#north buckhead

[usafphantom2]

A Flight of Four Mustangs Celebrates WWII Fighter Pilot’s 100th Birthday

March 20, 2024 Vintage Aviation News Warbirds News 0

The formation of four Mustangs flying over Lake Lanier, north of Atlanta.

United Fuel Cells

Mission accomplished! On Tuesday, March 19, World War II pilot Paul Crawford fulfilled his dream of flying in a P-51 Mustang like the one he commanded 79 years ago in China, where he flew 29 missions until he was shot down in 1945. Now 100, Buckhead resident Crawford was delighted when the Liberty Foundation and Inspire Aviation Foundation took him up in a TF-51D on a perfect blue-sky day for flying.

TF-51 “E Pluribus Unum” piloted by owner Bob Bull with Paul Crawford in the back leads the formation over Lake Lanier. The camera ship was a Bonanza piloted by long time Liberty Foundation’s pilot Cullen Underwood.

For the occasion, four P-51 Mustangs landed at the Dekalb-Peachtree Airport and parked at Atlantic Aviation, the FBO that supported this unique event. Mr. Crawford lovingly touched the nose and wing of one of the Mustangs when he first walked up to it, reuniting after a 79-year separation. LtCol Ray Fowler, Liberty Foundation Chief Pilot, and pilot Bob Bull helped Crawford into the back seat of the TF-51 and gave him an exhilarating 30-minute ride.

The organizers envisioned the participation of only one P-51, but a quick round of calls sparked the interest of other owners who enthusiastically decided to participate in the event. Bob Bull, Steve Maher, and Rodney Allison flew their Mustangs to Atlanta bringing the total number to four:

P-51D “Old Crow” (N451MG) – Pilot Ray Fowler – Liberty Foundation P-51D “Rebel” (N3BB) – Pilot Rodney Allison P-51 “E Pluribus Unum” (N351B) – Pilot Bob Bull – P-51 “Ain’t Missbehavin” (N51K) – Pilot Steve Maher

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Paul graduated six months later, during which time Congress passed the law to draft 18-year-olds. “I knew that I was going to be drafted so I went to Atlanta to talk with the Army Air Corps [sic] and the Navy about flying,” shared Mr. Crawford. ”The Navy said they would accept me for flight training but wanted me to go right then to their Great Lakes training center. The Air Corps told me they would accept me, but to go on back to college and they would notify me when to report.” said Crawford. Paul went back to Americus, entered Georgia Southwestern College, and shortly thereafter he received his draft notice to report to Fort McPherson in Atlanta on January 2, 1942.

Paul Crawford in his P-51 ‘Little Rebel’ ( photo by Paul Crawford Collection)

Paul had an older brother, Tim, who had gone into the Air Corps before Pearl Harbor and was flying B-26s, a medium bomber. He ended up flying combat in the B-17 Flying Fortress out of North Africa. The older brother influenced Paul’s choice, convincing him that the Air Corps had better aircraft, “I thought the water was, as they say, too deep and too wide to swim!” said Mr. Crawford.

With about 100 hours on the P-51 and 250-275 hours total, Mr. Crawford was sent off to Chengtu, China assigned to the 311th Fighter Group, 529th Fighter Squadron protecting the B-29 bases. As these B-29s transferred to the Pacific Theater, his squadron was transferred to Hsian headed for combat. At the time, Mr. Crawford was estimated to have only accumulated another 60 hours of flying time.

On his 29th mission, Mr. Crawford was shot down by ground fire while strafing a small railroad facility. After getting hit, he bailed out and was picked up by Chinese Communist guerillas. A few days earlier one of his housemates had been shot down and captured by the Japanese who cut his head off and put it up on a gate post. After a 200-mile-long walk, chased by the Japanese a couple of times, yet still evading capture, Mr. Crawford ended up at a compound owned by a wealthy family. A few miles from the compound was an airstrip where the OSS (U.S. Office of Strategic Services) brought downed airmen out. After the flight, Mr. Crawford talked about his experience: “When I recall my time in World War II, I always start by saying, I was not a hero! I was just there! That is not false modesty because it is the way I have always felt. I flew the P-51 Mustang.”

Mr. Crawford who has time in P-40, P-47, A-24, and P-51C, believes that the P-51 was the best fighter plane of its day. “There’s nothing in the world like that airplane,” Crawford said. “I loved doing the maneuvers again.” Paul Crawford was surrounded by several friends, his son-in-law, Tommy, and dozens of Liberty Foundation and Inspire Aviation Foundation members eager to have their pictures taken with him, shake his hand, and thank him for his service.

Ezoic

After serving in WWII, Paul Crawford finished college at Georgia Tech with a degree in Industrial Management. That’s also where he met his wife, Jean. They had a daughter and were married for sixty-one years when Jean passed away. Paul worked in the paper industry and for the U.S. Envelope Company until he retired in 1988. Paul currently lives in Atlanta and participates in aviation and historical WWII events.

This special event was made possible thanks to the support of Bob Bull, Ray Fowler Chief Pilot of The Liberty Foundation, Steve Maher, Atlantic Aviation FBO, Cullen Underwood with Vintage Flights, and Inspire Aviation Foundation.

Paul Crawford after the successful flight with (L to R), Cullen Underwood (Camera ship pilot), Bob Bull, Ray Fowler, and Rodney Allison.

[chorusfm]

The Japanese House Announce Tour

The Japanese House are heading out on tour this fall. June 29 – Kingston @ St John’s Church (Banquet Records) June 30 – London @ XOYO (Rough Trade) July 2 – London @ Finsbury Park (w/ The 1975) October 12 – Glasgow @ SWG3 October 14 – Newcastle @ Upon-Tyne – Newcastle University October 15 – Manchester @ New Century October 16 – Nottingham @ Rescue Rooms October 18 – Bristol @ The Trinity Centre October 19 – Oxford @ O2 Academy Oxford October 20 – Southampton @ 1865 October 22 – Birmingham @ O2 Academy Birmingham October 23 – London @ Outernet October 24 – Brighton @ CHALK November 1 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer November 2 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall November 4 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club November 6 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle November 7 – Atlanta, GA @ Buckhead Theatre November 8 – Nashville, TN @ Marathon Music Works November 10 – Austin, TX @ Emo’s November 11 – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger November 12 – Dallas, TX @ Granada Theater November 14 – Santa Fe, NM @ Meow Wolf November 16 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren November 17 – San Diego, CA @ The Observatory North Park November 18 – Pomona, CA @ The Glass House November 20 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre November 21 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore November 23 – Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood Theatre November 24 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre November 25 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall November 27 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Salt Lake City Union Pacific Depot November 28 – Denver, CO @Summit Music Hall November 30 – Lawrence, KS @ Liberty Hall December 1 – Des Moines, IA @ Wooly’s December 2 – Minneapolis, MN @ Fineline December 3 – Chicago, IL @ Metro December 5 – Detroit, MI @ El Club December 6 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall December 8 – Montréal, QC @ Studio TD December 9 – South Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground – The Ballroom December 10 – Boston, MA @ Royale --- Please consider becoming a member so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/news/the-japanese-house-announce-tour/

[chrisryanspeaks]

Crumb Unveils New Single “The Bug” and Announces North American Tour!

