Wall Street Journal reported McMahon was eying a comeback – the first rumblings that the new era might be on shaky ground.
According to the Journal’s reporting, McMahon was telling people around him that he had received bad advice to step aside after the paper reported he used company funds to pay more than $12 million in hush money settlements to women to cover up “allegations of sexual misconduct and infidelity.”
The WSJ also reported McMahon believed the controversy would have blown over if he had just stayed on as head of creative and chairman of the company’s board of directors.
Then, in early January, McMahon made his move.
As revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, McMahon said he had to return to the company because negotiations over media rights and a “strategic alternatives review” required his “direct participation, leadership and support.” He told the SEC he was putting himself back on the company’s board of directors, along with two longtime allies – both of whom McMahon had fired from the company in 2020.
How could he do this, despite retiring in disgrace and ostensibly being away from the company for months? McMahon never sold his stock in the company and remained WWE’s controlling shareholder.
“The only way for WWE to fully capitalize on this opportunity is for me to return as Executive Chairman and support the management team in the negotiations for our media rights and to combine that with a review of strategic alternatives,” McMahon said in a news release. “My return will allow WWE, as well as any transaction counterparties, to engage in these processes knowing they will have the support of the controlling shareholder.”
Over the course of just a few days, he had gone from ostracized former wrestling executive to once again running the company that he had taken from a regional player to a global power. It just was the kind of swerve one might have expected from “Mr. McMahon,” Vince McMahon’s devious on-screen character, who served as wrestling’s greatest heel for years in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Just days after reinstalling himself on the company’s board, WWE’s board of directors unanimously returned him to his old job as executive chairman.
Not only that, his daughter, Stephanie McMahon – who had seemed groomed to take over the company for years and played prominent roles on screen and off – resigned as chairwoman and co-CEO of WWE, leaving it all together.
Nick Khan was left as the company’s lone CEO. But the corporate machinations over the last week showed that, once again, McMahon was the real power in WWE.
There are reports that McMahon is exploring selling the company, but it’s not clear if there’s any truth to them.
So far, all of McMahon’s statements about his intentions pertain to business negotiations. But Stephanie McMahon’s departure has cast a cloud over her husband’s future with the company.
As his father-in-law forced his way back into the company, Levesque was gearing up for his first major period in charge of WWE’s storytelling heading into its most important time of year. WrestleMania season kicks off with January 28’s Royal Rumble event and continues through the first weekend of April, when WWE runs a two-night WrestleMania event – its biggest shows of the year – at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. This was likely to be the first major test for Levesque’s creative vision for WWE and had been hotly anticipated by wrestling fans.
McMahon’s reemergence now leads to questions over how much influence the chairman will seek to exercise over the creative direction of the company, and how it might clash with Levesque’s own vision.
Upon taking control of creative, the WWE Hall of Famer re-signed scores of wrestlers who McMahon had released in recent years, including stars like Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman, and given priority to other wrestlers who don’t fit McMahon’s typical vision of a professional wrestler – someone taller than 6-foot-3 inches, muscular, good looking and with actual wrestling ability considered optional.
The futures of those Levesque favorites now seem less certain than they did just a few weeks ago.
There are real questions over how fans will receive the news of McMahon’s return. A man once seen as a legend in the business is accused of sexually assaulting multiple women, then using the levers of corporate power to escape accountability. Fans have already tuned out from the company in droves in recent years and some may decide not to spend their money, time and attention on a product helmed by McMahon.
And then there’s the question of how McMahon’s return affects the pro wrestling industry as a whole.
All Elite Wrestling (AEW), an upstart promotion begun in 2019 by Tony Khan – the son of auto parts billionaire Shahid Khan and no relation to the WWE CEO – and several of independent wrestling’s biggest stars, has become the second-biggest wrestling company in the world by simply being what WWE is not.
Its focus on long-term storytelling, great matches, charismatic stars and less sanitized production has allowed AEW to break WWE’s monopoly on the wrestling industry and become a verified player in the business.
