Legal News

YouTube Video Ties Miami Judicial Candidate to Rogue Organization

By Dan Slater

Thanks to the Daily Business Review, today we bring you a little story from Miami, where a judicial candidate is encountering some questions, if not outright head-scratching, for a YouTube video he appeared in.

Mario Garcia, who’s running for a circuit court seat, appears at five minutes and twenty seconds into this video promoting an organization called the United Cities Group. He introduces himself as “chief master independent contractor” to the United Cities Group, a rogue group that has reportedly rolled out its own currency and attempted to seize two Bank of America branches.

“I’ve been chosen to provide members of the network of TUC with all of the legal services to all our network members,” Garcia says in the video. He now disavows any relationship with the United Cities Group. He said he attended some informational sessions but decided not to become affiliated with the group and severed ties with it two years ago.

Garcia said he was initially intrigued by the group’s concept but became worried when its members couldn’t come up with plausible explanations for what they were doing. “The concept in and of itself had all kinds of wonderful legalities in it,” he said. “But I kept asking the question, ‘What is [the alternate currency] backed by,’ and I couldn’t get an answer.”

(For an explanation of the “Amero-dollar,” watch the first presentation in the video by attorney Paul Woods.)

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 12, 2008 (boomark / email).