WHITE CO., Ill. - Did you know that there's a serious situation brewing with the matter involving Peoples National Bank and their corporate icons, the Bonans; Grand Rivers Community Bank, and the people involved with Evergreen Drilling et al, Gary and Abbey Evans?
You probably didn't, if you don't read our publication.
Let's start with some essentials; here are the links to the articles, some of which you won't be able to read if you don't have an online membership:
Behavior questioned in leadup to federal lawsuit
Peoples fires back at racketeering charges
Grand Rivers terminates lease, files suit
FORECLOSURE: Grand Rivers Community Bank attempts collection on another loan
PNB loses big in massive settlement
Judge signs documents in brother-in-law's civil case
Those are all ours. Other media outlets across the southern part of the state covered the matter, but not nearly as thoroughly as we did. How did we cover it so thoroughly? We had insiders who were helping us, every step of the way.
And we still do.
There are many things going on right now that I need to tell you about. But here's the most important one: Peoples National Bank (PNB) is looking to seal documents - apparently, even more than what already are, as we'll discuss in a minute - in the state case that Judge Mark Stanley - an associate judge who needs to learn a very hard lesson in conflict of interest, and may be on the verge of being taught one, even as you read this - signed off on for his brother-in-law Gary Evans of Evergreen Drilling in June of this year. This was the last offering on the hotlinks up there, and was a front-pager in the last physical copy we produced in July. You can imagine our astonishment in finding out Stanley did such a thing; and yet, given our own encounters with him, we've discovered that 'astonishment' does not equal 'surprise.' We were not 'surprised' that he did such a thing, which smacks of the corruption surrounding the ongoing case between PNB and GRCB; we were, however, astonished that he'd put his robe and gavel (and maybe law degree, if some folks have their way) on the line. He has, we've discovered, done some extremely shady things in other cases (not something he's been called out on yet; that's coming); but this was outright unbelievably corrupt. The things that some family members will do to keep peace - and to keep some from going to federal prison, apparently - are jaw-dropping, evidently.
It's that 'federal prison' reference that no one else is talking about...because few know.
See, there are already some documents filed under seal. We went to White County last week to view the full file, and were told that a particular filing had already been sealed by the new judge in the case, one named Emge, from the uber-corrupt judicial hellhole of the 20th Illinois Circuit ("judicial hellhole" isn't our snide moniker of it; they'd earned that LONG before we even came on the scene.). This is the place where publicly-supported divorcers go to get their files hidden away from the public, like Bryan and Melissa Drew did several years ago. People in positions of power know to go to the 20th - or get a judge from there if they claim they can't find an impartial judge from their own circuit - so that people in the public simply can't know how things transpired. Which is highly unethical, as well as unconstitutional. Sealed files mean you don't get to know how your tax dollars are spent in court settings. Bad enough you have people who have no urge or inclination to GO to courthouses and view the proceedings or files; bad enough that most newspapers don't print anything about cases like PNB's and when they do, they hedge. Now, it's gotten to the point where if you're a power broker, you can ask for a seal and you'll get it.
What those sealed files show, however, is what we mean when we reference 'federal case.'
You see, the filing that we were told point blank we couldn't access, we already had. We had it with us that day we went to the White County Courthouse, not knowing it'd been sealed. We have insiders, you know, as I've already noted. There are a LOT more people keeping an eye on this case than the participants are probably aware of, and one of them sent it to us anonymously. So while we were standing there with our jaws agape over the fact that a particular motion was filed under seal in lil ol White County, it so happened that Ang looked down at the paperwork she was holding, saw that it was the very motion the clerk had just advised us was under seal, and did a graceful maneuver with the paperclip holder, placing it over the title of the motion until she could move the pile of paperwork from the front desk to the safety of her file folder without anyone else seeing it was the sealed material.
Long story short: We have the sealed motion, and are prepping an article about it. And believe me when I tell you, there should be some VERY worried folks right about now. That's because there's been a federal grand jury convened, and the feds have a limited amount of time before they can begin serving the indictments and arresting people. People who are holed up in their expensive Carmi and St. Louis McMansions currently. People who gave us crap because we wrote about the civil case last year in explicit detail, even after our initial report about it was met with derision by their compadres on Facebook. People who have, through what appears to have been conspiracy, worked together and with others to ruin the life of someone extremely dear to us. I'll just leave that last one stand without further explanation; I'm sure the ones who carried that out are reading this along with you. Right. Now. In fact, I can hear an audible puckering sound all the way up from White County, here in Richland.
The next thing I have to tell you here is that there's another filing that's probably going to be sealed as well, that of Carmi CPA Keith Botsch. He filed a lawsuit against PNB in mid-November that outlines details of the federal grand jury, details that PNB probably doesn't even realize has been made available to the public yet. Because of Illinois' ridiculous "e-filing" system, it's "in the system" only, and there's no physical file the clerks can pull; you have to read it on the computer screen at the circuit clerk's office. Further, it's sideways on, so it's very nearly impossible to read. For an exorbitant fee, we could have had them print out a copy. We eschewed that on principle. We obtained it another way. I'm betting that by this time tomorrow, you, the taxpayer, won't even be able to go in and view it on the screen. If you can, though, email me. I'd be interested to know if THAT one doesn't get sealed right quick and in a hurry, too.