As such, it had become a home for some of the highest profile wrestlers in the industry who had been burnt out on WWE’s corporate culture and bending to McMahon’s whims. His departure back in July and Levesque’s ascension to the WWE creative throne led many observers to wonder if AEW stars would be looking to jump ship and head to WWE.
There were some hopes among WWE diehards that Levesque’s new regime might be successful enough to snuff out AEW’s rise. McMahon’s return may toss some doubt into the minds of AEW wrestlers who were thinking about moving to WWE in the future.
Children as Young as 8 Should Be Screened for Anxiety, Experts Recommend
All children should be screened for anxiety starting as young as 8 years old, government-backed experts recommended, providing fresh guidance as doctors and parents warn of a worsening mental-health crisis among young people in the pandemic’s wake.
The draft guidance marks the first time the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has made a recommendation on screening children and adolescents for anxiety. The task force, a panel of independent, volunteer experts that makes recommendations on matters such as screening for diabetes and cancer, also reiterated on Tuesday its 2016 guidance that children between ages 12 and 18 years old should be screened for major depressive disorder.
13 Investigates: Grand jury finds evidence to charge Harris County staffers with misuse of official information
HARRIS COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) — Three senior staffers at the Harris County Judge’s Office have each been indicted on one count of misuse of official information and one count of tampering with a government record following an investigation into allegations they steered a nearly $11 million COVID-19 vaccine outreach contract to a small Houston-based firm.
Alex Triantaphyllis, who is now Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s current chief of staff but was her deputy chief of staff last year, Aaron Dunn, then a senior advisor for public safety and emergency management at the county, and Wallis Nader, who is Hidalgo’s deputy policy director, were indicted this morning.
An indictment is not a finding of guilt, just that a grand jury, comprised of county residents, found there was enough evidence to pursue criminal charges against an individual.
Documents with more details about the indictments have not been uploaded and made public through the Harris County District Clerk’s website as of late Monday afternoon.
Search warrants made public last month indicate the Harris County District Attorney’s Office and Texas Rangers were investigating whether Triantaphyllis, Dunn and Nader communicated with Elevate Strategies’ founder Felicity Pereyra about possible work for the county before a bid for the vaccine outreach work was made public to other potential vendors.
RELATED: 13 Investigates: Search warrant on Harris County contract details alleged advantages
Derek Hollingsworth, an attorney for Aaron Dunn, said in a statement on Monday that “Aaron Dunn is innocent. He is an honest and dedicated public servant. He didn’t commit any crime, and I am confident that he will be vindicated.”
In a statement to 13 Investigates on Monday, Triantaphyllis’ attorney Marla Poirot, said, “We look forward to the upcoming court proceedings, which will shine a light on the fact that there has been no wrongdoing here. These charges against my client are unsupported by a full and objective review of the facts and the voluminous evidence in this case. In his service to Harris County, Alex has made the people the top priority and worked to ensure that taxpayer resources are utilized as effectively and efficiently as possible.”
Calls Nader have not been returned.
An additional warrant made public last week sought to search and seize documents from the Google customer accounts for Triantaphyllis, Dunn and Nader, as well as Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, her Communications Director Rafael Lemaitre and Kathryn Kase, who serves as counsel for the county judge’s office.
Investigators have not alleged or accused Hidalgo, Lemaitre or Kase of misuse of official information.
“This warrant was sought at the same time as the others and simply copies and pastes the same misleading allegations, based on the same cherry-picked excerpts of the same documents,” Hidalgo’s attorney, Eric Gerard, said in a statement to 13 Investigates last Thursday. “We reiterate our concern that this investigation appears to be rushing forward despite a fundamental misunderstanding of the facts.”
An attorney for Hidalgo said on Monday that they have not received a copy of the indictments and would provide a comment once they had a chance to review them.
Hidalgo’s campaign spokesperson, Toni Harrison, said, “We’ve yet to see the substance of the charges and can’t comment until we do.”