Following last month's announcement of their new album AMAMA, Crumb has unveiled a fresh preview with the single "The Bug." Along with the new track, the band has released an engaging and playful music video directed by Haoyan of America. Additionally, Crumb has announced a headline North American tour starting in mid-July. The tour will cover 30 cities, including stops in Chicago, Austin, Boston, Los Angeles, and a hometown concert in Brooklyn. L’Rain, Vagabon, and Discovery Zone will join Crumb on select dates. The full tour schedule is available below, with tickets going on sale this Friday, April 26th, at 10 AM local time. Discussing the new single, Lila Ramani of Crumb explains: "‘The Bug’ has been part of our musical journey since the early days, before the Jinx era. It started in a motel in Nebraska where I woke up covered in bed bug bites. Unable to sleep, I roamed the motel humming what would eventually form the outro of the song. As we recorded it years later, it gained a deeper, more tender meaning—the 'bug' isn't just an insect; it can be a friend, a lover, or a persistent late-night thought." Check out “The Bug” below: AMAMA represents Crumb’s most carefree and heartfelt work to date, mixing poetic abstraction with introspective honesty and inventive soundscapes. The album showcases Crumb in a dynamic and lively mode, incorporating elements like glitchy vocals, cell phone recordings, nautical sounds, sax mouthpiece solos, distorted drum samples, and piano strings muted with Silly Putty. Set for release on May 17th through Crumb Records, the album includes the title track "AMAMA," a vibrant homage to Lila Ramani's grandmother. This track is further enhanced by a music video directed by Abraham El-Makawy, which blends Lila’s archival home footage with fan-submitted artwork, creating a poignant mosaic of nostalgia. With its blend of psychedelia, pop, jazz, and rock, AMAMA further cements Crumb's distinctive musical identity. The album, produced in Los Angeles with Johnscott Sanford and Jonathan Rado, reflects on themes of stability, connection, and clarity amidst a nomadic life. In 2023, Crumb released the single “Le Temple Volant” with Melody’s Echo Chamber, earning praise from Pitchfork, The FADER, Stereogum, and others. AMAMA continues the narrative arc from their earlier works, including the self-titled EP Crumb, Locket, 2019’s Jinx, and 2021’s Ice Melt, which Rolling Stone described as "a captivating trek to the metaphysical and back down to Earth.” Upcoming Tour Dates * with L'Rain and Discovery Zone ^ with Vagabon 7/18 - Des Moines, IA @ Wooly's 7/19 - Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater 7/21 - Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Music Festival 8/20 - Philadelphia, PA @ Brooklyn Bowl * 8/21 - Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore Silver Spring * 8/23 - Richmond, Virginia @ The National * 8/24 - Charlotte, NC @ The Underground * 8/25 - Atlanta, GA @ Buckhead Theatre * 8/27 - Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl * 8/28 - Indianapolis, IN @ Deluxe * 8/30 - Detroit, MI @ Saint Andrew's Hall * 8/31 - Toronto, ON @ The Concert Hall * 9/01 - Montreal, QC @ Théâtre Beanfield * 9/04 - Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount * 9/05 - New Haven, CT @ Toad's Place * 9/06 - Boston, MA @ Roadrunner * 10/03 - Santa Cruz, CA @ The Catalyst ^ 10/04 - Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater ^ 10/05 - Sacramento, CA @ Ace of Spades ^ 10/07 - Salt Lake City, UT @ The Depot ^ 10/09 - Denver, CO @ The Mission Ballroom ^ 10/11 - Dallas, TX @ Ferris Wheelers ^ 10/12 - Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall ^ 10/13 - San Antonio, TX @ Aztec Theatre ^ 10/15 - Austin, TX @ Emo's ^ 10/17 - Albuquerque, NM @ El Rey Theater ^ 10/18 - El Paso, TX @ Lowbrow Palace ^ 10/21 - Santa Ana, CA @ Observatory OC ^ 10/22 - San Diego, CA @ Observatory North Park ^ 10/23 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern ^ Read the full article

[audiofuzz]

Crumb Unveils New Single “The Bug” and Announces North American Tour!

Following last month's announcement of their new album AMAMA, Crumb has unveiled a fresh preview with the single "The Bug." Along with the new track, the band has released an engaging and playful music video directed by Haoyan of America. Additionally, Crumb has announced a headline North American tour starting in mid-July. The tour will cover 30 cities, including stops in Chicago, Austin, Boston, Los Angeles, and a hometown concert in Brooklyn. L’Rain, Vagabon, and Discovery Zone will join Crumb on select dates. The full tour schedule is available below, with tickets going on sale this Friday, April 26th, at 10 AM local time. Discussing the new single, Lila Ramani of Crumb explains: "‘The Bug’ has been part of our musical journey since the early days, before the Jinx era. It started in a motel in Nebraska where I woke up covered in bed bug bites. Unable to sleep, I roamed the motel humming what would eventually form the outro of the song. As we recorded it years later, it gained a deeper, more tender meaning—the 'bug' isn't just an insect; it can be a friend, a lover, or a persistent late-night thought." Check out “The Bug” below: AMAMA represents Crumb’s most carefree and heartfelt work to date, mixing poetic abstraction with introspective honesty and inventive soundscapes. The album showcases Crumb in a dynamic and lively mode, incorporating elements like glitchy vocals, cell phone recordings, nautical sounds, sax mouthpiece solos, distorted drum samples, and piano strings muted with Silly Putty. Set for release on May 17th through Crumb Records, the album includes the title track "AMAMA," a vibrant homage to Lila Ramani's grandmother. This track is further enhanced by a music video directed by Abraham El-Makawy, which blends Lila’s archival home footage with fan-submitted artwork, creating a poignant mosaic of nostalgia. With its blend of psychedelia, pop, jazz, and rock, AMAMA further cements Crumb's distinctive musical identity. The album, produced in Los Angeles with Johnscott Sanford and Jonathan Rado, reflects on themes of stability, connection, and clarity amidst a nomadic life. In 2023, Crumb released the single “Le Temple Volant” with Melody’s Echo Chamber, earning praise from Pitchfork, The FADER, Stereogum, and others. AMAMA continues the narrative arc from their earlier works, including the self-titled EP Crumb, Locket, 2019’s Jinx, and 2021’s Ice Melt, which Rolling Stone described as "a captivating trek to the metaphysical and back down to Earth.” Upcoming Tour Dates * with L'Rain and Discovery Zone ^ with Vagabon 7/18 - Des Moines, IA @ Wooly's 7/19 - Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater 7/21 - Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Music Festival 8/20 - Philadelphia, PA @ Brooklyn Bowl * 8/21 - Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore Silver Spring * 8/23 - Richmond, Virginia @ The National * 8/24 - Charlotte, NC @ The Underground * 8/25 - Atlanta, GA @ Buckhead Theatre * 8/27 - Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl * 8/28 - Indianapolis, IN @ Deluxe * 8/30 - Detroit, MI @ Saint Andrew's Hall * 8/31 - Toronto, ON @ The Concert Hall * 9/01 - Montreal, QC @ Théâtre Beanfield * 9/04 - Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount * 9/05 - New Haven, CT @ Toad's Place * 9/06 - Boston, MA @ Roadrunner * 10/03 - Santa Cruz, CA @ The Catalyst ^ 10/04 - Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater ^ 10/05 - Sacramento, CA @ Ace of Spades ^ 10/07 - Salt Lake City, UT @ The Depot ^ 10/09 - Denver, CO @ The Mission Ballroom ^ 10/11 - Dallas, TX @ Ferris Wheelers ^ 10/12 - Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall ^ 10/13 - San Antonio, TX @ Aztec Theatre ^ 10/15 - Austin, TX @ Emo's ^ 10/17 - Albuquerque, NM @ El Rey Theater ^ 10/18 - El Paso, TX @ Lowbrow Palace ^ 10/21 - Santa Ana, CA @ Observatory OC ^ 10/22 - San Diego, CA @ Observatory North Park ^ 10/23 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern ^ Read the full article

[equestrianempire]

At the Makers ' Run Farm Carolina International CCI Horse Trials, Team Leslie wins the 2024 USEF Futures Team Challenge.

The 2024 USEF Futures Team Challenge winners ωere Jenny Caras and Sommersby. ©Allie Contrad Photography

Team Leslie won the head-to-head competition at the 2024 USEF Futures Team Challenge after three days of interesting eventing competition, winning with Team Bobby and teammate, Team Bobby, who had 112. 2 sanctions totals. At the Carolina International CCI at Setters ‘ Run Farm, the crew competition took place in the CCI3*- S and CCI4*- S groups.

Group Bobby, led by Chef d’Equipe/Technical Advisor Bobby Costello, produced good shows by Christina Henriksen and Cisco’s Calor Z, Andrew McConnon and FVF Top Gun, Caroline Pamukcu and She’s the One, and Sharon White and Claus 63.

Following Thursday’s dressage contest, Team Leslie took the lead with ƒirst leaderboards from aIl team members who posted small 30s scores. One fall from the dressage cycle is taken into account in the Future Team Challenge format, and the first time ended with 7. 9 penalties separating the teams. In the end, Team Leslie emerged as the wire-to-wire winners despite both groups ‘ strong results over the two jumping aspects.

