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17 Aug

Cops bust Harry Connick Jr. daughter Georgia for hosting illegal drinking party

UPDATE 9.2.15: The New Canaan Advertiser did their job today and showed up in court to report on Georgia Connick’s arraignment. The State showed it doesn’t treat all New Canaan residents equal though and allowed Georgia to get an off-books delay for October. Meaning the media wasted their time showing up. It also signals an AR deal is on the table. The new court date is October. How nice for Georgia that she didn’t have to slum it hanging out in Norwalk Court like the rest of the New Canaan teens who are charged with illegal underage drinking parties and got to avoid the media.

Original Story
While Harry Connick Jr. has been on tour this summer and prepping for American Idol his 19 year old daughter Georgia Connick has been charged with a Class-A Misdemeanor by New Canaan Police for allegedly permitting minors to illegally posses alcohol in her family’s New Canaan McMansion on 671 West Road. NCPD Lt. Jason Ferraro confirmed on Monday the underage drinking party bust happen at 1am Saturday morning from a party that started Friday night August 14th.

Harry and his former Victoria’s Secret supermodel wife, Jill Goodacre, have raised their daughters in New Canaan, Conn. for years and this appears to be the first charge of alleged illegal drinking in their home. Harry comes from a family out of New Orleans whose dad was a district attorney and sister is a military officer. With a law-abiding background like that it’s kind of odd his older daughter Georgia apparently thinks getting drunk is funny. Today she posted this photo of a drunk black man with a link to a site called Drunk Story on her public twitter feed.

georgia connick twitter
(UPDATE 8.18.15: It looks like Georgia got some PR training. After this news report was published Georgia has taken down her black drunk man twitter commentary. A screen shot of her twitter page from Monday afternoon is what you see in this photo)

It’s kind of a miracle the NCPD even brought these alleged charges against a celebrity New Canaan family. When I asked the cop if anyone 15 or younger was at the residence at the time of arrest Officer Ferraro said teens fled from the scene but of the ones caught they have a list of fifteen people who are all 18-20 years old. Georgia was not charged with risk to injury to a minor which could have happen if teens 15 years or younger were in the home or were possibly served. Georgia has younger siblings and it’s not clear if they were home at the time of the party. A class A misdemeanor usually carries less than a year of jail or fine. Georgia could also be facing suspension of her drivers license. Georgia was also issued an infraction charge with a fine between $200-$500 for procuring alcohol for minors. The charge is an infraction the first time but if she does it again it’ll be another misdemeanor.

The Connick’s $5.61 million 7 bedroom, 8 bathroom house on 4.61 acres has a cream-colored wood gate that blocks a street view of the house or easy entrance. So I am curious how the NCPD are justifying probable cause to enter the large estate. If a neighbor really called about excessive noise late at night( which NCPD claims happen) Connick has GE CEO Jeff Immlet’s family living to the left and Lynn and Richard King to the right who could have outed the teen bash. But NCPD isn’t being transparent with the media about who made the complaint yet.

New Canaan Town records of 671 West Rd.

New Canaan Town records of 671 West Rd.

Often we see the NCPD force the party host to post at least a $500 bail but they gave the celebrity daughter a hall pass with a promise to appear in Norwalk, Conn court on September 2nd. I was told by a person with a teen at the party that Harry and Jill were not at home. Since 2006 Conn. cops can charge parents for a role in the illegal drinking parties if they can prove the parent knew the teen was going to host an event with drinking or drugs; even if they are not on the premises at the time. Yet it’s rare to see the NCPD follow up or investigate the parents possible role in the illegal parties.

Georgia, who attends Tulane University, told the officers on the scene “it started as a small party but then got out of control. I thought I could handle it.” It’s actually really irrelevant how many underage drinkers were there. The letter of the law says if you are under 21 you can’t serve even one of your friends liquor if they are also under 21. And parents can’t allow their teens to host drinking parties. Georgia wasn’t charged with forgery for possessing a fake id to buy the liquor which leaves more unanswered question: did the parents give a nod to supply it, did another minor bring it (why weren’t they charged), or did she raid the liquor cabinet unbeknownst to Harry and Jill.

