Sunday, January 15, 2012

Walkergate: The Web(Site Problem) Draws Tighter

I've  already discussed some of the side issues stemming from the arrest of Tim Russell, especially in regards to various websites.

To recap, we know that Russell had used the money he stole from the veterans fund and used it to buy various domains, including the site for ScottforGov.com and for Scott Walker's official campaign website.

I have since been given information that shows how far Russell was into this and raises several more red flags on who else might have been involved in the whole Walkergate scandal.

My source said that they did a Google search of Russell's email, tim@regentgroup.us and found www.regentgroup.us/. They added this note
The site's only content is an address and phone plus: "The Regent Group provides consulting and ancillary services to select clients. For information or to inquire about becoming a client, contact us by e-mail or phone."
The significance of this address is that Russell's realty company was named Regent.

This site led to www.regentwebhost.com/ which was described as:
 "Regent Web Hosting is a subsidiary of The Regent Group. We provide web-page design and hosting services to select clients. For information on our services or to inquire about becoming a client. Please contact us via e-mail or phone."
Further examination uncovered that www.regentwebhost.com hosted a number of sites, most of which were blank pages or domains parked at GoDaddy.com.  Some of these include the following:

  • hiller-realty.com
  • walkerrecord.com
  • thewalkerrecord.com
  • hillerrealty.com
  • hiddencreekcondos.com
  • regentwi.com (which redirects to blank page regentrealtyonline.com
Hiller Realty is the company owned by John Hiller.  Hiller was Walker's campaign treasurer for 18 years until he abruptly and quietly left (or was fired) last spring.  He has ties to the Commercial Association of REALTORS Wisconsin*, which we learned about when Andrew Jensen was jailed for a couple of days when he refused to cooperate with the Walkergate investigation.

Russell also had a domain www.believeinwiagain.org which redirects to scottwalker.org, Walker's official campaign site.

Russell also had two other parked sites: www.believeinwi.org (as well as .net and .info) and www.hgps.info.

The latter site is obviously in reference to Heritage Guard Preservation Society, the front group that Russell headed up to act as fiscal manager for the Operation Freedom funds, which he eventually stole from.

Despite Walker's repeated attempts to put as much distance as possible between him and Russell, it's fairly obvious that Russell was deeply entrenched in Walker's campaign.  Another source had already told me that it appears that much of the work that's been done at Walker's campaign site was done by Russell and apparently during work hours.

And all the ties to the various realty brokers - John Hiller, Jim Villa, Andrew Jensen, Brian Pierick and Tim Russell - it appears that this group might be a larger part of the Walkergate investigation than previously thought.  

And as much as the Republicans keep trying to either ignore the Walkergate story or minimize it to just the embezzlement of the veterans funds, it's becoming increasingly obvious that all the threads of this web lead right back to Walker.

*If things keep going the way they appear, the Milwaukee area is going to have a sudden dearth of realty brokers.  Maybe that's the way Walker was planning on creating the 250,000 jobs.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting information but just FYI anyone can register a web address. If someone thought they could make money on it at some point in the future, and many do make a living doing it, they could register names close enough to a business to get hits. For example, a slight spelling error and/or the other related domains, .us, .info, .org, .net, etc.

    You are right that it stinks to high heaven & appears to be damning, but in America even slime is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. At this point in time we only have allegations.

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