Caras ( Buckhead, Ga. ) and Sommersby, the 2012 Holsteiner horse she co- owns with Jerry Hollis, had the striking performance of the week, earning the best dressage report across both teams and adding zero penalties in cross- region and jumping to accomplish on a 30. 8. Henriksen ( Keswick, Va. ) and her own 2015 Zangersheide gelding Cisco’s Calor Z had Team Bobby’s top score and the second- best finishing score in the competition with a 37. 3.

The Futures Team Challenge was created to imitate the structure oƒ global team competition and give up-and-coming athletes the chance to experience that environment as a training ground for poȿsible senior teams iȵ the future. Laws claims that this occasion was a victory by that standard.

” We started on Tuesday and Wednesday doing some staff courses”, said Law. ” I believe it’s beneficial for them to practice that. We spoke with the runners αbout what they thought should be done bȩfore going into competition and what is the best way to obtain their animals readყ for a contest that involved a group. Those first two weeks are when we do trot-ups. It gives the players a comprehensive understanding of what it means to bȩ a group. I think that’s the highlight—getting as many people into that space as possible”.

The staff members have the opportunity to socialize at staff dįnners and practice and get to know one anothȩr through competition. Accσrding to Law, these views helped the team work up properly.

” I think]Futures Team Challenge ] has good value for these younger athletes”, said Law. l believe it may grow and we can create ideas and do more to make it even more team-oriented. I firmly believe that in Europe, whether it’s the Western Championships or the Li Governments Cups, there is so much more opportunity for groups to gain that experience. We do n’t have that [in North America], so anything we can do to better prepare our athletes for an Olympic team or a World Championship team can only be for the better.

Laws had high praise for the host competition, Carolina International CCI and Horse Trials.

” They put on a great competition in all aspects”, said Law. ” It’s pretty well done, very professionally done. This time, the cross-country classes were fantastic, and the going was flawless, which was great for the animals. I believe there were excellent training for the horses going on this year, which taught riders and horses a bit, and hopefully this will help them continue and succeed in whatever three-day journey they’re on.

The USEF Futures Team Challenge is available here for more details.

#Eventing

[champagnemoon]

I agree with you about the DMV's Black elite families. My only point of contention, however, would be the comparison to Atlanta. Atlanta and the DMV aren't comparable at all.

The DMV is old money Black folks, Atlanta is new money.

The DMV is full of multi-generational Black families, while Atlanta is a transplant city full of people who moved there <20 years ago.

The DMV is overwhelmingly upper middle class, while Atlanta still has a really substantial issue with poverty and a very stark wealth gap.

Great points!

I am not very familiar with Atlanta beyond the conversations I've had with people from there so maybe I'm basing my opinion on my bougie friends talking about their own experiences going to private schools in Buckhead and attending the same cotillions their mothers and grandmothers attended.

I will say the DMV is full of transplants too, they just tend to integrate into families and merge into the culture quicker. You go to a mixer for black professionals and half of the people will be from North Carolina or Florida.

[celebsweek-blog]

Where Is Jordan Kustas? Family Concerned After 23-year-old Buckhead Resident, Auburn Grad Vanishes Along With His Dog

#jordankustas

[povhfr]

Tonight, we are walking around the district of Buckhead in North Atlanta during the Holiday Season! We are checking out the Atlanta Christkindl Market, walking around the city and checking what kind of Christmas Lights are up early in December!Google Maps Route: https://maps.app.goo.gl/c2cSzxzmH7SBg5cR8

#youtube #atlanta #christmas #walk #night #buckhead #usa #christmas season #holiday #holidays #holiday season

[connectcontemporary]

Neighbourhood Guide To Atlanta’s Awe-Inspiring Art Galleries and Event Spaces

There's nowhere better in the world to take in a fine art gallery in Atlanta, especially for those who want to feed their minds with thought-provoking paintings and sculptures. Although Midtown is known as the "heart of the arts," there are fine art galleries in Atlanta, from Buckhead to Castleberry Hill, that have inspiring pieces to satisfy every kind of visual hunger. Fabulous art can be found in these galleries and event locations, no matter where you live. Also, explore the finest art pieces by renowned artists like McKay Otto, Craig Alan, J.P. Goncalvez, Parish Kohanim, Henrik Abedian, and more.

Midtown

High Museum of Art

One of the top 20 art museums in the nation is Atlanta's High Museum of Art. The High is home to a wide range of artists and viewpoints, including a growing collection of African art spanning prehistory to the present, a sizable holding of European paintings and works on paper, and an extensive anthology of 19th and 20th-century American fine and decorative arts. It also boasts significant holdings of photography and folk and self-taught work, particularly that of artists from the American South.

The High is a community-focused place that hosts frequent activities for a variety of age and interest groups, including young professionals, elderly, teenagers, and toddlers.

Atlanta Contemporary

The Atrium Wall is one of Atlanta Contemporary's features. The wall, which is 20 feet long and 14 feet high, advances an artist's work by allowing them to create an installation that is unique to the location. Every mural project is visible for a full year. These installations serve as transient one-person shows. (2) Sliver Space. Local artists use the little space of the walls to construct on-site works in this actual slice of a gallery. (3) The Chutes. The old coal chute is where Chute Space is situated. It gives artists the chance to produce and exhibit immersive works that are tailored to a particular location. Atlanta Contemporary always offers free admission.

SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film

The SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film honours cinema as an engrossing and unforgettable medium, clothes as significant conduits of identity, and fashion as a worldwide language. Its shows honour the legacy and unique cultural contributions of the masters of fashion and film while evoking their thoughts and desires. Their innovative and thought-provoking exhibitions strive to be a creative resource for students of all ages and a wellspring of inspiration for visitors. SCAD is the global leader for arts and design in higher education.

Museum of Design Atlanta

The Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA), which is situated right across the street from the High Museum of Art, is dedicated to the study of design in all its manifestations. The MODA display on 3-D printing and its global influence was one of the more interesting ones. MODA provides funding for youth programmes that are both online and in-person. Chalk painting and calligraphy, video game design, and Minecraft are the subjects of recent instances. Design can address the major issues of the twenty-first century, such as how to combat climate change and create a just and equitable society, in addition to improving our everyday lives.

Gallery 72

The address of Gallery 72 is 72 Marietta St., first floor of the historic Atlanta Journal and Constitution Building. Three zones comprise the 3,400-square-foot lobby renovation: the entry lobby, the north gallery, and the south gallery. While the north gallery specialises on digital artwork, the south gallery showcases a range of artistic mediums.

ZuCot Gallery

The largest fine art gallery in the Southeast owned by African Americans is called ZuCot Gallery. Situated in the esteemed Castleberry Hill neighbourhood of downtown Atlanta, the gallery aims to showcase original artwork created by contemporary African-American artists and offer valuable and distinctive services that elevate the art-collecting experience for both new and experienced patrons.

The Conclusion

Are you searching for the best works of Craig Alan artist? Connect Contemporary is one of the leading art galleries in Atlanta dedicated to promoting contemporary artists both locally and globally. Explore the artworks of numerous artists including Joao Paulo Goncalvez, Pezhman, George Charriez, and others.

Disclaimer- The information provided in this content is just for educational purposes and is written by a professional writer. Consult us to know more about the top art galleries in Atlanta GA.

#atlanta fine art gallery #j.p.goncalvez #craig alan artist #context art miami #affordable art fair

[cheaphotelshub]

[arnoldmasonryandlandscape]

#stone #atlanta #contractor #hardscape #landscape #outdoorliving #landscaper #patiolife #brick #fireplaces #outdoor living space #outdoor fireplace #outdoor kitchen #outdoor living #outdoor dining #landscapestonescape custom stonescapes hardscape hardscapes patios atlanta atlanta outdoor kitchens masonry patios atlanta outdoor kitche.. #arnold masonry and concrete #masonry #stonescape #pool patio #patio #covered patio #bluestone patio #fire pit #outdoor kitchen #pavers #flagstone

[xtruss]

How a Man in Prison Stole Millions From Billionaires

With smuggled cell phones and a handful of accomplices, Arthur Lee Cofield, Jr., took money from large bank accounts and bought houses, cars, clothes, and gold.