NCPD has this troublesome practice of verbally telling the media events written in their incident reports every Monday morning for news stories in police blotters. (Reports that are a huge page view grab and drive ad fees for local papers.) But when you request to see the incident report to fact check the cops verbal account they deny it. You have to wait till the charged person shows up in court days or weeks later and ask a court clerk for the case. This means reporters can’t really report the whole story in a timely way. I’ve often found the cops leave details out during this verbal media release to either hide the seriousness of the case or promote whatever version of the event they support. It’s a horrible exercise in freedom of information between civic servants and local media, who also often fall down on the job by not trying to get comments from those accused or take a trip to the court house to inspect a case file they have public access to once the cops deliver it.

Today officer Ferraro couldn’t even bother to explain to me if the charges are misdemeanors, felonies, or infractions. I had to push the NC PD records women, Frances Danaher, to fact check the charges who first explained it was a Class A Felony charge and then had to call back and explain she was wrong its a misdemeanor.

I tried to reach the Connick’s for comment and called Fairfield County defense lawyers who usually rep these kind of cases but have been unable to find if Georgia has a lawyer yet. It will be interesting to watch if the Norwalk assistant states attorney pleads these charges out for the Celeb family or pursues the case. Georgia could be offered something the State loves to easily hand out for wealthy teens in Fairfield County’s Gold Coast called accelerated rehabilitation. This means after a set amount of time if Georgia doesn’t get arrested or caught hosting another drinking party the current charges are wiped off her record like they never happen.

UPDATE 8.26.15: Georgia is being represented by Greenwich lawyer Michael Jones of Ivey Barnum & O’Mara. When I reached him for comment he refused to answer questions about the case such as has the States Attorney offered an AR deal yet. Attorney Jones is best know for representing the family of George Smith in his unsolved murder. Her case number is S2ON-CR15-0140602. September 2nd is Georgia’s due date in front of a Norwalk judge to be arraigned.

UPDATE 12-26-15: As predicted Georgia was offered an AR deal by the state and accepted it. This means she pleads to the charges but after a year the charges are removed from her public record if she doesn’t get arrested again. The NC Advertiser was able to interview Georgia’s attorney who told the local paper the NCPD were wrong about what she was charged with when they did their media briefs. This is a huge communication mistake by the local cops given there was a large amount of press coverage at nearly every publication that covers the entertainment industry who has now reported inaccurate initial charges. The NC Advertiser reported the charges were nolled. That’s an inaccurate description of how AR works. Nolled charges are dropped charges that a State’s attorney agrees to if there is proof the arresting officers were clearly wrong in asserting the charges on the scene. In Georgia’s case, these are charges accepted by the defendant and the prosecutor and because of Connecticut’s first time offender program they are erased latter from a record but not nolled. There should have been more reporting if Georgia was required or do community service or lost her driving license for a period of time and ordered to pay a fine but the local paper fell down on reporting out this info.

2 Comments
8 Aug

Banker Peyton Patterson Won’t Pay Her Taxes

Peyton Reed Patterson, now former CEO of Bankwell, apparently doesn’t like to pay taxes. On Thursday the regional bank announced Ms. Patterson was quitting as CEO for personal reasons. This is two months after Matt Pilon of the Hartford Business Journal exposed the multi-millionaire banker for being a deadbeat with her creditors. In fact these creditors have secured court judgments against her for over $400k. This included contractors for her new McMansion in New Canaan, country club bills, and back real estate taxes owed to Madison, Conn.

What hasn’t been reported yet is Peyton Patterson also doesn’t like to pay taxes to New Canaan. A town records search shows New Canaan filed a tax lien on June 5th, 2014 against the banker for $36,146.63 and the tax assessor office shows she still hasn’t paid this year’s taxes. In fact, since she moved to town in mid 2012 she hasn’t really been timely in paying any taxes on her $4.2 million home at 112 Clearview Lane.

Peyton garnered years of glowing press from local and national media on her track record of buying and selling banks or raising money to bring them public. She’s a dealmaker kind of CEO who reportedly made over $16 million in 2011 on a deal she did with New Haven’s NewAlliance Bancshares. So how does this divorced single mom, who is clearly a double-digit million now, not have the cash to pay her damn taxes? She won’t answer reporter questions so maybe someone close to her will speak up and share what in the world is going on. As a CEO of a public company (well now a once CEO of Bankwell) shareholders have a right know why the leader of their bank, who is in charge of money, can’t seem to manager her own finances.

