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CooterBrown

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  1. Deadpool will be given a choice to stay in his universe or enter the Marvel universe and he'll do so, probably to protect his wife and friends. By doing so, he loses his 4th wall breaking ability so he fits in the world built by the Marvel universe and going forward is just the likeable, shit talking, violent asshole everyone loves.
  2. How did usher get so popular with this shit? It’s terrible.
  3. My guess is there's an amount of time you can teach before you are required to get the cert. I would think she doesn't teach it next year since she's in that role because of the teacher shortage and they couldn't find someone before the year started.
  4. My kid's AP Physics teacher has never taught physics before so that accreditation can't be too important. The only time the kids understand the material is when the teacher shows the AP Youtube video over the lesson instead of trying to teach it herself. That class is a complete trainwreck.
  5. I don't get the logic of these victims. Some dude tells you the cartel is after you and you need to pay them off. Why don't you go straight to the police/FBI? AAS doesn't ask the right question: what shady shit were these victims involved with that it made sense not to immediately contact to law enforcement? https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2024/02/09/wealthy-austin-tx-residents-scam-millions-alleged-con-man-saint-jovite-kota-youngblood-feds-say/72399667007/ 'It almost felt like you could trust him.' How feds say an Austin con man stole millions Tony Plohetski Austin American-Statesman Eric Perardi rolled over from a night of fitful sleep, waiting for the phone call from a friend that finally came at 6:15 a.m. Perardi, an Austin real estate developer, had been warned the night before that the call from Saint Jovite Youngblood would arrive from a blocked number. Youngblood, whom Perardi had known for five years, told the developer that he’d be there within the hour with urgent, troubling news that had to be delivered in person. Clad in his signature all-black cargo pants, dark-colored T-shirt and Crocs, Youngblood bounded into Perardi’s Steiner Ranch home. Against the chirping of the birds, the two men paced back and forth on Perardi’s balcony that June 2022 morning against the backdrop of a majestic Hill Country overlook. “Look, I found out a really frightening piece of information,” said Youngblood, who Perardi believed was a top-secret federal agent with high-level CIA clearance. He explained that Los Zetas, a Mexican drug cartel known for its viciousness and even beheading rivals, had put out a hit on Perardi and his children — that they could be kidnapped and killed as soon as that day. Perardi, whose projects include the Crossover in Cedar Park and medical office parks, sank in a chair, still in his pajamas, with head-to-toe terror. “They believe I had all this money from projects I’ve done,” he remembers Youngblood telling him. He also said the cartel knew that Perardi had a multimillion-dollar life insurance policy. Eric Perardi, a developer of the Crossover, a sports and entertainment facility in Cedar Park, sits in its lobby. Federal investigators say Perardi funneled Saint Jovite Youngblood $900,000 that Youngblood claimed he used to fend off cartel threats. Federal documents say it was an epic fraud, and that Youngblood used the false threats as a ruse to get money he squandered at posh Las Vegas casinos. In further describing the encounter, Perardi said Youngblood offered instant protection: Perardi could give him $70,000 that he’d use to pay off the cartel. Perardi wrote him a check right then and there. And over the next several months, Perardi and federal investigators say, he funneled Youngblood up to $900,000 that he had believed Youngblood used to satisfy cartel demands. Federal documents say it was an epic fraud — a magistrate judge called the crimes “the most massive pattern of intimidation of threats and violence and death I have ever seen” — that ensnared at least 20 victims in Austin and across the nation. FBI agents say in court documents that Youngblood — a 51-year-old husband and father living in a 4,000-square-foot Manor home with no documented employment — scammed millions of dollars in recent years, including from victims who believed their safety depended on high-dollar payoffs. They say Youngblood used the threats as a ruse to get money that he squandered at posh Las Vegas casinos. “All I can say is, ‘wow,’” U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Lane told Youngblood in an August detention hearing. “The number of lies, the depth of those lies, is beyond anything I have ever heard. Absolutely incredible. ... The weight of the evidence is absolutely against you, Mr. Youngblood.” Saint Jovite Youngblood, 51, appears in court in August. A federal magistrate judge has described Youngblood's case as “the most massive pattern of intimidation of threats and violence and death I have ever seen.” In the hearing, FBI special agent Lindsey Wilkinson rattled off a sprawling range of victims — old and young, wealthy and middle-class: A manager and bartender at the ShadowGlen golf course. A seatmate on a Vegas-bound flight. A fellow estate sale customer, and a man who sold exotic fish for Youngblood’s aquarium. “Friends of friends” and others he met from his children’s extracurricular activities, Wilkinson added. Ricky and Rebecca Kumar of Cedar Park are among them. They say they wanted to help their friend — they called him “Kota” — twice with loans to pay for family