— By Charles Bethea | August 28, 2023

Illustration By Max Guther

Early in 2020, the architect Scott West got a call at his office, in Atlanta, from a prospective client who said that his name was Archie Lee. West designs luxurious houses in a spare, angular style one might call millionaire modern. Lee wanted one. That June, West found an appealing property in Buckhead—an upscale part of North Atlanta that attracts both old money and new—and told Lee it might be a good spot for them to build. Lee arranged for his wife to meet West there.

She arrived in a white Range Rover, wearing Gucci and Prada, and carrying a small dog in her purse. She said her name was Indiana. As she walked around the property, she FaceTimed her husband, then told West that it wasn’t quite what they had in mind, and that he should keep looking. West said that he’d need a retainer. She reached into her purse and pulled out five thousand dollars. “That was a little unusual,” West recalled.

Later that summer, Lee called again, with a new proposal. His wife, he said, had been “driving around Buckhead, and she came across this amazing modern house and thought it had to be a Scott West house.” She was right. The house, on Randall Mill Road, wasn’t quite finished, and it had not been on the market—but Lee told West that he was already buying it, from the owner, for four and a half million dollars. Now he wanted West to redo the landscaping and the outdoor pool, plus some interior finishes. West took another retainer, but he had other clients to attend to, and Lee grew impatient. Eventually, Lee asked West for his money back and began planning the renovations without him.

The renovations were supervised, as far as the neighbors could tell, by Indiana’s father, Eldridge Bennett, a sturdy man who drove an old Jaguar and wore a pair of dog tags around his neck. Neighbors described him as friendly but hard to pin down. He told one that he worked in the concrete business—and that he’d been on the team that killed Osama bin Laden—but gave another a card that identified him as the marketing manager for an accounting company. This neighbor noticed that a wine tower in the house was being stocked with Moët & Chandon (“thousands of bottles, like, twenty feet tall”) and asked who was paying for it all. Bennett told him that the new owner was in California, “working on music stuff.” Like many residents of Randall Mill Road, this neighbor is white. The Bennetts are Black. “It seemed like they didn’t come from money,” the neighbor said, “but they had sure found a lot of it.”

A closing meeting was scheduled for early September at a bank in Alpharetta, north of the city. By then, Lee and the Bennetts had made three down payments on the house, totalling seven hundred thousand dollars, most of which Indiana and Eldridge had delivered in rubber-banded bundles of cash. Lee told the seller’s attorney that they would deliver the rest—about three and a half million dollars—in similar fashion, at the closing. He couldn’t be there himself, he said, because he was still busy in California. (Lee, the lawyer recalled, said that he “represented a variety of entertainers and got paid in a variety of ways,” and also that he’d made money in Bitcoin.)

Because so much cash was going to be exchanged, the bank arranged for the closing to be held in its kitchen and break room, which offered some privacy. The bank also asked a local cop to be present. At the appointed time, Eldridge and a younger man carried several black duffelbags into the room and began handing stacks of bills to a bank employee, who spent the next three and a half hours counting them all. Afterward, on the phone, Lee asked the seller to complete a few punch items on the property. When the seller got to the house, he noticed that the door to a large safe that he’d installed—and which he’d left open—was locked, and that the combination had already been changed.

A few weeks after the close, Lee sent Scott West another e-mail. “I’m buying land in a month or so to start planning on designing a house 100% to my liking,” he wrote. “I want to give you the ball and let you run the entire project. Let you go insane on your ideas. I’m thinking of a seven million dollar budget just for the house, not including the landscaping.” He suggested that the two of them “become a team.” West replied, as gently as he could, that he was too busy. A week before, he’d received a call from a federal agent, who asked him if he knew a man named Arthur Cofield. West said that he did not, and the agent began rattling off names. “He kept going through aliases until he said ‘Archie Lee,’ ” West told me. Arthur Lee Cofield, Jr., the agent said, resided in a maximum-security prison in Georgia. He had been incarcerated for more than a decade.

Arthur Cofield probably stole more money from behind bars than any inmate in American history. His methods were fairly straightforward, if distinctly contemporary: using cell phones that he’d had smuggled into prison, and relying on a network of people on the outside, he accessed the bank accounts of the very wealthy, then used their money to make large purchases—often of gold, which he’d typically have shipped to Atlanta, where it was picked up by his accomplices. Some of that gold he seems to have converted to cash: he and his associates bought cars, houses, and clothes, and they flaunted all of it on social media. (At one point, Cofield wrote on Instagram, “Making millions from bed.”) By the time Cofield was charged—with identity theft and money laundering, among other crimes—he had likely stolen at least fifteen million dollars. “I don’t know of anything that’s ever happened in an institutional setting of this magnitude,” Brenda Smith, a law professor at American University who has researched crime in prison, told me. Cofield, she said, was “something of an innovator.”

He didn’t arrive in prison as a man with a lot of connections or a history of fraud. He didn’t have much history at all—he was just sixteen. He had grown up in East Point, a poor and predominantly Black suburb southeast of Atlanta. A number of gangs operate there, but, if Cofield belonged to one back then, no one seems to have noticed. When he was a kid, dirt bikes were his passion. He began riding at a motocross track northwest of the city when he was little; at eight, he finished fourth at the Amateur National Motocross Championship, in Tennessee. A friend from his riding days told me that Cofield stuck out among the motocross crowd for two reasons: “He was African American, and he was freaking badass.” Cofield told the friend that he was called racial slurs by fans and other racers. “Nasty stuff,” the friend said. “It almost fuelled the fire.”

Competing in motocross is expensive, and Cofield’s father, who mostly made his living hanging drywall, converted a box truck into a trailer, with living quarters, so that the family could get Arthur to the big races. At one of those races, when Cofield was about fourteen, a gate collector noticed that more than eight thousand dollars had gone missing from the till, and told the track’s operators that Cofield had been lingering nearby when it vanished. “We went into Arthur’s mobile home and he had the money hidden in there,” a member of the family who owned the track told me. The family was fond of Cofield and his father, and declined to press charges, but it was the last time that they saw the Cofields at a race. Soon, Cofield began to “slack off from racing,” his friend said, adding, “That’s when everything happened.”

In October, 2007, when Cofield was sixteen, he brought a gun into a bank in Douglasville, just west of Atlanta, and demanded that the tellers give him all the money they had. He walked out with twenty-six hundred dollars and headed for a stolen station wagon, where a friend of his older brother’s was behind the wheel. A smoke-and-dye pack hidden in a stack of bills exploded as he got into the car; the young men crashed soon after getting on the road. They ran but didn’t get far. The driver was sentenced to ten years and was paroled after three. Cofield got a fourteen-year prison sentence and ended up in a maximum-security facility in middle Georgia.

It took a few years and a couple of prison transfers before he became a more successful thief. Early in 2010, Cofield sustained cuts on his arm from a razor blade; according to a prison report, he initially told a guard that he’d cut himself shaving. But he later handwrote a carefully argued lawsuit alleging that he’d been attacked by a fellow-inmate and that prison staff had not only failed to intervene but knowingly allowed the assault to take place. Citing the damage to his motocross career, which he slightly embellished, he demanded more than a million dollars. A judge dismissed the suit on procedural grounds. Cofield was sent to another prison. Later that year, he was mailed a package containing bottles of shampoo and conditioner. Inside each bottle was a cell phone.

As smartphones have become more powerful and more ubiquitous, the barrier between life in prison and life on the outside has become more porous. Thousands of phones are confiscated from Georgia prisons every year, according to the state’s Department of Corrections. Prison guards are generally not well paid, and they are often bribed to assist in the smuggling or simply to look the other way. Most people in prison use phones in innocuous ways: to talk to loved ones, for instance—prison phone services are notoriously expensive—and to keep up with what’s going on in the world. In 2010, inmates at seven Georgia prisons used smuggled cell phones to organize a protest for better living conditions. But phones are also used to carry out drug dealing and other crimes. Authorities have recognized this problem for more than a decade now, but the phones keep coming.

In the years that followed Cofield’s first prison transfer, he was found with phones in his soapbox, taped around his waist, and inside his undershorts. Many more seem to have gone undiscovered. On one occasion, he told a guard seizing yet another phone, “I don’t give a fuck about that phone. I’ve had hundreds of phones.”