In a statement to 13 Investigates on Thursday, Lemaitre’s attorney, Murray Newman, with Newman & Chappell Law Firm, said, “Since the inception of this investigation, Mr. Lemaitre has been fully cooperative with investigators and is merely referenced as a witness in the latest documents released by the District Attorney’s Office.”
Kase’s attorney, Nick Dickerson, said last week that Kase is not a target of the investigation, just a witness.
“As a member of the judge’s staff and custodian of the records, Ms. Kase certainly would’ve been involved from time to time in drafting and editing documents available in Google Docs,” Dickerson said. “We have nothing to hide. We’ve collected more than two and a half terabytes of data and turned over thousands and thousands of pages of documents. These (four) search warrants themselves are a little odd. It seems they may be used as an end-around of the attorney-client privilege.”
During a nearly 20-minute news conference last month, Hidalgo offered few details into the allegations and referred questions to her attorney, but reiterated that everything she has done “has been completely above board, has been made with the interests of the people of Harris county in mind, with the interests of fighting COVID 19.”
“Because it’s an ongoing investigation, I can’t address many of the misleading and sometimes false allegations that are swirling around as much as I’d want to and you guys know that I’d be the first one to want to do that,” Hidalgo said last month. “What I can say is this, I follow the law.”
Harrison told 13 Investigates’ Ted Oberg last week that Pereyra was never supposed to receive the scope of work for the vaccine outreach contract before it was publicly released for vendors to bid on.
When Oberg asked why she received the scope of work for the contract, Harrison said, “as wild as this may sound, human error.”
“She was sent a scope of work. That was the incorrect document. It was simply human error,” Harrison said. “I (sometimes send) the wrong attachment (to people). I probably do that once a day. (In this case), you’ll see a trail where that is corrected and another message is sent to (Pereyra) and it says, this is actually the correct scope of work approved by the judge.”
The affidavits do not include any messages to Pereyra indicating she was sent the scope of work – that Texas Rangers say is similar to the one for the RFP – by accident.
When asked about it, Harrison said, “that will come out.”
RELATED: Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo calls search warrants into contract controversy ‘misleading’
The search warrant made public last week called on Google to turn over all versions of three Google Docs links which they believe are related to the project as well as the email addresses for the individuals who the Google Docs were shared with. Different versions of the same document could give investigators a sense of how the project and its scope evolved as Hidalgo’s senior staffers and an eventual vendor pored over it.
According to investigators, Triantaphyllis, Nader and Dunn allegedly communicated with Pereyra in January 2021 and allowed her to review and revise the project’s scope of work nearly a month before a bid for proposals was publicly available to all on Feb. 19, 2021.
In a Feb. 25, 2021 email, “Pereyra states she had just been invited to bid for Harris County’s large COVID-19 outreach program (campaign) to decrease vaccine hesitancy. She stated that she has ‘really solid relationships in house and I feel really good about my chances in landing the project (they asked me to design the program beforehand but then were told to go RFP), so I’m just starting to build out a team,'” according to the search warrant.
Harrison said Pereyra was being considered for a data analyst position – not the vaccine outreach contract.
“Many of those text messages you see in the affidavit were not with any regard to the RFP. In fact, the RFP wasn’t a consideration at the time. They were discussing a data analytics position,” Harrison said. “At the time it was, we need someone who can understand data and crunch this data and help us decipher through it. Miss Pereyra had done a wonderful job on the Census outreach in Harris County and Fort Bend, so she was considered, and that’s what the outreach was for.”
Harrison said Pereyra eventually declined the data analyst position. It appears the job was never filled.
Elevate Strategies was awarded the multi-million dollar vaccine outreach contract in June 2021, but amid the controversy it was canceled three months later.
Even though the contract was canceled in September 2021, Elevate was still paid $1.4 million. The county has said Elevate is cooperating in paying back $1.2 million of the funds it received.
Harris County Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack Cagle, who was the sole commissioner who voted against the Elevate contract last year, called it a “sad day” for county residents.