In April 2012 it appears she look $1.2 million from the NewAlliance deal payday and made a down payment on a huge 8,000ish square foot McMansion in ultra rich New Canaan, Conn. Town records show she then borrowed $3 million from Bank of America to fund the rest of the home purchase. So it’s not like she used up a bunch cash to buy a $4.2 million house out right. Which brings us back to question of why she’d risk her stellar reputation as a smart female CEO banker to not pay trade workers or pay taxes that fund schools and roads in the towns she lives in.

Something doesn’t add up. Is Payton a closet ultra Libertarian and doesn’t believe in paying any taxes? I would love to hear local residents or people who know Peyton and tell us what you think is going on.

Peyton Patterson Tax Lein

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14 Oct

New Canaan Cops Arrest Mogul’s Daughter Kalikow for Masturbation

UPDATE 10-15-13: THE NCPD HAVE FINALLY RELEASED THE NAME OF THE SENIOR OFFICER ON THIS ARREST. IT IS SGT. JOHN MILLIGAN.

Original Text

The daughter of the former owner of the New York Post, Kathryn Kalikow, is having a rough time managing life at a local rehab center in New Canaan, CT. Last night a New Canaan cop on cruise patrol was driving around the back roads of New Canaan near the celeb drug and sex addiction hospital SilverHill when the officer claims to have seen 27 year old Kalikow pulling up her pants while in the backseat of her car and then arrest her because she was performing what most consider a perfectly normal sexual act on her self – masturbation.

The news was first reported by the New Canaan Advertiser.

Kalikow made tabloid headlines when she was arrested in New York this March with her boyfriend for allegedly selling bags of heroin on Craigslist. Her real estate mogul Dad made public statements that they were going to get her in rehab and she plead not guilty.

The NCPD released her without bail thanks goodness because a late night arrest like that would have been a pain to post bail on. But we have to question how the local cop really saw Kalikow performing this private action in the backseat of her car to give him cause to call it public indecency?

Kalikow had a 11pm curfew and the arrest was at 10:30pm so it’s not like she was violating curfew.

The NCPD did not release the name of the arresting officer during their Monday press briefing and are not returning a FOI request for the name of the arresting officer – which under CT FOI laws has to be made public.

Attorney Frank DiScala who represented actor Erik Douglas on a sex related charge while he was at SilverHill in the 90’s and won an acquittal for Douglas thinks the NCPD arrest is ‘ludicrous and an invasion of privacy’.

DiScala told me in an interview today, “The punishment of public humiliation that the NCPD uses to provide very personal details to the press could qualify as being unconstitutional. These allegations, which are a private act, that almost every person could relate to do not need to be detailed to embarrass Ms. Kalikow.”

NCPD officer John DiFederico gave the press briefing today where he told reporters Ms. Kalikow told the police “she would drive from rehab to masturbate because it’s not allowed at her rehab.”

Really Officer DiFederico did all that have to be in the press brief?

What’s next will the New Canaan Town Council create an ordinance that no masturbation is allowed in ‘The Next Station to Heaven’? It’s not like she was standing on the road doing it or even on a high traffic street. She was on Millport Ave near East Ave in the backseat of her property (a car).

Kathryn Kalikow is due in court over this silly misdemeanor arrest on October 23rd.

17 Comments
31 Jul

Parents Host Teen Drinking Party, NCPD Makes No Arrest

Cars wrapped about half a mile down Brushy Ridge road last night as New Canaan teens threw a drinking party at 126 Brushy Ridge road. The noise was so loud from the top of the street I stopped to see if people were all right. I witnessed over half a dozen teens arriving at the party some carrying in alcohol. When I asked three boys if they were allowed to legally have this party they ran down the driveway and started yelling the cops are coming ‘run get out’. It was a mass exodus of at least 60 teens rushing to get into their cars and leave the scene. I asked a few if they were about to drink and drive but no one answered.

This boy (pictured below) started screaming and cussing at me for calling the cops and then his friends joined in. They thought it was illegal for a reporter to stand on the road and take a photo of them and kept screaming foul words ‘you can’t do that b*tch’ it’s illegal to take my photo’. The driver of the car I was with said he heard them cussing in the street for awhile expressing their frustration that my call to the NCPD had busted the party.

