Friday, April 11, 1997
Police want skinheads’ bank files
By David Shepardson / The Detroit News
State police issued a search warrant for bank records of a Highland
Township-based white separatist record company on Thursday in an effort to
link the company to a paper trail of unpaid taxes.
The police asked the Twelve Oaks Mall Comerica bank branch in Novi to turn
over international monetary wire transfer records, signature cards and
deposit records, under a second search warrant filed in 52nd District Court
in Milford.
Police also acknowledged that Wednesday’s six-hour search of Resistance
Records was part of a coordinated raid with Ontario Provincial Police.
While agents searched the Highland Township home in the 2900 block of
Central, provincial police raided the Windsor home of Resistance founder
George Burdi.
“Both searches were for business records and were carried out at the same
time for the safety of the officers and to make sure computer records
weren’t destroyed,” said Michigan State Police Detective Sgt. Rodney Young.
Ontario Provincial Police Detective Sgt. Tom Whittaker said that his
officers seized a large amount of business records, computers and discs. He
said the investigation could take months to complete.
“We don’t know if what Michigan found will be helpful to us. We’ll need to
meet to review the records they obtained,” Whittaker said in a telephone
interview from Toronto.
In the Highland Township search, police were surprised to find the massive
quantity of records. They confiscated 100 boxes of business records, three
IBM-compatible computers, flags, pamphlets and merchandise.
“We didn’t come with a U-Haul truck and we didn’t expect to find as much as
we did,” Young said.
They said they were shocked that the 1,200-square-foot, four-bedroom ranch
on a dirt road in western Oakland County was home to “a major distribution
center,” he said.
Police also recovered a massive amount of merchandise — including one box
with nearly 10,000 white-power music compact discs — as well as customer
address labels and mailing lists.
Young said it would take at least two months to go through the 100 boxes of
business records, but he anticipated that several criminal and civil
charges would be filed.
Resistance Records was operating without a Michigan sales tax license,
Young said. Undercover officers purchased three CDs at a Feb. 9 white
supremacist rock concert on Detroit’s east side, he said, and two tapes
were purchased through mail by an officer using a Grand Ledge address.
The state police first were contacted in late 1996 by Ontario Provincial
Police, conducting an lengthy ongoing investigation of the company’s
Canadian operations.
A resident at Burdi’s home originally said that Burdi had been arrested on
an outstanding charge Wednesday.
But the Ontario Provincial Police’s Whittaker said Burdi had turned himself
in mid-February and has been jailed since after losing an appeal of an
assault charge. He is serving the remainder of a one-year sentence.
Burdi, Joseph Talic and another Canadian are listed on the company’s
incorporation papers. Talic was seen in January by undercover police
mailing dozens of packages from the U.S. Post Office in Royal Oak and
Federal Express offices in an effort to skirt Canadian tax and hate-crime
laws, police said.
Two auditors from the state Treasurer’s Office have been assigned to go
through the reams of documents and Assistant Atty. Gen. Dan Levy of the tax
division will have to approve any charges.
Resistance Records sells thousands of records around the world. The
publicly held company incorporated in 1994 and maintained on its Domestic
Profit Records only minimal assets of $48,414 and a negative net worth of
$34,991.
Police are in the process of copying the contents of the hard drives to
“clean” state computers, where they will begin the task of determining
whether the company failed to pay withholding tax to employees.
No one at the house on the 2900 Central block would comment Thursday.
Copyright 1997, The Detroit News
From: [email protected] (Heavy Metal Maniac)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.white-power
Subject: Resiatance #3
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 16:57:15 GMT
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