Tuesday, January 10, 2023

a very interesting collection of crime and criminals in motorsports, a new book about drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement, robbery, fraud, murder and money laundering.. and how drivers, team owners, investors, etc were involved


Of course, we're all familiar with the decades long murder mystery of Mickey Thompson by his business partner that was finally solved, but there are a lot of other stories just as intriguing:

Nick Whiting (casualty of the biggest gold bullion heist in British history)
 Jerry Dominelli (a Ponzi scheme that funded top-level racing Porsches)
David Thieme (the Lotus sponsor who vanished)
Lord Brocket (jailed for staging the theft of his classic cars, including Ferraris)

And this is a wild one:

Ever heard of Fatemeh Angela Harkness, who at age 31, had embezzled over $1 million from an Austin bank to assemble a NASCAR team called Angela's Motorsports?

Angela Harkness was born Fatemeh Karimkhani in Iran in 1976. When she was three years old, they fled Iran when the government was overthrown by extremists. She moved to Texas at the age of 19 in 1995 to earn her citizenship by marrying then moved to California in 1998 and began working as a stripper at the Candy Cat. 
She viewed nascar as a great way to make even more money. With a little investment, sponsors would bring millions of dollars and line their pockets with cash. With bank loans created a team that would run in the Busch Series. Angela's Motorsports was born. Checks started bouncing while employees and suppliers weren't getting anything. Wells Fargo was beginning to notice all the loans, seeing the team was a fraud, Robert Yates repossessed his tools and engine. Angela returned to stripping. Later that year, US Marshals discovered was working as a beautician in Dubai. In 07 she served three years in prison for the scam.

6 comments:

  1. My 'favorites' are Team Carl, two Swedes who back in the 1970 robbed baks to finance their motorcycle drag racing habit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nothing showing up on google with swedes, motorcycle racing, bank robbers, or Team Carl... do you have some more info, or a link?

      Delete
    2. Tried googling them too, to no avail. But I have about one shelf meter of old BIKE (UK) magazines, and there's a good chance the article is in there. I may have time tomorrow evening for that (I'll do anything to avoid doing more urgent, serious and necessary things...)

      Delete
    3. lol, I look forward to learning about this, and since there might not be anything online about them, you will be sharing a very cool fun story very few other people know or remember

      Delete
  2. the Whittington brothers were drug smugglers , who bought their own racetrack to help smuggle drugs and launder money.
    https://altdriver.com/racing/whittington-brothers-porsche-24-hours-of-le-mans/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Geez! And you just reminded me of that Nascar track that had a moonshine still under it!

      Delete