Officer McFadden Couldn't Find This?

Officer McFadden Couldn’t Find This?

By the time officer McFadden arrived most of the teens had left. I told the officer I saw teens leaving the party with beer and had photos. He chose not to take a statement from me. There was even the driver of the car I was with who was a witness to the teen party and angry yelling on the street.

This morning NCPD top dog Leon Krolikowski told me McFadden found that the parents WHERE home yet he saw no alcohol on the premise so no arrests were made. Yet there are two witnesses who say otherwise and the photo of the boy carrying out the beer was sent to the NCPD last night.

The home is appraised at near $1 million according to town records. I confirmed with the owner that they rent it out and are concerned these kind of parties could happen in the home. He wouldn’t give me the name of the tenant. I could not reach the tenants for comment.

A local resident, Roy Abramowitz, told me as he drove to work he still saw beer cans around the drive way this morning. But NCPD Officer McFadden couldn’t find any last night?

It’s also not clear if the teens I saw with beers in their hands were 21 or over. They sure looked young. But if they were a legal drinking age then why did so many run when word got out that the cops were coming.

Parents who host parties where people under the age of 21 are drinking (or doing drugs) can be arrested for up to a felony in Connecticut. New Canaan police just don’t seem to do the leg work to carry out that part of the law.

7 Comments
17 Jun

NCPD Top Dog Krolikowski Wanted to Arrest Officer Pickering for Assault

A criminal incident report on New Canaan police officer Fred Pickering shows NCPD second in command, Leon Krolikowski, thought there was probable cause to arrest Officer Pickering for 3rd degree assault and 2nd degree Breach of Peace. Pickering was put on paid leave in late February after a young black man, Joel Anderson, filed a complaint that he’d been the victim of racial slurs and a physical altercation by Officer Picker and a local Hockey coach Rob Benson, age 41, at a popular restaurant in New Canaan. The incident report released to today via a freedom of information request also shows Krolikowski filed an arrest warrant application for Robert Benson for Intimidation based on bigotry of bias in the 3rd degree, Threatening 2nd degree, 2nd degree Breach of Peace. On April 12th Officer Krolikowski states he asked States Attorney David Cohen to sign both arrest warrants. But New Canaan residents had to wait until June 3rd for Attorney David Cohen to decided he was not going to sign the warrants and would not prosecute either of the accused men on the behalf of Joel Anderson.

Bar witnesses, who were not part of Anderson’s party, state they saw Officer Pickering and his friend Rob Benson as the ‘aggressive’ people in the fight and some say Pickering’s group started it. Vinay Rival, a key witness who saw the fight, stated in a sworn interview with Officer Krolikowski the exchange was ‘racially charged’ and Benson towered over Anderson while he was sitting at a table asking him ‘why are you here and ‘you can’t be here’. Rival then sees Pickering come over to Joel’s table, put a clicked fist on the table and ‘say something to the effect of I’m a police officer be careful’. Rival describes what Pickering said as threatening although no specific threats where said. Rival also confirms he saw Pickering push the young black man with two hands to the chest. The incident is described as one sided in that Anderson never was aggressive or advanced on Pickering or Benson. It was Rival’s view that Pickering was intoxicated. None of the witnesses appear to remember either party calling Joel a Nigger though. Rival told Officer Krolikowski in his interview he’d never previously meet or seen the men involved in the fight.

Town records show Robert Benson lives with his family (wife Darlene Benson) in a home valued at $3mn at 66 Parish Road.

Previous press reports said Joel started the fight by calling Officer Pickering a pig but the case-incident report shows none of the eye witnesses heard Joel say this; it was only Pickering who stated that line. The core group of New Canaan friends with Pickering who were kicked out of the Tequila Mockingbird bar by bartender Jason Geane were Kevin Arnone, Robert Benson and Sean Hurley. Benson admitted to drinking at least 4 beers prior to coming to Tequila Mockingbird. The bartender stated in his police interview the group was ‘buzzed up but lucid’.

One of the things that is troubling about this report is I asked NCPD Chief Edward Nadriczny on May 29th if it was true that David Cohen was sitting on an arrest warrant application for Pickering and he emailed me back that this was ‘absolutely not true’. I told him my source was a member of the force. With the Chief’s denial I decided not to report it. Now today it appears he either didn’t understand my question or flat out lied to this reporter.