“These trusted employees of the taxpayers, guardians of the taxpayers’ dollars, should not be in that position until the judicial system has done its job now that the indictments are there,” Cagle said.
Hidalgo said on March 22 that she had no plans to let go of anyone involved.
“I will keep looking and digging and trying to get a grasp on everything that took place and everything else that comes out. But right now, I don’t believe (letting anyone go) is warranted,” Hidalgo said last month. “I believe that the decisions my team made (were) based on fighting against COVID-19. I believe, from where I’m standing, that that was the intention behind the decisions made in my office. But, you know, we’ll continue looking at the facts.”
In a statement, Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia said, “I am aware of the latest developments with regards to legal accusations against staff in another office. I caution anyone from coming to any conclusions before all parties have had an opportunity to present their facts.”
Harris County Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey said, “It’s a shame we’ve gotten to this point. I’ve had questions about this contract, which I included as a court agenda item on the very day it was canceled. While they remain unanswered, there’s still a lot of work to be done. Distrust in government is not what our constituents deserve. I’m hopeful the courts will find answers, so that we can begin to restore faith and integrity in Harris County again.”
Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis said, “During her time in office, Judge Hidalgo has gone out of her way to hold herself and her staff to the highest ethical standards. From recent press reports we have seen, there are still too many unanswered questions about the facts of the Elevate contract investigation for us to pass judgment. These public servants have earned the benefit of the doubt until the system plays out and the facts prevail.”
As part of the investigation, officials seized phones, laptops, and desktops for Dunn, Nader and Triantaphyllis.
Whenever the bid was finally open to the public, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and two other groups also submitted proposals to be considered.
Dunn, Nader, and Triantaphyllis were on the five-person committee tasked with scoring the proposals.
Last month, Hidalgo said irrespective of the investigation, as part of a recent review of the county’s purchasing procedures, “No office will have staff members on selection committees going forward.”
The committee scored UT Health Science Center at Houston the highest with 46.8% followed by Elevate strategies with 40.4%, according to investigators. That raised some concerns among commissioners.
A review cited in the search warrant said UT Health was passed upon because the county wasn’t happy with its work on other projects.
“In a text between Dunn, Nader, and Triantaphyllis on May 7, 2021, Dunn asked Triantaphyllis if he could ‘make the outreach RFP meeting that’s happening now?’ Triantaphyllis replied, ‘No. Take it away. And don’t let UT get it,'” according to a search warrant.
Harrison said although the affidavits indicate UT scored better than Elevate Strategies, that was actually just the score for the initial round.
“In any competitive bid process, there are multiple rounds. First round is usually a written proposal. The best of those bids comes in for a formal presentation. It was at that point we start to see the difference between Elevate and UT from maybe an accountability standpoint in that UT did not show up for their first presentation round,” Harrison said. “Here you have a vendor who hasn’t shown up for the next round, who’s also managing another project within the county. It’s not going very well. There are some rumblings that maybe we need to make a change on that account. It’s almost like a reference check if you will, at that point and as you’re evaluating, we’re talking about an outreach campaign door knocking, going into underserved communities, Elevate came out ahead.
Moving forward, Harrison said the county is implementing changes to how documents are named to ensure potential vendors for county contracts aren’t sent RFPs before they’re public, especially by mistake.
“(This case) was human error, the wrong document was sent. Now we have a practice. There’s a practice on how we do that to ensure we’re sending the right document. Look at the document name, thinks like that can make a huge difference in these types of situations,” she said.
Harrison said there have been no staffing changes as a result of the search warrants.
“We are not rushing to any sort of judgment because we know there was no manipulation of this bidding process,” she said.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg has not commented on the indictments.
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Fentanyl Invades More Illicit Pills, With Deadly Consequences
Zachary Didier took what looked like a prescription pain pill just after Christmas last year, according to his parents. It contained an illicit form of the powerful opioid fentanyl, which they say killed the 17-year-old Californian.
