Sean David Morton calls in from the slammer

        Well, guess who was on the phone call-in line to Strange Universe radio yesterday. A clue: The call was interrupted by an official voice announcing "This call is from a federal prison." Yes, indeed, it was Mr. Scamalot himself, Sean David Morton, banged up for six years starting last September. Sean and his wife Melissa defrauded around 100 customers of $6 million between 2006 and 2007. According to the SEC, only a fraction of the money received by Morton went into foreign exchange trading accounts and the rest was placed in shell companies run by Morton and his wife. They also scored $480,323 off the IRA [oops, IRS...] with an entirely fraudulent 2008 tax filing.

        Far from being in any way penitent, in his 15-minute phone call SDM maintained that a recent ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court basically negated the entire tax structure of the USA^{Do you believe that?} and thus vindicated he and Melissa. He said he's lost 50lb and is still in business.

10:35 "I've got lines of people every day in the er... you know, in the whole facility. Because I started to do readings for people, I finally got a deck of lightweight Tarot cards. I'm still waiting for somebody to send me a decent book of. er.. of, er.. er, of a.. a set of talk Tarot cards... that actully come with the... the talk book. Ahh... that's what I need to complete the readings. I started getting a reputation as being... you know, I mean, this is a reading I usually charge like $250-300-400 for on the outside. You know, here if I get a bag of granola and [...] some power bars I'm lucky."

        His "readings" apparently include a prediction that California will break into two separate states, and that the "caravan" of Central American refugees marching through Mexico will cause havoc at the US/Mexico border. ^{note 1}

        I suppose Morton's ridiculous optimism is something to be treasured. Just one month before his April 4 trial, he was telling Kerry Cassidy that the charges against him were certain to be dropped because he is "not a 14th Amendment citizen," whatever that means. Even now he's in the pokey, he seems to be looking on the bright side.

11:55 "There's a lot of really interesting guys. We've got one guy who won five superbowls as a running back, another guy was former head of HBO... my bunky is the great grandson of Calvin Coolidge. It's all tragedy, man."

Thanks to UFO Watchdog for the audio.

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[1] According to this report, the caravan is much reduced and will not attempt to reach the international border.
Update 30 April: In fact, several hundred migrants from Central America have made it to the Tijuana-San Ysidro border crossing. None has yet been admitted or even processed. CBP says that once their backlog has been cleared, they will be split into small groups for processing, since the border facility has limited room. That does not sound like havoc to me (and California seems to be still in one piece).