Pickering is still on paid leave while Officer Krolikowski conducts an internal affairs investigation looking at if Pickering violated conduct in the police manual. The Chief who is set to retire next week has not responded to email questions on why he told me my tip about the arrest application was not true when their own internal report shows it was.

Stay tuned for an in-depth report on the witnesses and evidence gathered in this alleged hate fight including an interview with Joel’s mother who was also a witness to some of the events.

Photo is Robert Benson March 2013

Officer Fred Pickering Case Report

2 Comments
4 Jun

States Attorney Lets NCPD Officer Fred Pickering Off after Bar Fight with Black Man

Stamford States Attorney David Cohen has finally told the town of New Canaan he will not be pressing charges against a 25 year veteran cop, Officer Fred Pickering, who was allegedly in a bar fight with a young black man. The incident happen late February and after a citizen complaint was filed by a few of the men at the bar Officer Pickering was put on paid leave. As I previously reported witnesses at the bar say Pickering came into the bar inebriated with a few of his Hockey buddies and Joel Anderson, a man Pickering has arrested before, got into a verbal altercation with Pickering’s crew that involved racial slurs directed at Joel. Anderson is in his mid-twenties, black, and was raised in New Canaan, Conn. The charges Pickering had once arrested him for in 2011 were waived.

What went on in the criminal investigation conducted by Pickering’s peers on the force is still a mystery and the police have not released their findings although several media publications have made FOI request. Fellow officers were telling town residents I spoke with that part of the States Attorney investigation involved Pickering coming into the bar drunk with a loaded gun or driving home drunk from the bar with a loaded gun in his car. An illegal move regardless of if you are a member of force. But when I fact checked the rumor with the NCPD and Pickering’s attorney they flat out denied this was part of the investigation. Which shows how lengthy drown out investigations without full transparency can sully the accused reputation. It also highlights the infighting within the New Canaan police.

Attorney Cohen and the States office told me they are not actually going to comment on the case today. The statement we see attributed to Cohen in the local papers is from communication he sent to the New Canaan police. I’d like see Cohen’s actual whole statement on the investigation and not just the part the NCPD chose to share.

NCPD said in a written press release this afternoon “Cohen said after a thorough review of all the evidence they did not find there was sufficient evidence presented to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that any specific person has committed a crime.”

Attorney Darnell Crosland, president of the Norwalk NAACP chapter who has reviewed the case with Joel Anderson, told me after hearing David Cohen’s statement about no charges, “I respect the standard of guilt must be found beyond a reasonable doubt, but that’s not the standard for finding a person culpable for a wrong doing and for making an arrest. There only needs to be a finding of probable cause. If anyone of us was subjected to what Joel was subjected to we would expect that any court in a civilized society would find probable cause and conclude absent a rational explanation that something went wrong, and that a police officer should be held to a higher standard.”

This also means Pickering’s buddy, Robert Benson, who allegedly called Joel a Nigger also isn’t getting charged for say breach of peace or a hate crime. Clearly there isn’t a community standard the New Canaan police are using for breach of peach charges because just last month they charged a 68-year old woman with breach of peace for getting into a verbal altercation at a popular New Canaan restaurant called Sole. But Pickering and his rich Wall Street buddy gets off scott-free for their role in the bar fight?

Oddly, the NCPD still isn’t giving Pickering the all-clear. Chief Nadriczny told me today they are now starting an ‘internal investigation’ into if anything in the police manual of conduct was violated by Pickering. This also mean that the officer, a father of three kids who lives in expensive New Canaan, is still going to be out on paid leave. Leave that doesn’t included the lucrative overtime our town pays these cops. A FOI request done last year shows Pickering base salary is $98,000. So that means in the three months he’s been on paid leave the town’s spent around $25,000 for David Cohen to figure out he’s not going to do anything. Talk about a waste of taxpayers’ money. On the flipside this means Pickering has not been able to have the opportunity to earn his usual pay, which was around $152k last year.