In 2014, he was transferred again, to Telfair State Prison, in south Georgia. There he met a man named Devinchio Rogers, who was serving a seven-year sentence for manslaughter. Rogers grew up not far from Cofield, but he was a few years older, and flashier. Cofield is stocky and gruff—he was lean and muscular in his motocross days but put on weight in prison. Rogers was tall and stylish. He shared Cofield’s knack for getting cell phones behind bars. He’d attained some brief local notoriety in 2011, when he began tweeting from inside Fulton County Jail. (His tweets were “littered with foul language and pictures of prison food, something that appears to be marijuana and himself,” a local TV station reported.)

Cofield and Rogers started a crew, which they called yap, for Young and Paid. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of similar crews in Atlanta, many with three-letter names, most of them small-time. They are typically founded in prisons or on particular city blocks. Some are involved in the drug trade; some flaunt a connection to nationally known gangs, such as the Bloods; some aspire to be movers and shakers in hip-hop. The most famous of these crews is Y.S.L., which was allegedly co-founded by the rapper Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams. Like Cofield, Williams, who is Cofield’s age, grew up in East Point. He and more than two dozen other alleged members of Y.S.L. are currently facing rico charges in Fulton County. They stand accused of crimes that range from drug dealing to murder. (Williams, who started a record label also called Y.S.L., has denied involvement in criminal activity.)

Cofield and Rogers adopted aliases, like hip-hop m.c.s, incorporating the name of their crew. Rogers went by yap Football, or just Ball. Cofield called himself yap Lavish. In March, 2017, they filed paperwork to establish yap Entertainment as a limited-liability partnership in the state of Georgia. yap Entertainment, according to its filing, planned to provide “agents and managers for artists, athletes, entertainers, and other public figures.” Within about a year of the partnership’s formal creation, three hundred thousand dollars went missing from a bank account in Alabama.

The Alabama Theft was probably not Cofield’s first big score, but it is the earliest, from his prison career, of which he has been formally accused. The target was a wealthy doctor. Cofield got hold of the doctor’s personal information, logged in to the doctor’s bank account, used money from the account to buy gold, and had the gold shipped to a UPS center near Atlanta, where someone else picked it up for him. According to a detective who has investigated Cofield and Rogers, the Secret Service, during the previous several months, had noticed a string of similar thefts, and began making inquiries. (The agency, which has jurisdiction over some federal financial crimes, declined to comment.) Eventually, the agency opened an investigation, and dubbed the case Gold Rush.

The year that followed, 2018, was a big one for Cofield and Rogers. They were, evidently, beginning to bring in a lot of money, and they also seem to have been actively recruiting associates. This recruitment could allegedly be quite direct. A young woman named Selena Holmes was approached by a friend, who, according to Holmes’s former lawyer, said, “Look, there’s these guys in prison. They’re really rich. And all you got to do is talk to them. They’ll look out for you.” A few days later, the lawyer said, Cofield called Holmes on the phone. She was nineteen and had grown up poor on the west side of Atlanta. (Cofield may have known her through a family connection.) She had dropped out of high school after becoming pregnant and was working at Panera. Shortly after Cofield called, according to the detective, a man named Keonte Melton found her outside work and handed her fifteen thousand dollars. (Melton could not be reached for comment.)

Soon, Holmes and Cofield were spending hours together on the phone. She got a yap tattoo and people began calling her yap Missus—the queen to Cofield’s king. He bought her a Mercedes-Benz and rented a penthouse apartment for her in Buckhead. He also flew her first class to Los Angeles, to shop on Rodeo Drive, where she bought a three-thousand-dollar purse. (The detective believes that Holmes was running yap-related errands.)

In May, 2018, a video was posted to YouTube of a pool party that yap threw at a “secret location” that looks a lot like a Buckhead mansion. The party was hosted by an aspiring rapper, Anteria Gordon, who had adopted the name yap Moncho. Gordon, in the front seat of a Bentley, gives a shout-out to Lavish. “Nobody doing it bigger than us,” he says later, amid drinking and twerking revellers. Around this time, Gordon released a single called “Lavish,” mostly about spending large amounts of money (“two hundred thousand, blow it on a stripper”), and gave an interview to the YouTube channel Hood Affairs, sitting in an ornate gold chair at the same mansion where the party was held. Wearing a diamond chain that spelled “yap,” Gordon shows his interviewer around the mansion, praising Missus and thanking Lavish, seeming to call him “the most richest motherfucker in the city.”

In June, Rogers was released from prison, and quickly began throwing money around, according to a person who knew him before he was incarcerated. “He bought four hundred and thirty-six pairs of Reeboks,” this person told me. “He had a line around Greenbriar Mall—people lined up to get those shoes that he paid for. He was giving them to kids.” This person also saw pictures of Rogers “standing on top of Mercedes-Benz trucks” and “living in penthouses.” (In one of them, there was a shark tank.) A lawyer for Rogers told me, “I’ve seen the photos, but he gets paid a lot because he’s attractive and he does social-media posts wearing different clothes and things of that nature. I don’t know if it’s called ‘influencing,’ but he’s a fashionista type.” As for yap, the lawyer said, “their business did sign people and do social media and marketing—club things—and that’s what our client Mr. Rogers is good at.”

The detective who has investigated Cofield and Rogers believes that the two men were both building a brand and enlisting accomplices—mostly young men who had spent time in prison, plus a handful of young women with whom one of them had been romantically involved. The detective pointed, for example, to an attempted theft for which neither man was charged. A woman who worked at Wells Fargo, in Atlanta—and who had, according to the detective, exchanged “affectionate text messages” with Rogers—gave Keonte Melton access to a large account at the bank in August, 2018. (Melton is the man who allegedly delivered Cofield’s cash to Selena Holmes.) The account belonged to one of the family businesses of John Portman, a famous Atlanta architect and developer who had died several months before. Melton tried to withdraw eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars; another Wells Fargo employee called two of the account’s signatories, who said that they had no idea who this withdrawer was. Melton was charged with an attempt to commit a felony; he pleaded guilty and is on probation.

The woman left Wells Fargo for another bank, then went into real estate. (She has also appeared in multiple episodes of the reality show “Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta.”) When I reached her on the phone, she denied knowing any of the men involved. She does follow Rogers on Instagram; on her own account, she often posts pictures of herself in Lamborghinis or wearing diamond-encrusted watches, not only in Atlanta but in places like Dubai and Aruba. She was questioned by police in connection with the Wells Fargo theft but was never charged. (As part of Melton’s plea deal, he was ordered not to have contact with her.) “It was like a big ring that all of them were part of,” the detective said.

In the summer of 2018, Cofield heard that Selena Holmes was growing close to a man she had met named Antoris Young. Cofield, perhaps flexing his growing power and resources, allegedly hired someone to kill him. The hit man, Teontre Crowley, tailed Young in a car; Rogers and Holmes followed in a separate vehicle so that Holmes could I.D. the target. Prosecutors say that the pair was on the phone with Cofield so he could be sure that the hit was carried out. Crowley shot Young around ten times outside a recording studio. Young survived but was paralyzed from the waist down.

Days later, according to the detective, Rogers threw a birthday party for Cofield at Club Crucial, on Atlanta’s west side. “They had ‘Lavish’ on the club’s marquee,” the detective told me. Within months, Holmes, Rogers, and Crowley had been arrested for the shooting. All pleaded guilty and are now in prison. (Cofield was also charged, and pleaded not guilty; the case against him is ongoing.) A lawyer for Holmes maintained that she had been forced at gunpoint to help Crowley identify Young; Holmes later filed to withdraw her guilty plea but was denied. Last summer, at a hearing related to her sentence, an investigator said, of Cofield, “He finds these women from the outside and kind of pretends like he owns them from the inside, using money and things like that, and they enjoy the life style, so they go along with it. And they’re O.K. with it, as long as the money is good.”

“I Was a Pretty Girl in a Strip Club,” Eliayah Bennett, who goes by Indiana professionally, told me recently. “I wouldn’t say that I’m, like, a million-followers type of girl. But people know me. I danced for big people and stuff like that.” I had asked her how she and Cofield met. The full story would “probably take about two hours,” she said. I asked for the CliffsNotes. “Somebody seen my picture,” she said. “I don’t know who it was. And people was trying to find me. I was out of town. I think I was dancing in Miami or something, because, in the summer, Georgia gets slow. So one of my homegirls, they would have, like, stripper parties and I was invited to one. And that was it.” I waited for more. “It’s a real long story,” she said.

