Showing posts with label Alaskan Bush People. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alaskan Bush People. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

"Alaskan Bush People" Stars Convicted In Oil Fraud Scheme

Stars of the Discovery Channels Alaskan Bush People have been pulled into court for attempting to defraud the state of Alaska, according to court filings and statements made by the Brown family. Billy Brown, 63-years-old, spoke for the entire family, asking that he alone face charges, stemming from allegations that his family benefited from state residency payouts, while the Brown family was not actually meeting Alaskan residency requirements.

Alaskan Bush People Duped By A Family Of Con Artists?

It seems that the Brown family havent just scammed the people of Alaska, but The Discovery Channel and their viewers as well. By claiming residency payouts from the state of Alaska and thereby entrenching themselves into a community, Billy Browns family has not been nearly as removed from society as Alaskan Bush People would have viewers believe.

In part, the description from The Discovery Channels series reads that each season they will choose a family so far removed from civilization that they often go six to nine months of the year without seeing an outsider.

It certainly sounds as though Billy and his 31-year-old son, Joshua Brown, have seen more than a few outsiders. At the very least, the two leading men of the Brown family have violated these conditions for participation in Alaskan Bush People, as well as actively attempting to deceive Alaska.

Billy Brown Blames Fraud Charges On Poor Record Keeping

Initially, the Alaskan government charged Billy Brown with 24 counts, many of which were felony charges, related to the familys fraudulent activities. Joshua Brown was also charged with six unspecified counts and other family members faced charges, as well, but a plea agreement changed much of that. A plea deal resulted in most of the charges having been dropped and Billy Brown pleading guilty to a single misdemeanor charge of second degree unsworn falsification.

As a result of the agreement, both Billy and Joshua will serve 30 days in jail. Upon their release, the Brown family will also be required to pay fines and thousands of dollars in restitution.

From 2009 to 2012, the Brown family had claimed that they met permanent residency requirements when they did not. As a result, the family illegally received payouts from Alaskas Permanent Fund, totalling more than $20,000. The fund, which is derived from the states oil revenue, requires that families must live in Alaska year round to claim permanent residency. The fund allows for absences of up to 180 days, with longer absences permitted for extenuating circumstances.

Because of the way we live our lives and the way we often unconventionally travel, I didnt keep good track of our movements, Brown said in a statement to the court. I accept full responsibility for filing for benefits without confirming that we met the requirements.

The Brown family left Alaska in 2009 and didnt return until 2012.

We are committed to living in Alaska for the long term and we respect the states rules, said the 64-year-old Brown in an apology to the judge on Monday.I thought it best to settle to put this behind us.

The Brown family arent survivalists living off the land and away from society, as they have presented themselves to Alaskan Bush People producers or to viewers of the series. Instead, theyre opportunists, leaching off of whatever community will open its arms to them. Thirty days in county lock up is far too lenient for a family that had successfully scammed the Alaskan people for more than five years. In fact, if The Discovery Channel hadnt come along, they certainly would have found a new scam to perpetuate.

Perhaps The Discovery Channel should cut the Browns loose and find a more deserving, honest family to promote.

[Image via The Discovery Channel]

Source: http://www.inquisitr.com/2701049/alaskan-bush-people-stars-convicted-in-oil-fraud-scheme/

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Friday, November 20, 2015

Discovery Channel Alaskan Bush People recap: Shots Fired

Go Here For All Of Your Fish-PunchingAlaskan Bush PeopleNeeds!

Do the Alaskan Bush People get paid? We asked! Read our interview with the Brown family.

Just another beautiful day in the bush, my friends.

I have no idea what the plea deal [Update: Rejected!] means for the longterm future of the show. Discovery went with an all-out media blitz for the Season 3 premiere, and Ive seen the Browns covered in outlets Id never seen before. With the fraud case now out in the (sorta)mainstream, lots of people are learning about Alaskan Bush People for the first time. Scandals and negative press usuallyhave a positive impact on audience numbers and thats good for the cash flow at Discovery Channel. Is Discovery milking every last drop from the cash cow before reluctantly putting it down? Dont know.

