KINGSTON- An investigation conducted by Hudson Valley Mountain River News has unveiled a vast network providing millions of dollars in books, movies, magazines, newspapers and passes to area cultural institutions — using your taxpayer dollars — without compensation to content providers and at no charge to “patrons” of the syndicate.
“The most successful criminal enterprises hide in plain sight,” said Vanessa Fox, a member of the Hudson Valley Mountain River News Spotlight Team. “This was certainly a case of that.”
Fox’s team revealed cells operating in every major Hudson Valley town and city, and speculates that the network may go far beyond the valley. “This could be just the tip of the iceberg.”
Fox recounts how the team was daunted by its attempt to calculate the value of the media being distributed when it came across a lucky break. “The cells began offering their users a ‘calculate the value of your loans!’ tool,” she remembers. “It’s like they were taking some kind of perverse delight in the amount of money they were taking out of the pockets of book publishers and Hollywood.”
At this point investigators are just beginning to dig into the formation of the syndicate and how it managed to secure government funding.
“There’s simply no way this is legal,” said Fox. “If I were to come to you and say ‘hey, let’s tax everybody to set up these buildings in every town that let anyone read any book or watch any movie they want to free of charge,’ you’d tell me I’m crazy. But that seems to be what’s happened.”