The detective offered me a shorter version: Cofield “wanted Selena to recruit a stripper and for them to have a girl-on-girl encounter in front of him on FaceTime,” the detective said, explaining that this detail came from Holmes. “That’s how Eliayah got involved. Then she and Cofield developed a relationship behind Selena’s back.”

Bennett told me that she and Holmes are very different. She said she comes from a more middle-class background and went to a good school—a charter school just north of the city. But, like Holmes, she began to live more fabulously after coming into Cofield’s orbit. She moved into a Buckhead home with separate floors for her mother and her father; she bought two Range Rovers and a four-hundred-thousand-dollar Rolls-Royce S.U.V.; she got breast implants and a nose job, though she said she funded those procedures herself. (“I’ve always had my own before Arthur,” she told me.) “When I talk to him, really it’s just to see me naked,” she told an investigator, downplaying the role of money in their relationship. “And that’s about it. And we’ll watch movies together.” They liked true crime, she told me.

She and Cofield were married, online, in July, 2019. Afterward, she was approved to handle his finances. As his spouse, she received another privilege: she could no longer be compelled to testify against him. Meanwhile, Cofield’s reputation within the prison system continued to grow. A month after his marriage, Cofield was moved temporarily to Fulton County Jail to attend a court hearing related to the Antoris Young shooting. “The jail was buzzing,” a person familiar with the case told me. “You could hear it on calls from inmates using the jail phone system: ‘That guy Lavish is here!’ ”

Cofield was transferred to the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison and later placed in solitary confinement in its Special Management Unit—a notorious facility that had been described by a social psychologist, a few years earlier, as “one of the harshest and most draconian such facilities I have seen in operation anywhere in the country.” There, he was kept alone for around twenty-three hours a day. But every prison has guards, and smuggling happens at all of them. Jose Morales was the warden of the prison when Cofield arrived. He described him as an unusual inmate. “The others were boisterous, loud, violent,” he told me. “Cofield was the opposite of that. Very cordial, very respectful.” Morales thought he was up to something.

In September, 2019, the Secret Service was contacted by Fidelity Bank. Someone had breached a large account belonging to Nicole Wertheim, the wife of the billionaire investor Herbert Wertheim. This person had used more than two million dollars from the account to purchase gold coins and had then had the coins shipped to a suburb near the Atlanta airport. Investigators traced the I.P. addresses of devices that had accessed the account: one led to an apartment building in Buckhead, and another led to a Verizon cell tower near the Special Management Unit of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison.

Investigators informed Georgia’s Department of Corrections, which began looking for the second device. In November, guards at the Special Management Unit found two phones on Cofield, including one hidden in the rolls of his stomach. They gave the phones to prison investigators, who matched one of them to the Wertheim breach. The phone had a virtual private network that could mask its user’s identity by routing its connection through a private server, and it had a free app called TextNow, which is marketed as a provider of affordable phone service but can be used to disguise the number that a call or text is coming from. It also had several saved Yahoo and Gmail accounts that incorporated, presumably for the purposes of impersonation, the names of some of the richest men in the country, including the real-estate tycoon Sam Zell, the media mogul Sumner Redstone, the hair-care entrepreneur John Paul DeJoria, the businessman Thomas Secunda, and multiple founders of the global investment firm the Carlyle Group.

Cofield had apparently narrowed his targets to aging billionaires: men who were rich enough to not notice if millions went missing—and old enough, perhaps, not to have set up personal online-banking accounts. Secunda, who is in his late sixties, was the youngest person on the list. Two men on the list have since died: Redstone, less than a year later, at ninety-seven, and Zell, at the age of eighty-one, this past May. Before Redstone died, his Fidelity account was breached twice. (Secunda and the founders of the Carlyle Group declined to comment for this story; DeJoria told me that he hadn’t heard anything about Cofield’s scheme.)

Having identified a likely suspect in Georgia, the Secret Service turned the case over to Scott McAfee, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the state’s Northern District. In August, 2020, one of McAfee’s investigators was contacted by the brokerage firm Charles Schwab. Two people, working in tandem, had successfully impersonated the ninety-five-year-old clothier and Hollywood producer Sidney Kimmel and his wife, Caroline Davis. Kimmel, who had recently executive-produced “Crazy Rich Asians,” reportedly had a net worth of around one and a half billion dollars, and had several accounts with Schwab. Cofield created an online brokerage account in Kimmel’s name, then called Schwab, claiming to be Kimmel, in order to connect the new account to a checking account. Over the phone, he provided Kimmel’s Social Security number, his mother’s maiden name, his date of birth, and home address. Three days after that, someone claiming to be Kimmel’s wife called Schwab and asked about making a wire transfer. Half an hour later, Cofield submitted a signed form authorizing such a transfer. The transfer was for eleven million dollars. It was used to purchase gold coins.

An investigator who has listened to these phone calls told me that the vocal impersonations were not sophisticated. “It was a bad old man’s voice,” he said, of Cofield’s Kimmel. “Just gravelly.” Even so, he said, the representative from Schwab was deferential. “I don’t know if they checked every single security-protocol box before transferring that money,” the investigator said. “It really seemed, like, ‘Yes, Mr. Kimmel. Yes, sir.’ ” Schwab, at the phony Kimmel’s behest, wired funds to a company called Money Metals Exchange L.L.C., in Idaho. This company was also deferential, the investigator told me: “They’re, like, ‘Folks, I’ve researched this Sidney Kimmel guy, this could be a really good client. Let’s give him the V.I.P. treatment! Let’s get him that gold!’ ” (When I asked the company’s director, on the phone, for comment, he hung up.)

Illustration By Max Guther

Cofield, still impersonating Kimmel, contacted security and logistics firms capable of transporting highly valuable assets from Idaho to Atlanta; that job was ultimately subcontracted to a man named Michael Blake. One night in June, just after 2 a.m., Blake landed on a private runway in Atlanta, during a heavy storm, with millions in gold coins in tow. He was met by two men in a Jeep Cherokee. The car was a rental, with Florida plates, which struck Blake as a little off. The driver showed him a license, and Blake loaded the gold into the car. He asked for a ride to a nearby hotel, due to the late hour and the weather, but the driver said no.

After the handoff, Cofield texted Blake with instructions to delete any photos that he had taken of the car or the driver’s license—and to send him a screenshot of his photo library and his deleted-files folder as proof. Blake, who had Googled Kimmel, thought this was an odd request to get, in the middle of the night, from a ninetysomething-year-old man. He complied, but he also kept a screenshot of the folder with the photos for himself.

Later, Cofield initiated another Schwab transfer, of eight and a half million dollars, again for the purchase of gold. But, before the transfer was complete, he cancelled the order and asked Schwab for a credit-line increase instead. At that point, a Schwab employee contacted a lawyer for Kimmel, who told Schwab that neither he nor his client had requested the transfer, or the previous one. (Kimmel’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. Last fall, he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that neither he nor Kimmel had knowledge of anything related to the theft, adding, “Mr. Kimmel was unaffected by whatever occurred.” According to the investigator, the Kimmel breach alone doubled Schwab’s average annual loss from fraud. Schwab, which reimbursed Kimmel, declined to comment on this figure.)

In the meantime, guards at Cofield’s prison found two more phones in his cell in the S.M.U. and gave them to a prison forensics unit. The timing was fortunate: Cofield had been using the TextNow app, on which messages can permanently expire, to communicate with Money Metals Exchange and with someone listed in the phone as Yum. Prosecutors believe that Yum is a bank employee who provided Cofield with a driver’s license and a utility bill that belonged to Kimmel. Federal investigators also contacted Michael Blake, who sent them his screenshot of the I.D. that the driver in the Jeep Cherokee had shown him. Investigators enlarged the screenshot and determined that the photograph on the I.D. was of Eldridge Bennett.