His death was one of a record 100,000 fatal overdoses in a year-long period through April that have demonstrated how the nation’s illegal drug supply is becoming more toxic and dangerous. A bootleg version of fentanyl being made mainly by Mexican drug cartels is spreading to more corners of the U.S., increasingly inside fake pills taken by people who in some cases believe they are consuming less-potent drugs.
Zachary Didier in spring 2019. His parents say an illicit form of fentanyl killed the 17-year-old late last year.
Photo:
Allene Salerno/Leniespictures
“It robs you of any chance to get red flags,” said Laura Didier, Zachary’s mother. His parents said they didn’t know he was using pills recreationally before he died.
Other dangerous opioids are also surfacing in the drug supply, researchers say, continuing a long-running cat-and-mouse game as suppliers and users try to stay ahead of law enforcement. Fatal overdoses involving the combination of fentanyl with stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamines are also rising, research shows.
Federal authorities say they are encountering more pills passing for medications such as oxycodone that contain fentanyl. By late September, they had seized more than 9.5 million fake pills, many containing fentanyl, a haul higher than in the two prior years combined, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
“The supply of these pills is going up exponentially,” said Joseph Palamar, an associate professor and drug epidemiologist at New York University Langone Health. “They are easy to transport and difficult to track. Pills are the ultimate fake out. You can fake out your parents, your friends, your partner, law enforcement.”
The mass production of such pills by Mexican cartels has escalated the threat, according to the DEA. Pill-related deaths are particularly common in the western U.S., a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report said Tuesday. Fentanyl appears to be gaining ground there after surfacing mainly in eastern states for years.
Fentanyl is made from chemicals, rather than the opium-poppy cultivation required to produce heroin. It can also be 50 times more powerful than heroin.
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Pills containing fentanyl are often made to look like less-powerful prescription opioids that can be harder to obtain. Fentanyl can also show up in tablets masquerading as other kinds of drugs, like benzodiazepines, a class of sometimes-abused medication used to treat anxiety and other issues. Users with no tolerance to opioids can end up ingesting an extremely powerful dose. Some advocates for those killed consider hidden fentanyl deaths poisonings.
Toxicologists and law-enforcement authorities are engaged in an ever-evolving effort to spot, and then outlaw, different synthetic opioids. Several years ago these were often fentanyl analogues that faded after the DEA put them on its schedule of illegal drugs, toxicologists said. There is a legitimate form of fentanyl sold to treat pain. The illegal market is largely fueled by illicit forms, authorities say.
Drug samples are analyzed for fentanyl in Sacramento, Calif.
Photo:
Andri Tambunan for The Wall Street Journal
Another class of powerful opioids known as nitazenes cropped up in recent years, and sometimes show up with fentanyl in toxicology samples from overdose victims. The drugs can be 10 times as potent as fentanyl. Washington, D.C.’s Department of Forensic Sciences recently found two different nitazene drugs while testing residue from needles at local needle-exchange programs. The city this year recorded about 36 opioid overdoses a month through August, compared with 17 a month as recently as 2018.
“There’s definitely a case to be made the opioid supply is getting more toxic,” said Alex Krotulski, associate director at the nonprofit Center for Forensic Science Research & Education, which maintains a public early-warning system for new synthetic drugs.
Fentanyl was found this fall in marijuana that had been used by a person who survived an overdose in Connecticut. Law enforcement say they are trying to determine whether the mix was user-driven or caused by accidental ingestion.
Dr. Krotulski said accidental cross-contamination between fentanyl and other kinds of drugs is rare. But any encounter with unsuspected fentanyl can be dangerous, said Bryce Pardo, a Rand Corp. researcher who focuses on drug policy.
“Now, if you’re a casual consumer, partying on the weekends, it can be the case that someone hands out pills—you overdose and die,” he said.
Even knowing fentanyl is present may not protect an experienced user. Illegally made pills may contain unpredictable and poorly mixed amounts of fentanyl. “These are not pharmacists,” Dr. Pardo said.
Joshua Arnds in 2017. In September, his mother found him in his room, his body cold; he died from a fentanyl overdose at 19.