heirlooms, settling an estate dispute, and to handle blackmail involving his wife. They gave him $200,000 — a fraction of which he returned, they said. “It kind of sounds unbelievable that we would do that,” Rebecca Kumar said. “You have to understand how he molds his relationships with people and how he just tries to continue to build this trust. He is a master storyteller and a fantastic con man." Investigators say Youngblood left a trail of financial devastation and monetary ruin. In an FBI victims’ meeting, Perardi recounted, some tearfully admitted surrendering their life savings and homes to Youngblood. Wilkinson testified that one victim was so terrified of a cartel hit that he and his family abandoned their home and lives in the middle of the night and secluded themselves in an extended stay in Florida for months, all the while paying Youngblood. Perardi sold his home, unable to pay the mortgage. The Kumars — Ricky is an engineer, and Rebecca operates a small gym in Cedar Park — gave Youngblood their son’s college tuition savings. Youngblood remains in a federal detention facility near Waco charged with wire fraud, aiding and abetting and engaging in monetary transactions in criminally derived property — crimes for which he faces up to 40 years in prison. A trial is set for April. His court-appointed attorney, Charlotte Herring, declined to comment. In the end, Perardi and court documents say Perardi relied on internet sleuthing and a series of phone calls to break through the deception. In a made-for-TV moment, federal investigators teamed up with Perardi to set up an undercover operation at a North Austin Carrabba's Italian Grill. They wired him with a hidden microphone that let the feds record Youngblood perpetuating the cartel threat and monetary demands, documents say. With $18,000 in his front pocket that he told investigators was from a casino win, Youngblood was nabbed by agents two months later boarding a flight on his latest Las Vegas junket. “Call it a higher power — somebody put me in this position to bring him down,” Perardi said. The Delta Force, hockey and friendships Perardi, 52, moved to Austin in 2006 after playing college ice hockey and working in the Hollywood entertainment industry. He thought it would be a family-friendly area to raise his children. Over the past 15 years, he founded and built Perardi Development, constructing 12 medical office buildings regionwide. His most ambitious and prized project is the Crossover, a 240,000-square-foot entertainment, sports and wellness expanse off U.S. 183. Beginning in 2010, when his son was 4, Perardi served as a volunteer coach for his son’s ice hockey league. That’s how he met Youngblood and his family in 2018. Youngblood’s son joined Perardi’s son’s team. Perardi saw immediate talent. “I took the kid under my wing and just tried to help teach him the game and skate better,” he said. Eric Perardi watches his son's hockey game at the Crossover sports and entertainment facility in Cedar Park. Perardi first met Saint Jovite Youngblood and his family in 2018 while serving as a volunteer ice hockey league coach after Youngblood’s son joined Perardi’s son’s team. The Kumars' son also played hockey. The families cheered together in the stands, passed practice time at the Pond Hockey Club and the Chaparral Ice rink, and traveled to regional competitions. Saint Jovite Youngblood became a constant — and captivating — presence. Perardi and the Kumars recall how he told fellow parents he had served in the Army, describing daring adventures as part of the elite Delta Force. He said he spoke multiple languages and had lived in Japan and Russia. He drew sympathy with a story that his parents had been killed when he was a child — and intellectual intrigue by claiming he had a master’s degree in quantum physics. He kept his work intensely confidential, they recalled, insisting secrecy was required for his classified government job. He seldom carried a cellphone and resoundingly rejected being photographed. "He was extremely generous, and he would throw a bunch of money at purchasing dinners and doing events with people and giving fancy gifts to whoever would accept something like that from him," Rebecca Kumar said. "He seemed very loving, very attentive, and you just feel like he's going to protect you," she said. “You almost felt like you could trust him with anything.” "He would rent out a whole movie theater and take you and your family to the movies,” Perardi added. “Always paying for things on road trips. Buying the team dinner for kids. He was an extremely likable person, always talking about geopolitical things.” But looking back, Rebecca Kumar says she had a back-of-mind suspicion that she never allowed herself to voice. At times, Youngblood was almost overly friendly. She said he encroached on personal space during conversations, talking too closely face-to-face. Kumar added that he seemed manic — always. “I have a really strong gut feeling, and something about him threw me off,” she said. The alleged scams On the witness stand in the summer detention hearing, Wilkinson, the FBI agent who spent months uncovering his alleged crimes, unfurled what she described as Youngblood’s multilayered, sometimes difficult-to-follow patterns of deceit. She told the judge that Youngblood relied on a combination of investment schemes and extortion, sometimes offering purported antique clocks, a Confederate flag and sports memorabilia, including baseball bats he claimed belonged to Lou Gehrig or Babe Ruth, as investment collateral. “Among other claims, Youngblood told investors that he had access to a large number of gold bars and that Youngblood