Cofield Was Indicted in December, 2020, and charged with aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. His lawyer, a prominent Atlanta attorney named Steven Sadow, declined to comment. (Sadow currently represents Donald Trump in the ex-President’s election-interference case in Georgia; Cofield’s legal team also includes Drew Findling, who represented Trump until Trump replaced him with Sadow, in late August.) Eldridge and Eliayah Bennett were indicted on conspiracy and money-laundering charges.

Soon afterward, a resident of Randall Mill Road was working at his kitchen table when he looked out the window. “Up comes a white locksmith truck followed by maybe ten black unmarked S.U.V.s,” he said. Armed federal agents circled the house. “I’m, like, ‘This ain’t good.’ It was right out of the movies.” The agents couldn’t get the house’s large safe open; McAfee, the Assistant U.S. Attorney, became convinced that that’s where the gold was. He tried, unsuccessfully, to subpoena the man who designed the safe, in Arizona. (“He was, like, ‘You’re not the real government,’ ” McAfee told me.) A team of six safecrackers finally got it open. It was empty. The vast majority of the gold that Cofield is known to have purchased with stolen money has never been accounted for. Laundering tens of millions of dollars in gold coins is not easy—it often requires dealing with transnational organizations capable of smuggling the gold out of the country.

Agents also searched the Bennetts’ place, seizing electronic devices, a Range Rover, a firearm, three hundred thousand dollars, and six Buffalo Tribute Proof gold coins, which were found on Eliayah’s desk. Cofield entrusted his wife with much of what he stole, and text messages between the two, discovered by investigators, suggest that this strained their relationship: on several occasions, Cofield seems to have become convinced that Bennett was going to steal, in turn, from him. “I get why u mad,” Bennett wrote at one point. “Cause U think I’ll steal a house from u. Like I don’t steal money from u I had Millions in my house for months. I know u love that house probably more than me I’ll never do that to u.”

“Phones were the key to his success,” Scott McAfee said, of Cofield, “but also his downfall. For me, it’s all there.”

A Few Months after Cofield was indicted, McAfee was appointed inspector general of Georgia. He handed the case off to another U.S. Attorney, who left the post after two years and then handed the case off yet again. McAfee’s successors both declined to comment for this story. (McAfee has since become a judge in Fulton County’s Superior Court. In August, he was appointed to oversee Donald Trump’s election-interference trial.)

In March, I got a call from Eliayah Bennett, who told me that she had Cofield on the other line. She then patched him through. Calmly and firmly, with a cool Georgia drawl, he told me that he was going to take a plea on the fraud and conspiracy charges. With Bennett listening in, the only matter he seemed intent on discussing, apart from the plea, was his connection to Selena Holmes, which he insisted did not exist. “In the story, if you don’t mind, don’t put this lady’s name anywhere close to mine, because she don’t know me,” he said.

The detective who investigated Cofield and Rogers described listening to hundreds of calls that Holmes made from a county-jail phone—many of which, the detective said, were obviously with Cofield. “He’d disguise his voice like he was an old lady when they talked, the same way he disguised it as an old man when he called the banks to take over the accounts. It was crazy Madea-type stuff,” the detective added, referring to the grandmother played, in several movies, by Atlanta’s own Tyler Perry. “They’d usually try to talk in code, and she’d slip up every now and then. When she’d get really angry, she’d write e-mails saying she was gonna tell everything that happened.”

Several people I spoke to expressed a fear that Cofield could try to retaliate against anyone whom he perceives to be working against him. He has, after all, been charged with ordering the murder of one person, and he committed most of his crimes while detained in maximum-security prisons—it’s not clear what authorities can do to make things more difficult for him than they are. Earlier this year, Georgia’s attorney general, Chris Carr, announced that he and twenty-one other attorneys general were pushing Congress to pass a law allowing states to jam phone reception in correctional facilities, which is forbidden as a result of the Communications Act of 1934. Todd Clear, a criminal-justice professor at Rutgers, told me that the better approach would be to allow people in prison to have cell phones, and to closely monitor their use. This, he noted, would also make prison life more humane.

A month after I spoke with Cofield, I attended his plea hearing, at a downtown courthouse. His high-priced lawyers made small talk about their ties while he hunched between them in his jumpsuit. He has a large tattoo on his neck, which was partly visible: “Laugh now, cry later,” it reads, alongside drawings of clowns.

After he pleaded guilty, lawyers for the government laid out the agreement that they had reached with him: a hundred and fifty-one months for fraud committed in Georgia and Alabama. The judge asked Cofield to explain what he’d done.

“What did I do,” he began. He took a deep breath. Without visible emotion, he described gaining access to bank accounts belonging to Sidney Kimmel and to the doctor in Alabama, using their funds to buy gold coins, and shipping the coins to Atlanta. “I got possession of it,” he started to say, when one of his attorneys cut him off. “I think that’s enough,” the lawyer said. The judge accepted this, then shook his head. “If you would have taken the ability and knowledge you have and put it towards something that was legal and right—” he said, in Cofield’s direction.

“I would be investing my money with him,” one of the lawyers said.

Eliayah Bennett, who has not yet entered a plea in her case, sat a few rows behind Cofield in the gallery. (Her father, who declined to comment for this story, has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.) Cofield smiled at her before a U.S. marshal escorted him out of the room. Later, the detective told me that another phone had recently been found in Cofield’s cell, and that he’d been Googling “U.S. marshal uniforms.” The detective suspected that he was trying to formulate an escape—that he wanted to get back to the free world, where he hasn’t set foot since he was sixteen. Devinchio Rogers is now in Ware State Prison, in south Georgia. His lawyer told me that, in July, he was stabbed multiple times. He is currently recovering, the lawyer said.

On one of my last visits to the house on Randall Mill Road, I saw that weeds had grown in the yard and around the unfinished pool. “Someone smashed a basement window,” a neighbor told me. “It’s attracted lots of activity and gawkers.” Neighbors said that they had also seen Eliayah Bennett around, late last year, in a Mercedes. “She was taking everything that wasn’t screwed down to the ground,” one said (including the Moëts). Bennett has opened a business in a North Atlanta strip mall offering facials and ombré brows. When I asked her on the phone whether she’d been by the house, she said, “I don’t want to talk about that.” Earlier this year, the government seized the property and put it on the market for around two and a half million dollars. It went under contract quickly. The new owner is an ophthalmologist. Proceeds will go to Cofield’s victims.

When I visited, it had not yet sold. As I stood outside, a black Lamborghini pulled up and parked nearby. Two well-dressed young men got out and ventured onto the property. When they returned to the street, one of them said to me, “The guy who built this house is in prison. Have you walked up on it? It’s nice.” This man turned out to be a real music producer, with the stage name of BricksDaMane. He mentioned his work with Drake, Future, and Lil Baby. (The Lamborghini was his.) I told him that I’d spoken with the architect who designed the house, and the producer asked me for his number. He wanted to chat with him, he said. He had some ideas for how it might be finished. ♦

#Georgia #Crime #Fraud #Scams #Prison #Millions #Billionaires #Smuggling | Cell Phones 📱 #Arthur Lee Cofield #Money #Large Bank Accounts #Purchase: Houses | Cars | Clothes | Gold #Charles Bethea | The New Yorker #Max Guther #Lamborghini #Architect | Design Houses 🏠

[brookstonalmanac]

Beer Events 8.15

Events

William Carter patented a Beer Pump (1882)

Backus Beardsley patented a Hop Picking Machine (1893)

G.H. Schneider patented brewing wort process improvements (1893)

Columbia Brewery brewed their 1st batch of beer (Pennsylvania; 1898)

Robert Clarke patented a Protector for Drinking Glasses (1911)

"Beer is Best" ad campaign begun by Brewers Journal (1920)

Frederick Wallace patented a Refrigerator Cabinet for kegs (1933)

City of Tulsa declared "Ranger Beer Week" to honor the Ranger Beers from Ahren's Brewing (Oklahoma; 1938)

Crown Zellerbach patented a Fiberboard beer Container (1967)

Bass patented a Self-Cooling Containers of Beverages and Foodstuffs (2000)

"Beerituality" film premiered (2010)

Brewery Openings

San Diego Brewing (California; 1986)

Creemore Springs Brewery (Canada; 1987)

Hartford Brewery (Connecticut; 1991)

Gate City Brewing (North Carolina; 1994)