And the next thing I have to tell you is that we were indeed hacked a little over two weeks ago. And guess when we were hacked...? TWO. DAYS. After we received the material that's now under seal. What are the possibilities...? Very, very slim. My guess is that the idiots who hacked our website just after Thanksgiving 2018 are the same ones who hacked it in early August 2015 (when we were only investigating material surrounding the Chess Club in Harrisburg - and I say 'only' because we hadn't produced the first article on it, we had just been speaking with those involved in the creation of it - not knowing that lil Bill Bonan and Abbey Evans were a thing by that time despite being married to other people); the same ones who hacked us at the end of December 2015 (after we'd been producing issues outing the Chess Club and were investigating the upcoming scrutiny of the PNB/GRCB matter, which exploded to the fore in early February 2016); and the same ones who hacked us the second week of February 2016, when something very crucial was happening to us and our loved one and which impacted each of us in an extremely negative way. In each of those hacks, we 'mysteriously' lost articles about Bonan, his various associates in the political realm, the Chess Club, White County public defender Rhonda Blades, and ISP's "special agent" Rick White. We were able to restore some of them, but not all. That hack helped us zero in on the beginning stages of our investigation into certain individuals who put themselves into a position so that they could A - harm us and B - cause harm for someone very dear to us. They succeeded. So when this last hack occurred a couple of weeks ago, within literally a matter of hours after we received the material that's now under seal, we immediately began scrutinizing server logs...and contacted one of our attorneys. We'll see what he has to say about the whole thing pretty soon, since we're coming up against a hard deadline.
It's almost impossible to boil all this down into a paragraph, but this is the part where I try: The allegations in this whole thing are that Peoples National Bank made very, very bad loans to Gary Evans, several years back. They lost a very expensive piece of oil rig equipment in another state and through machinations involving a lot of the actors in the cases, finagled that so that it appeared they hadn't lost it, but still had it as collateral on the loans. Lil Bill set about to make a "merger" between PNB and Grand Rivers, claiming they would combine into a big solid bank (this was how he got hooked up with Abbey, with whom he procreated twice, illegitimately [because he'd been married several years when he took up with Abbey, that divorce only being finalized VERY recently]...and that hooking up is very likely how he got talked into making the bad loans for the Evanses). However, this "merger" was for the sole purpose of transferring the millions of dollars of bad loans to the Evanses OVER TO GRCB so that PNB's asset sheets would look solvent, which they weren't because Evergreen couldn't make good on their loans. Nevertheless, when this transfer of loans was accomplished, Lil Bill welched on the deal and withdrew the merger. GRCB notified the banking regulators, and the rest...well, read the links. You who've hung on to your $5.99 monthly recurring subs for online reading are going to benefit, I'm here to tell you; the rest of you, you'll have to do either a $2.99 Day Pass each time an article comes out, or a $4.99 Week Pass. This is going to make for some serious reading in the upcoming several weeks, and we're putting it on the pay side ONLY.
If we can.
Here's the last tidbit I have to let you in on: My wife is very ill. Lyme has about done her in over the last 19 years. She is undergoing a kind of experimental treatment this week and for at least two days of it, neither of us will be able to be around a computer or even a phone. We may or may not be able to produce new articles during those two days; you'll be able to tell because there simply won't be any new entries. Depending on how the treatment goes over the two weeks following, we may or may not be able to get back to a regular schedule. We're trying to make contingencies for it...but things like people not knowing where they're going to be from one minute to the next because they're incapable of making schedules, as well as stupid crap like our site being hacked, makes even contingency plans put in place by us, the expert planners, nearly impossible to predict. It's likely that your podunk mainstream-adhering newspapers will break some of the stuff before we do. Rest assured, however, that they won't tell the whole story. They can't. Just like last year's lacking coverage of the federal civil suit, your mainstream papers won't tell it all because they're beholden to many of these people for advertising, the thing that makes the media world go round. As you're well aware, we don't take much advertising; our sales are made on content. And when that's the case, we can write the truth because no one's calling our publisher threatening to pull their ad revenue. I'm the publisher and we don't have ads. Problem solved.
So I just have one more thing to say before the indictments begin flying and the hysteria begins and alleged criminals start worrying about where the babies are going to stay while they're in federal lockup, with his parents or with hers (welcome to THAT fight, suckers...you deserve it. Get your civil filings in order before the marshals show up on the doorstep of your McMansion.)
You cannot cause harm to a person - and I mean actual, literal physical harm, not butthurtitis from a perceived slight based on words alone - without it coming back on you. You cannot continue to subvert the law and think no one will ever find out about that subversion. You cannot continue to say a person is a lawbreaker when only half the story is being told in court; half the truth is a whole lie, especially in a court setting. One would think that even if the businessmen don't, lawyers and judges would know this.
This case proves that either they do not; or if they do, they don't care.
And that, my friends, will be their undoing. I'll be too busy bringing it all to you to sit back and watch the show with a bowl of popcorn; so have some popcorn (or ice cream or chocolate or whatever your entertainment food of choice might be) for me and think of me slaving here when you eat it. The ball's been set in motion and it's rolling downhill. Join us as we give color to it as much of the rolling as we can. It should be an interesting ride.