was going to then sell and share profits with the investor,” a six-page federal complaint said. Saint Jovite Youngblood remains in a federal detention facility near Waco, and his trial is set for April. In Wilkinson's testimony, she traced victims back more than a dozen years, including cases that the Los Angeles-area media reported in 2011. Police in California arrested Youngblood on theft charges after investigators said he wrote a fraudulent check for $94,000 in gold coins, sold them and gambled the money, according to published reports. At the time, the Los Angeles Daily News reported that other victims said Youngblood told them that he had earned a Purple Heart in the war on terror, that he had served as a U.S. Navy SEAL, and that a drunken driver had killed his wife and children. Federal officials said in court that he was convicted, and records show he was sentenced to the time he had already served. Wilkinson said that, as in Perardi’s case, Youngblood often used fears of cartels. Perardi said that, at first, Youngblood did not ask for money, only mentioning in April 2022 that his family might be under threat based on preliminary covert intelligence he said he had received. “He was just, ‘Be careful; watch where you are going,’” Perardi said. Two months later, Perardi got the alarming call from a mutual friend traveling with Youngblood in Las Vegas. The friend said Youngblood was extremely concerned about Perardi’s safety and was urgently flying back to Austin to meet with Perardi. After the initial $70,000 that day, Perardi’s payments to Youngblood continued over the next six months. Perardi said he faced growing pressure from Youngblood. The indictment lists two transactions of a combined $86,000 in July and August 2022 “for payment to provide protection against threats to E.P. and his family.” Wilkinson testified that Youngblood also told Perardi he would receive an “exorbitant” return on the money and offered him a tattered Civil War flag, supposedly valued at $2.5 million, as collateral. In the following months, Perardi said he was the victim of several property crimes and social media harassment that Youngblood told him were the cartel’s work. An online Nov. 6, 2022, review of the Crossover said it is a haven for “a few folks that are creepy and say they know the owner … sad that the owner, Mr. Perardi, can’t get his ‘friends’ in line.” Perardi said, and Wilkinson testified, that the posts coincided with Youngblood’s increasingly urgent demands for more money. Perardi said he sold business entities, took out lines of credit and borrowed money from friends and family — some of whom met with Youngblood and were also convinced Perardi and his family were in danger. Eric Perardi orders from a food truck at the Crossover in Cedar Park. After internet sleuthing helped confirm some of Perardi's suspicions about Saint Jovite Youngblood, he went to the FBI. The FBI then set up an operation at a North Austin restaurant with Perardi, Youngblood and an undercover agent. The first time Youngblood asked for a loan, the Kumars said he told them that a family friend needed money to pay for nostalgic items that belonged to his father to prevent other family members from selling them at an estate sale. Months later, they gave Youngblood $100,000 after he told them his wife was being accused of arson, but a person had a recording that vindicated her, and he needed the money to purchase the recording, the Kumars recalled. “We are grateful that is all it was, because the other victims lost more, and that’s heartbreaking,” Rebecca Kumar said. “And we are grateful we were not led by fear because other victims were — for their lives and for their families’ lives.” Last summer, Perardi and the Kumars independently grew suspicious. Perardi reached out in April 2023 to an out-of-state antique flag dealer. Perardi said the dealer told him the supposedly $2.5 million flag was actually valued at $85,000 — and coincidentally, that he had recently sold it to Youngblood for $75,000 but had not been paid in full. That revelation prompted him to hire Austin attorney Steve Toland. Together, they went to the FBI. Rebecca Kumar decided to investigate Youngblood’s background and paid $30 for an online criminal history search. “What I found was shocking,” she said. The search showed the previous arrest in San Bernardino, Calif., and related newspaper articles. She found through those articles that Youngblood had allegedly told victims a decade earlier the same stories about himself. “Every word out of his mouth was a lie,” she said. “Every word.” Perardi began asking other mutual friends if they had loaned or given Youngblood money. When the Kumars confirmed they had, he asked them to speak to an FBI agent as quickly as possible. On May 1, the FBI set up the Carrabba’s operation with Perardi, Youngblood and a third man whom investigators staged as Perardi's wealthy friend who could loan him more money. Instead, the man was an undercover FBI agent. At a round table outside, and over a shared meal of green salad and pasta with shrimp that Youngblood ordered, Youngblood told the men that the cartel was becoming impatient and needed $77,000 immediately. “There are agents inside the building, agents outside the building, just like you would see in a movie,” Perardi said. What’s next? With the incriminating audio in hand, the FBI stepped up its investigation into Youngblood. They searched his home, where they found five guns and a note in his wife’s purse that included a script to law enforcement if they showed up, Wilkinson testified. Youngblood’s wife, Gloria, declined an interview with the American-Statesman. It is not clear what she knew about Saint Jovite Youngblood’s alleged crimes. Wilkinson also set out to perform months of forensic accounting, poring over transaction logs from the Aria Casino & Resort in Las Vegas showing Youngblood lost more than $700,000 in 2023 alone and gained only about $200,000 through winnings, she said. She said she traced the $18,000 Youngblood had with him during his arrest to several victims — one of whom had taken out a loan to pay him. Some of the alleged victims packed the courtroom to hear the prosecutors' case, with several of them in tears. “It was such a mixed reaction,” Perardi said of the crowd. “You feel foolish, like ‘How did I let this person dominate my life for so long?’ But then I was just disgusted. Just the lies and destruction.” “You feel foolish, like ‘How did I let this person dominate my life for so long?’ But then I was just disgusted. Just the lies and destruction,” Eric Perardi says of the alleged fraud schemes he and many other people in the Austin area got caught up in with Saint Jovite Youngblood. By then, they said they had learned nearly everything about Youngblood was untrue. His birth name was Dennis Schuler Jr., and he was born and raised outside Cleveland. His parents were not killed in an accident but were alive and well. “I spoke with them last week at least,” Wilkinson testified. (A woman with the same name as his mother told the Statesman that the two have been estranged for 30 years before ending the call.) Wilkinson told the court Youngblood had never served in the military — much less in the Delta Force or 82nd Airborne Division. The only international destination he had visited was Mexico. Investigators said the only documented employment Youngblood ever had was as a used car salesman. His highest level of education was a high school diploma, not a master’s degree in physics, Wilkinson said. “I was astonished,” Perardi said. “To be able to construct that level of detail about his life, and the way he knew things to the level of detail, yet he had never done any of those things.” Perardi said he is trying to rebuild his life and finances. “I just think to myself, I am financially devastated right now, but I am still hopefully young enough to make it back,” he said. The Kumars said they have slashed their spending, and their son might need to take out student loans. They also are healing emotionally — that a man they once thought was a trusted friend utterly betrayed them. “There are some days I don’t think about it, and others when I am extremely angry,” Rebecca Kumar said, tears forming in her eyes. “We are hurt in so many ways.”
  6. The drummer is from Austin also. He was the frontman for Poi Dog Pondering back in the day. One of the horns players is also.
  7. I like that our headhunter firm told city manager candidates to wear Halloween masks as they arrived at ABIA so they'd stay inconspicuous when arriving for an interview. Just what. the. fuck.
  8. The first singer is Lou Lou from Austin. Her day job is being the manager at Justine's. She got kicked out of the band over a year ago. No idea what happened.
  9. First few booths this year people were thrown off by the new $6/box price and were only buying 1-2 when last year the normal purchase was 4 for $20. So, my kid started a new sales spiel of "1 FOR $6 OR 5 for $30!!!" People can't do simple math but love to think they're getting a deal. She went from selling an average of 70 boxes per booth to 110 boxes.
  10. Public employees in Texas can’t unionize. Dunno how that affects anything when whores, blow, and Lambos are already flowing freely.
  11. She refused until Spotify negotiated a special rate for her.
  12. Thought I’d picked great seats for Tool at Moody but what the fuck was this bundle of cables? A half billion for an arena and there’s not enough electrical under the floor to avoid this?
  13. I wish they’d make the batshit original treatment for the sequel. Maximus is resurrected and becomes an immortal who has Forrest Gump style adventures throughout history and ends up working at the Pentagon. Really.
  14. Meh. It was a lightweight PG Kingsmen. It was fine outside of the stupid dance and ice skating scenes. The setup for the sequel seemed more interesting than this movie.
  15. He needs to hold on to the election. We can’t risk there being time for a decent candidate to get the GQP nomination. The GQP needs to lose big in November. I think the only way that happens is if Trumps infects the entire down ballot.
  16. In my hood, they recently narrowed a residential street (Green Haven) that hits Greenlawn. For just 10 feet the curb now juts out 5 feet narrower at the intersection for no reason. I’m constantly seeing cars having to wait to turn because only one car at a time fits through that bottleneck.
  17. Where are you getting Smores? Those were cancelled a year ago. At least in Central Texas. My kid has sold 1,200 boxes so far. She would make an excellent drug dealer.
  18. It’s really two years. Most schools disregard your freshman grades completely. Also, many schools don’t look at your high school transcript’s GPA. They calculate a GPA for you based on core classes and classes pertinent to your proposed major. Elective grades don’t matter unless it’s related to your major. That 80 in AP Physics that shows up as an A 4.0/5.0 on your weighted HS GPA is given the same 3.0/4.0 as regular physics in the university’s calculation. The advanced course load is looked at separately from the GPA.
  19. Didn’t she speak out against ObamaCare back in the day? Wouldn’t be surprised if she was a Covid denier also.
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