So why did the NCPD wait until now to start their internal investigation. The citizen’s complaint, which would sparked an investigation of this type was filed back in late February. It’s because it’s likely a stall tactic to slow down any attorneys Joel Anderson has who are looking at suing Pickering or the town in a civil suit. Greenwich lawyer Phil Russell had initially taken on Joel as a client on contingency for a civil rights suit but nothing was filed.

The NCPD move also delays press FOI request seeking police notes and citizen complaints in the event. And on top of that, I was told by people close to Pickering that he is also considering suing the town of New Canaan after he’s been vindicated by the State’s attorney. Talk about a total Clusterfuck. It reads like the NCPD is in way over their head and residents could be paying for their mistakes via civil suits.

Pickering’s criminal attorney, Gene Riccio, told me they are glad about State’s attorney decision to drop the case and appreciate all the people in New Canaan who supported his client. But this story is far from over, as we now wait to see what the young black man will do in a civil suit and how Pickering will respond to the actions of town officials who are keeping him out on leave.

4 Comments
19 May

China Stock ZST Planned “Go Dark” Scheme to Cheat U.S. Investors

UPDATE 6-3-13: I reported for Growth Capitalist today that the firms who ZST went to for their ‘go dark’ plan in 2011 were Scorpion Capital and Global Hunter Securities.

Original Text
A wealthy businessman from New Canaan, CT is single handedly taking on a China company, ZST Digital, that gutted U.S. investors who bought into its NASDAQ-exchange traded stock. Peter Duetsch, who owns a New York-based wine distribution company, has watched U.S. regulators stand by and do nothing to go after the China reverse-merger companies and the boiler-room American investment firms that promoted their now worthless stocks. So after he saw ZST simply stop filing financial statements in a move to ‘go dark’ he asked his long time business lawyer David Graff to use the Delaware Courts to inspect what really happen. What he found made his blood boil.

I reported for Growth Capitalist on Thursday, the court appointed receiver, Rob Seiden of Confidential Security and Investigations, pulled off a move no one has witnessed yet in the aftermath of Chinese reverse-merger frauds. Seiden got control of ZST’s parent company assets and bank accounts in China. He found this company is sitting on tons of money and not in dire straights. So why did it stop filing financial statements with U.S. regulators and make its company seem to have gone out of business?

I reported messages recovered on ZST’s CFO cell phone during a raid of his home show the company was allegedly working with a few U.S. investment firms in a scheme to depress the stock and then buy it back for cheap and take it private. Apparently we now have Wall Street types helping the Chinese raise money from main street investors and then say screw you to U.S. securities laws because they think the long arm of the American law can’t reach them in China. But Deutsch said, “I can’t let them do that to us” and used a bulldog private eye, Seiden, to attempt a global take down of these alleged foreign cheaters.

Deutsch, who has gotten the Delaware court to say he’s owed $32 million by ZST for his 3,431,370 shares in the company hasn’t gotten his money back yet but my report at www.growthcaptialist.com shows how close he is. Last week Seiden even found the ZST owner in China was so bold, he moved cash out of the company into his personal bank account in the last 30 days while litigation was ongoing. That’s fraudulent conveyance, which could be litigated against the CEO personally in a China court. And you bet Deutsch is going to try to use that info to get the company to pay up on the U.S. court ordered claim.

Attorney David Graff told Growth Capitalist, “Based on a review of assets we seized, and our own investigation in China, we think we’ll be able to show ZST has $75 million to $100 million in cash.”

This wasn’t the only China reverse merger stock Deutsch invested millions in. Financial journalist Roddy Boyd questioned why a small time investment advisor firm in New Hampshire, run by Carol and David O’Leary, was putting Deutsch’s millions into these China stocks after research reports came out advising investors of problems in their SEC filings. Boyd’s story questioned why Deutsch was going long in barley collapsed companies–it’s not like Deutsch was a professional investor. Deutsch’s attorney, David Graff, says his client just trusted the audited financials statements filed with the SEC. But I haven’t been give an on record reason from Deutsch on why he spent so much money in these risky China stocks.

What I do know is if Deutsch, Graff, and Seiden pull off this international take back expect more U.S. high net worth investors to use private eyes and civil litigation to hit the wallets of China company CEO’s who screwed them over on reserve merger stocks and not wait for the likes of the SEC to fight for their investor rights.

To follow the outcome of the case check out my reporting at www.growthcapitalist.com.

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