Part 7 (1/2)
NEWS IN BRIEF.
Department-Store Santa Told To Push Chinaware UTICA, NY-Art Schultz, better known as the Senpike Mall's Santa Claus, carried out the management-issued directive to push fine china dinnerware during dozens of two-minute lap sessions Monday. ”Ho, ho, ho! Has Bobby been a good boy this year so Santa can bring him, a, uh, Wedgwood five-piece bone china setting in the timeless 'Crown Gold' pattern?” Schultz said to perplexed 5-year-old Robert Ullings. ”Maybe if you're on your best behavior, and a big help to Mommy, Santa could bring you ... a Lenox gravy boat!” Schultz bolstered his holiday messages by urging children to act now, as their good behavior could qualify their parents for a 10 percent discount on their first Nordstrom credit-card purchase.
NEWS.
Feds Uncover Secret Santa Ring BLOOMINGTON, IN-The FBI arrested 34 people and seized $157 in small, tasteful presents Monday in what is believed to be the largest bust of a Secret Santa ring in U.S. history.
The Creative Concepts sales office that served as headquarters for the Secret Santa ring.
The ring's base of operations, FBI director Louis Freeh said, was Creative Concepts, a Bloomington-area marketing firm. According to Freeh, all of the ring's partic.i.p.ants were employees of Creative Concepts, mostly working in the secretarial pool and mail room, with a few coming from the client-services and accounting departments.
”It took nearly two years to secure sufficient hard evidence and eyewitness testimony, but we feel we have a solid case against them,” said Freeh following the raid. ”We believe that this Secret Santa ring had been operating at Creative Concepts for upwards of 15 years, and that thousands of gifts, from Dilbert coffee mugs to giant Hershey kisses, had been exchanged during that period of time. We are hopeful that the reign of Yuletide graft and corruption that has infested this company for so long has finally come to an end.”
Among the items seized in the raid were three Sheaffer ballpoint pens, a bag of Jelly Belly jelly beans, two poinsettia plants, an Indianapolis Colts Christmas-tree ornament, a box of Ferrero Rocher bon bons, a Mannheim Steamroller CD, a 46 silver picture frame, a Mooch The Monkey Beanie Baby, a pair of mittens, a Dorf On Golf video and several items believed to have originated from a mall-based Successories store.
Despite the success of Monday's raid, much about Secret Santa operations remains unknown. It is generally accepted by criminologists that Secret Santaism is a seasonal practice taking place exclusively around Christmastime, and involves the exchange of gifts, usually costing no more than $10 each.
According to Lester Long, a freelance criminal profiler and a.n.a.lyst, cracking a Secret Santa ring is difficult, because ”the key to Secret Santaism is anonymity.”
”The ring members commence their operations by writing their names on small sc.r.a.ps of paper, then surrept.i.tiously placing the sc.r.a.ps in a hat or a small bucket or tin,” Long said. ”Then, each member quietly draws a single name and does not divulge who this person is to anyone. Nor does this member know who drew out his or her own name. Everyone is sworn to total silence and secrecy. This means partic.i.p.ants are able to cover their tracks and protect each other's ident.i.ty.”
Added Long: ”That's why it's so hard to run surveillance on suspected Secret Santa ring members when they go shopping-for all we know, they could be buying gifts for family members or friends. So possible civil-rights violations come into play. It's ingenious, really.”
Sorely lacking in circ.u.mstantial evidence, law-enforcement officials have come to depend on information from informants and infiltrators planted in suspected Secret Santa rings. Much of what is known about these schemes comes from now-retired FBI agent Clayton ”Hap” Roemer, who, posing as a claims adjustor, infiltrated a Secret Santa ring at a Freehold, NJ, insurance firm in the late 1960s.
Roemer detailed his experiences in his 1982 book Santa's Secrets: My Harrowing Undercover Life In The Center Of An Office Yuletide Racket.
”At times, work came to a virtual standstill as people chatted about the items they hoped to get on 'Secret Santa Day,' which normally coincided with the regular, perfectly legal office Christmas party,” Roemer wrote. ”A pair of white gloves for church? A Harold Robbins novel? Anything was possible for a Secret Santa, provided it was under the agreed monetary limit.
Roemer's work resulted in the arrest of 22 people and the eventual dismantling of the Freehold office racket. But despite this and subsequent decades of similar efforts, Secret Santaism still thrives to this day.
”Today's Secret Santa partic.i.p.ants are far more savvy than those of Agent Roemer's time,” Long said. ”For example, they've learned not to post gift wish lists on the break-room board-that's an instant giveaway that Secret Santa activities are present. They also avoid using intra-office e-mail, which can be read by managerial higher-ups, and they a.s.siduously destroy any evidence of a Secret Santa party, such as gift wrap, Dixie Cups and leftover poundcake.”
