ES&S was the start. Franklin Savings and Loan scandal involved money laundering in Omaha, NE. It also involved Boystown, child trafficking to Hollywood, DC etc. The guy who owned the world-herald newspaper at the time sold it and started or bought ES&S
OMAHA'S HURRICANE OF SCANDAL
By Rick AtkinsonApril 1, 1990
OMAHA Lawrence E. King Jr., everyone now agrees, had a remarkable knack for stretching a dollar. On a salary of $16,200 a year, the credit union manager drove a $70,000 white Mercedes and still could afford to spend $10,000 a month on limousines. His credit card charges topped $1 million, he owned a four-story house on 26 acres overlooking the Missouri River, and his floral bill alone came to $146,000 during a fragrant, 13-month period in 1987-88.
A former McGovern Democrat who converted to the GOP, King threw a $100,000 party for 1,000 close friends at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans two years ago, leasing a warehouse used to store Mardi Gras floats. Four years earlier, before singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Republican convention in Texas, he hosted a similar bash by renting Southfork, the ranch used to film "Dallas." When visiting Los Angeles, King preferred a two-story suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel; in Washington, he paid $5,000 a month to occupy a palazzo on California Street, next to the Venezuelan Embassy.
A federal jury this summer will decide whether King, 45, is guilty as charged of looting $38 million from the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union in a predominantly black neighborhood of north Omaha. But it isn't Larry King's finances that have Nebraska in a Great Plains pother. Last week, a county grand jury, under the direction of a special prosecutor, began sifting through allegations tying King to a child prostitution and exploitation ring that reputedly catered to some of Omaha's most respected burghers.
Those implicated in this city's venomous rumor mill if nowhere else include businessmen, media personalities, lawmen and educators. "We've got a firestorm of suspicion and rumors of hurricane force," said James Martin Davis, a former Secret Service agent who is now an attorney here. "And if it doesn't stop, Omaha is going to gossip itself to death."
Moreover, King's high profile in the GOP has "got the Republican Party here as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs," added former state senator John DeCamp, a Republican.
King has pleaded not guilty to 40 counts of embezzlement and fraud. The sexual allegations, which he has denounced as "garbage," are based on still unverified reports from half a dozen young people who reportedly have described being auctioned like love slaves, flown to the coasts for wild parties, or plied with drugs and alcohol as part of a bisexual bacchanal.
"I don't know if the witnesses are telling the whole truth or part of the truth, but they appear credible to me," said state Sen. Loran Schmit, chairman of the legislative committee appointed to investigate the scandal. "I'd rather cut my arm off than find that these allegations are all true, not just because of the alleged perpetrators, but because if true, there has been a series of heinous crimes against children here for a long time."
The recriminations are bitter, brutal and apparently bottomless. "The whole damned shebang of investigative agencies were lax in pursuing this," Schmit charged. That "shebang," including the Omaha police, FBI and state attorney general, contends that investigations were thorough and failed to turn up sufficient corroboration of sex crimes. The local media have been upbraided for being either too timid or recklessly irresponsible; others in Omaha have been accused of McCarthyism or, conversely, abetting a coverup.