Photo:
Tawny Arnds
Joshua Arnds, who lived in the Sacramento area, knew he was using illicit pills containing fentanyl but believed he could control the dose, according to his mother, Tawny Arnds. Joshua overdosed several times, including one last December that hospitalized him and led to a debilitating arm injury, despite saying repeatedly he would stop because of the danger, Ms. Arnds said.
“One time, when he had an overdose, he said ‘I just miscalculated,’” she recalled.
She believes Joshua struggled with stress and was dogged by brain and spinal injuries that may date to a childhood soccer-field collision. In September, she found Joshua in his room, his body cold; he died from a fentanyl overdose at 19. There was powder and a knife on his desk and pills in his pocket, she said.
When Zachary Didier died suddenly at home in the Sacramento area, investigators said an undetected health issue was possible, his father, Chris Didier, said. They also suggested fentanyl.
Zachary Didier, in red, with his parents in early 2020, when he starred in his school’s production of ‘High School Musical.’
Photo:
Laura Didier
“We were baffled, we were confused,” Mr. Didier said.
Toxicology confirmed fentanyl in his system, and information on his phone helped show he had purchased pills he believed were legitimate, Placer County, Calif., District Attorney Morgan Gire said. Virgil Xavier Bordner is facing charges including involuntary manslaughter for allegedly selling the drugs. His attorney said he plans to plead not guilty.
Zachary’s parents said he paid a terrible price for experimenting with something so risky. “He was one of those kids that encountered something deadly right away,” Ms. Didier said.
Three months after he died, college acceptance letters began arriving.
Write to Jon Kamp at jon.kamp@wsj.com and Julie Wernau at Julie.Wernau@wsj.com
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Judge denies CDC’s request to keep COVID-19 cruise restrictions, cites ‘use and misuse of governmental power’
The Celebrity Edge is set to depart from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, this weekend and will be the first cruise ship to leave a U.S. port in 469 days. FOX Business’ Ashley Webster with more.
A federal judge denied the CDC’s request to keep COVID-19 restrictions on cruises in place in Florida past July 18, writing that the agency “can show no factor that outweighs the need to conclude an unwarranted and unprecedented exercise of governmental power.”
U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday originally ruled against the CDC last month, granting a preliminary injunction that will turn the Conditional Sailing Order (CSO) into nonbinding guidelines on July 18.
The CDC appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and requested a stay on Tuesday, but Merryday dismissed that motion on Wednesday.
REGENT SEVEN SEAS SHARES 2024 DATE FOR ITS 132-NIGHT WORLD CRUISE
“Although CDC invariably garnishes the argument with dire prospects of ‘transmission’ of COVID-19 aboard a cruise vessel, these dark allusions dismiss state and local health authorities, the industry’s self-regulation, and the thorough and costly preparations and accommodations by all concerned to avoid ‘transmission’ and to confine and control the ‘transmission,’ if one occurs,” Merryday wrote Wednesday.
He continued, “More to the point, this action is not about what health precautions against COVID-19 are necessary or helpful aboard a cruise ship; this action is about the use and misuse of governmental power.”
The Celebrity Edge is moored at Port Everglades, Saturday, June 26, 2021, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Celebrity Edge is the first cruise ship to leave a U.S. port since the coronavirus pandemic brought the industry to a 15-month standstill. (AP Photo/Ma
The CDC shut down cruises in March 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, then issued a CSO in October that gave cruise lines a strict phased approach to reopening.
The court battle started in April when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sued the CDC, saying that the “lawsuit is necessary to protect Floridians from the federal government’s overreach and resulting economic harm to our state.”
After Merryday’s ruling that sided with Florida, the CSO will turn into just recommendations on July 18, and the CDC’s appeal will be left up to the Eleventh Circuit.
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Cruises have already restarted in Florida, with Celebrity Edge taking off from Fort Lauderdale on June 26. A Royal Caribbean ship set sail from Miami on July 2 and a Carnival Cruise Line’s ship set sail from Galveston, Texas on July 3.