Crime historians believe Secret Santa rings got their start among the office employees of a storage-and-transfer business in New York's Lower East Side in the late 1950s. From there, it slowly spread, finding its way into businesses throughout New England and the upper Midwest. By the mid-1970s, it had made its way to the burgeoning Sun Belt and the West Coast.
The accused members of the Creative Concepts Secret Santa ring are scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate on Jan. 15. They are charged with first-degree racketeering and improper expectation of gifts from professional colleagues.
NEWS IN BRIEF.
Fall Interns.h.i.+p Pays Off With Coveted Winter Interns.h.i.+p NEW YORK-New York University student Dave Werner announced Monday that he has successfully parlayed an unpaid fall interns.h.i.+p at the magazine GQ into a long-sought-after unpaid winter interns.h.i.+p at the ESPN network. ”After three months spent fetching coffee and making copies, all my hard work has finally paid off,” the 21-year-old communications major said as he dropped off executive a.s.sistant Matt Sullivan's dry cleaning at a local laundromat. ”These days, I'm totally in charge of taking lunch orders, and some of the people I work with already sort of know my name. What an invaluable experience.” Werner added that his main goal is to use his connections at ESPN to secure a highly desirable spring interns.h.i.+p that could possibly offer school credit and a modest travel stipend.
FAMILY.
Grandma Concerned About Dinner Roll Count ROCKFORD, IL-Local grandmother Eileen Stafford, 78, expressed concern Monday over the number of dinner rolls she should have on hand for this year's Christmas meal, appearing distressed when discussing the implications of there being either too many or possibly too few.
An offer by Stafford's son to make an emergency supermarket trip if the rolls run out has done little to calm her fears.
On a recent trip to the supermarket, Stafford reportedly purchased a package of 12 enriched white dinner rolls that was on sale for $1.89, and has since remained torn over whether a second package is necessary.
”They're a little small, and I don't want anyone to go hungry,” said Stafford, carefully removing the rolls from the grocery bag to examine them more closely. ”Of course, I can always give mine away if there's someone who doesn't get enough.”
Added Stafford, ”I don't have to have any rolls.”
The elderly grandmother of four told reporters that, while she would hate for anything to go to waste, she would be equally upset if one of her guests reached into her wicker basket and found nothing but crumbs.
”Bill usually has two, even though he really shouldn't,” said Stafford, referring to her son-in-law, whose above-average appet.i.te she must always take into consideration when planning family meals. ”And [daughter] Sheila's on that diet where they don't eat any bread.”
Despite her insistence that she really doesn't want to bother anyone about anything, Stafford admitted that in the past week she has contacted several family members on multiple occasions to get an idea of how much company might be coming over.
Pacing nervously in her kitchen, the small septuagenarian admitted that, even if she were to acquire an accurate estimate of those planning to attend, the number still could increase or decrease dramatically without any notice.
”Sandy doesn't make it home for holidays much since the divorce, but you never know,” Stafford said of her youngest son. ”And [grandson] Dennis sometimes gets called into work at the last minute, because he is a very good doctor and people trust him and rely on him. Still, it would be a real shame if that happened five Christmases in a row.”
As a precautionary measure, Stafford has made several trips to nearby grocery stores to ensure that suitable dinner rolls are still available should a need for them arise in the coming days. If an emergency leaves her with no time to purchase an additional package, Stafford said she is prepared to defrost the hot dog buns in her freezer, a surplus from her upsetting overestimate of the turnout for this year's Memorial Day picnic.
According to a longtime friend who spoke with Stafford at church Sunday morning, the grandmother became fl.u.s.tered when discussing the possibility of someone bringing a girlfriend or boyfriend unannounced. Stafford, who lives alone in the house where she and her late husband raised their children, also said that she fears failure to serve her guests an appropriate amount of food might result in family members deciding to host next year's Christmas festivities at one of their own homes instead.
Eileen Stafford ”Grandma gets so worked up about the littlest stuff,” said Amy Joyner, Stafford's granddaughter. ”She's been calling me a couple times a day to update me on her dinner preparations and ask if I know about a better sale on sweet potatoes near us.”
Joyner said since her grandfather Walter Stafford pa.s.sed away in 2005, the holidays have made her grandmother uneasy because she worries that no one will be able to carve the turkey into ”nice-sized” pieces the way Grandpa used to.
”It's always, 'Oh, no, that's not how Walter used to carve it-you should really carve it thicker, like your father would,' ” said eldest son Michael Stafford, who has taken over many of the patriarchal duties in recent years. ”It's just a turkey, for Christ's sake, and Dad isn't the one carving it anymore. I am. I'm the one carving the d.a.m.n turkey now.”