The federation last weekend voted to eject two board members, sometime women's chess champion Susan Polgar and her husband, Paul Truong, according to an overview of the fracas in the New York Times. Polgar's lawyer has promised to try and block the decision, via the same court hearings where his client stands accused by the federation of stealing board members' email messages.

Those messages, in turn, concerned another court case alleging computer fraud by Polgar, in which she and her husband allegedly impersonated former board member Samuel Sloan on internet chess newsgroups. The federation has also sued to remove Polgar and Truong from its board; the couple in turn has sued the federation for libel, slander and business disparagement.

Sloan has presented evidence in his New York suit that Polgar and Truong created messages in his name and in the names of others, designed to undermine his bid to get re-elected to the federation board. Their purported motive was to consolidate their power over the federation and its $3.3 million annual budget.

Low stakes indeed, but the online campaign was ruthless. Again, Sam Sloan has said he did not write these posts, drawn from his lawsuit in New York and the federation suit in Illinois:

Polgar and Truong are also accused of posting under the names of other federation members:

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(Top pic via Cayusa on Flickr, not involved in any of this)

Over the last two years, an FBI affidavit claims, Pang and his assistants made 38 separate cash withdrawals below the $10,000 limit which triggers a report to the authorities; the rule is meant to track money-laundering activity. Evading the reporting requirement by making multiple transactions below the limit carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

But that's a small crime compared to the one SEC officials are alleging: that Pang lied to investors about his background, falsely claiming he had an MBA degree and worked at Morgan Stanley, and that he ran part of PEMGroup's $4 billion money-management business as a Ponzi scheme.

The SEC is charging Pang, a colorful Taiwanese immigrant who led a glittering L.A. lifestyle, with defrauding investors by falsifying his credentials and misrepresenting how his $4 billion money-management firm, PEMGroup, made money. A judge has frozen the firm's assets.

If even some of those accusations prove true, the picture that will inevitably emerge is that of a gambler and a liar — one who bets his inventions will never catch up with him.

Pang has been under the microscope since the Wall Street Journal aired charges similar to the ones the SEC is now making two weeks ago: that he'd never earned an MBA and never worked at Morgan Stanley. An ex-employee, Nasar Aboubakare, told the newspaper that Pang had called his money-management business, PEMGroup, a "Ponzi scheme" and offered him $500,000 on the condition that he not talk to the Journal. According to Aboubakare, a scheme to purchase life-insurance policies at a discount and pay investors with the proceeds went sour, and Pang instead paid his investors their promised returns with new money raised to invest in time shares.

Pang has denied the charges. But it's telling who he's hired as his spokesman: Mike Sitrick, the crisis PR guy whom Paris Hilton has on speed-dial.

New York has a complete timeline of Pang's career. He's had his share of financial shenanigans before the current ones. But three anecdotes seem to tell the story of his life:

Education. School records show Pang only attended one summer term at the University of California at Irvine, in 1986. Yet in the 1988-1989 term, he got elected chairman of the university's Asian Pacific Student & Staff Association. A university spokeswoman explained that anyone could have walked up and won the post.

Love. One would think a former stripper would marry for her husband's money, rather than the other way around. But Janie Louise Pang, Danny Pang's murdered wife, told police that her husband had been abusive and forced her to withdraw $70,000 from the bank to spend on gambling. The Journal reported on the mysterious circumstances of her death:

In May 1997, Ms. Pang hired an investigative agency, which, according to court records, observed her husband holding hands with another woman. The next day, Ms. Pang was scheduled to meet with the investigator at noon. Shortly before that, the doorbell rang at the Pangs' home. According to court records, the family's maid heard Ms. Pang, her 5-year-old at her side, answer the door and begin talking to the visitor, who asked if she was "Miss Pang."

She then began screaming. The maid saw her run through the house, chased by an elegantly dressed man carrying a briefcase and holding a gun. As Ms. Pang cowered in a closet, he shot her dead.

Money. Among the allegations against Pang is the claim that he used investors' money, raised to purchase time-share real estate, to buy a private jet in 2007. He then took PEMGroup employees on the jet to Las Vegas, where he won a large amount of cash and handed out stacks of bills to his workers.

Before the WSJ and the SEC closed in on him, Pang seemed to have been pursuing one last big bet: that an investment in a Chinese mining firm would pay off and allow him to make good on his soured life-insurance scheme. With commodity prices collapsed, that seems like a long shot. But up until a few weeks ago, Pang had been betting that no one would call to check on whether he'd actually gotten an MBA; that no one would make inquiries about his dead wife; that no one would ask how he managed to buy a private jet and support a gambling habit. For Danny Pang, all bets are off now.

Joanna is, of course, disputing the claim.

The video is still up, but now Viacom gets access to her video statistics. The worst part is the fear Joanna has that something she slaved and sweat over could be taken away from her. "I'm just a scared that my little film will be lost in the shadow of the hulking monolith...," she wrote on her blog. Also on her blog is a comment by another filmmaker indicating Joanna isn't the only filmmaker Viacom has fraudulently targeted in this manner.

YouTube used to be cool but the site allowing actions like this show how much it's become just another co-opted drek-hole... all because they're too cheap to hire enough people to vet either the uploads or the corporate takedowns.

Below, a screenshot of the creepy and baseless stake-claiming.

Viacom Wants To Steal My Film [Channel Federator Raw]
Juxtaposer [YouTube]

The IRS has stepped up efforts to crack down on unpaid payroll taxes in recent years. This form of fraud hurts both employees, who may be on the hook for monies withheld from their paychecks but never sent to the government, as well as taxpayers. The IRS can press charges against not just the company but top officials as well; the corporate veil, a legal concept which protects officers and directors from the actions of a corporation, does not apply here, I'm told.

That likely explains why Red Herring reported last year that half its board members had quit. David Chao, the cofounder of VC firm Doll Capital Management, still serves on the board, according to his online biography. Is his reputation worth a continued association with the Herring? Vieux can be charming and persuasive. Perhaps he kept Chao and other board members in the dark.

If the IRS investigation concludes that the Herring didn't pay its taxes, its directors have an unpleasant choice: Confess to complicity in the fraud, or admit that they were among the many Vieux has duped. Embarrassing as it would be, I'd suggest they go with the latter. They'd have plenty of company.