Brandywine Brewing (Delaware; 1995)

Buckhead Brewery (Nebraska; 1995)

King Brewing (Michigan; 1995)

Poplar Head Mule Co. Brewpub (Alabama; 1995)

Tapps Brewing (Washington; 1995)

Black Bear Brewing (Georgia; 1996)

Henni's Brewery & Restaurant (South Carolina; 1996)

Nimbus Brewing (Arizona; 1996)

Stoopid Moose Brewing (California; 1996)

#Events

[chrisryanspeaks]

SEE: Dance Pop | Valley - “Break For You”

Valley’s upbeat, danceable love songs is exactly what you need in your life right now. The alternative-pop band is set to release Lost In Translation. Take a look-listen below: READ More: JUNO nominated, alternative-pop band Valley - Rob Laska, Michael "Mickey" Brandolino, Alex Dimauro, and Karah James - share their steadfast new single “Break For You” through Capitol Records/Universal Music Canada. “Break For You” arrives as the third single from the band’s upcoming sophomore album Lost In Translation set to release on June 23.  Listen HERE. Valley have been performing “Break For You” live as part of their set list during the first few dates on tour to rave responses from audiences, the track blending seamlessly into their catalogue of danceable love songs. Drummer and vocalist Karah James, explains “’Break for You’ was one of those songs that just fell from the sky and into our lap. The lyrics and melodies effortlessly unfolded as we wrote the song and when we listened back for the first time, we felt that it was a special one.” Karah continues, “The concept isn’t anything ground-breaking, but it’s a universal one that we said in a way that felt true to us and our relationships. This song is a reminder to a loved one that they don’t have to bear their burdens alone.” Karah continues, “It’s a guardian angel looking after us from near or far and a loyalty to pay it forward. The good and the bad parts of life aren’t meant to be lived alone, and if we just let each other in, our lives could be even more colourful.” “Break For You” follows two previously released tracks “Throwback Tears” which was covered by Kerala folk/indie group When Chai Met Toast and shared on Rolling Stone India and has racked up over four million global stream plus “Good, but not together,” that was released alongside a live performance video. All three tracks are set to be included as part of the band’s highly anticipated upcoming album, see below for full track listing, now revealed by the band. Valley have kicked off their North American ‘Lost In Translation Tour’ headlining tour in Canada earlier this month, including two sold-out nights in Toronto and head out on their U.S. leg tomorrow in Philadelphia. Fans attending their shows are getting an exclusive listen of songs off the Lost In Translation album ahead of it’s release in June. The band quickly sold-out dates in New York, Los Angeles and Vancouver with many of the shows low on tickets. See the updated list of tour dates below. Tickets can be purchased on Valley’s website, here. LOST IN TRANSLATION TRACKLIST - theme - Lost In Translation - Throwback Tears - Natural - Break For You - Have A Good Summer (Without Me) - Good, but not together - Evenings & Weekends - i thought i could fly - Either Way, I’m Going Your Way - I Haven’t Seen You In Forever - We Don’t Need Malibu - Keep My Stuff - Big Jet Plane - Fishbowl “Lost In Translation” 2023 Tour   April 25 – Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre of The Living Arts* April 26 – Boston, MA @ Big Night Live* April 28 – New York, NY @ Irving Plaza*SOLD OUT April 30 – Washington, DC @ The Fillmore* May 02 – Charlotte, NC @ The Underground – Filmore Charlotte* May 03 – Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl* May 05 – Atlanta, GA @ Buckhead Theatre* May 06 – Orlando, FL @ The Beacham* May 07 - Ft Lauderdale, FL @ Revolution Live* May 09 – Birmingham, AL @ Zydeco* May 11 – Houston, TX @ House Of Blues Houston* May 12 – Dallas, TX @ House Of Blues Dallas* May 13 – Austin, TX @ Emo’s* May 18 – Los Angeles, CA @ Regent Theater*SOLD OUT May 19 – Los Angeles, CA @ Regent Theatre* May 20 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore* May 22 – Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theatre* May 23 – Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood Theatre^*SOLD OUT May 24 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre* May 26 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex* May 27 – Denver, CO @ Summit* May 30 – Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater* May 31 – Chicago, IL @ House of Blues* June 02 – Detroit, MI @ Saint Andrew’s Hall* June 03 – Columbus, OH @ The Bluestone* ^w/ Devon Cole *w/ Aidan Bissett Read the full article

[audiofuzz]

SEE: Dance Pop | Valley - “Break For You”

Valley’s upbeat, danceable love songs is exactly what you need in your life right now. The alternative-pop band is set to release Lost In Translation. Take a look-listen below: READ More: JUNO nominated, alternative-pop band Valley - Rob Laska, Michael "Mickey" Brandolino, Alex Dimauro, and Karah James - share their steadfast new single “Break For You” through Capitol Records/Universal Music Canada. “Break For You” arrives as the third single from the band’s upcoming sophomore album Lost In Translation set to release on June 23.  Listen HERE. Valley have been performing “Break For You” live as part of their set list during the first few dates on tour to rave responses from audiences, the track blending seamlessly into their catalogue of danceable love songs. Drummer and vocalist Karah James, explains “’Break for You’ was one of those songs that just fell from the sky and into our lap. The lyrics and melodies effortlessly unfolded as we wrote the song and when we listened back for the first time, we felt that it was a special one.” Karah continues, “The concept isn’t anything ground-breaking, but it’s a universal one that we said in a way that felt true to us and our relationships. This song is a reminder to a loved one that they don’t have to bear their burdens alone.” Karah continues, “It’s a guardian angel looking after us from near or far and a loyalty to pay it forward. The good and the bad parts of life aren’t meant to be lived alone, and if we just let each other in, our lives could be even more colourful.” “Break For You” follows two previously released tracks “Throwback Tears” which was covered by Kerala folk/indie group When Chai Met Toast and shared on Rolling Stone India and has racked up over four million global stream plus “Good, but not together,” that was released alongside a live performance video. All three tracks are set to be included as part of the band’s highly anticipated upcoming album, see below for full track listing, now revealed by the band. Valley have kicked off their North American ‘Lost In Translation Tour’ headlining tour in Canada earlier this month, including two sold-out nights in Toronto and head out on their U.S. leg tomorrow in Philadelphia. Fans attending their shows are getting an exclusive listen of songs off the Lost In Translation album ahead of it’s release in June. The band quickly sold-out dates in New York, Los Angeles and Vancouver with many of the shows low on tickets. See the updated list of tour dates below. Tickets can be purchased on Valley’s website, here. LOST IN TRANSLATION TRACKLIST - theme - Lost In Translation - Throwback Tears - Natural - Break For You - Have A Good Summer (Without Me) - Good, but not together - Evenings & Weekends - i thought i could fly - Either Way, I’m Going Your Way - I Haven’t Seen You In Forever - We Don’t Need Malibu - Keep My Stuff - Big Jet Plane - Fishbowl “Lost In Translation” 2023 Tour   April 25 – Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre of The Living Arts* April 26 – Boston, MA @ Big Night Live* April 28 – New York, NY @ Irving Plaza*SOLD OUT April 30 – Washington, DC @ The Fillmore* May 02 – Charlotte, NC @ The Underground – Filmore Charlotte* May 03 – Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl* May 05 – Atlanta, GA @ Buckhead Theatre* May 06 – Orlando, FL @ The Beacham* May 07 - Ft Lauderdale, FL @ Revolution Live* May 09 – Birmingham, AL @ Zydeco* May 11 – Houston, TX @ House Of Blues Houston* May 12 – Dallas, TX @ House Of Blues Dallas* May 13 – Austin, TX @ Emo’s* May 18 – Los Angeles, CA @ Regent Theater*SOLD OUT May 19 – Los Angeles, CA @ Regent Theatre* May 20 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore* May 22 – Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theatre* May 23 – Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood Theatre^*SOLD OUT May 24 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre* May 26 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex* May 27 – Denver, CO @ Summit* May 30 – Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater* May 31 – Chicago, IL @ House of Blues* June 02 – Detroit, MI @ Saint Andrew’s Hall* June 03 – Columbus, OH @ The Bluestone* ^w/ Devon Cole *w/ Aidan Bissett Read the full article