Theres no indication the show will be yanked before Season 3 ends. Besides, were just talking abouta little fraud and theft here. Totally forgivable. Nobody cares about that. The Brownsjust stolefrom the government, which is totally cool because the government steals from all of us anyway, the bastards. Now, if a Brown family member were suspected of a sexcrime, that would mean immediate cancellation and the name Alaskan Bush People stricken fromevery book and tablet, erased from the memory of men for all time.This paragraph may contain thinly veiled sarcasm and The Ten Commandments quotes.

On to Shots Fired, one of the most farcical entries in the ABP series, and thats saying a lot.

Its summer on Chicago Bears Island. But winter is right there!

Bear is being wolflike again, running shirtless and mud-slathered through the woods doing Bush Parkour in an effort to track deer for a very IMPORTANT hunt. This stuff makes some very lonely ladies swoon, apparently.

Are the somersaults a necessary part of the deer stalking? #AlaskanBushPeople

Ryan Berenz (@ChannelGuideRAB) November 19, 2015

Gabe and Matt (in between chugging cans of whole tomatoes) are building Ami a bed downstairsso she doesnt have to climb up. Dadgumit, woman! That lumber was supposed to be for Matts pool house!

Amis recovering from her injuryin the hospital in Juneau, and her vertebrae are deteriorating from living the Bush life for too long. The doctor says shes not supposed to move. (Id love to watch a live Ami Bedcam!) This Ami stuff has serious implications for the family. Who will teach Rainy about Bush Biochemistry? Who will make decorative wall hangings out of twigs?It could literally change the way we live, Billy says. Everyone will have to step up and do Amis shareof the weaving and dental emergencies.

The Brownssure as h**l dont want another Dread Winter of 95. G*d, that was awful. Thirty-nine degrees below zero, not includingwind shear, Bear says, possibly confusing wind chill andwind shear. Not sure. Bush Meteorology was not my best subject in high school.

The Council of Brown convenes and decides that getting meat is the best course of action and a good way to burnoff a lot of screen time with cool night-vision stuff. Right now, we need meat. We need it really bad, Billy says.

The Browns should go to Arby"s. THEY HAVE THE MEATS! #AlaskanBushPeople

Ryan Berenz (@ChannelGuideRAB) November 19, 2015

Matt goes into Hoonah to get parts for Amis root cellar.

Now that moms teeth are gone, I am going to give her a root cellar. #AlaskanBushPeople

Pete (@peteder13) November 19, 2015

This leads Matt to KENNY! Yes, Kenny from the Junkyard, arguably the most fascinating person ever to appear on this series. Matt is looking for something to reinforce the root cellar, or Alaskan Refrigerator, and help make it bear-proof. He and Kenny sort through a mix of scrapped appliances, eventually coming to this old computer mainframe cabinetthat looks like [SPOILER ALERT!] The Old Man in the Cave from The Twilight Zone. Matts going to haul this beast back to Brownton Abbey and mix it with nature.What comes from the earth shall go back to the earth, says Kenny, the Confucius of the Bush.

I know nothing about firearms, but can someone who does know something tell us if pouring chicken grease on your rifle actually accomplishes something other than making your gun smell like the garbage can ata Popeyes? Wouldnt the smell attract bears?And like h**l chicken grease doesnt coagulate. Just ask this Florida Woman.

Noah is in charge of designing the new smokehouse that will preserve all the fish they caught in Excursion and whatever fresh deer carcass Bear brings back. Noah thinks hes got an innovative design for a smokehouse with some kind of automatic firewood replenishment contraption.We dont need to go quite as overkill as youre talking, says Bam, ever the voice of reason. Yes, Im sure the original Noah cut corners on the Ark, Noah protests. I cant speak to that, but Im pretty sure Darren Aronofsky cut more than a few corners on Noah.Bam gets in some nice digson Noah about his wearing Puffy Shirts to do construction work. Im liking Bam so much more these days, and Noahs pretentious asshat act is wearing thin. Take this exchange:

Bam: Noah, we need to talk, man. I love the dreamhouse youre building. But its taking too long.Noah: Well Bam: Those fish are going to rot out on us. We need the smoker operational as quick as possible.Noah: When you first walked up, you shouldve said And I need to talk not We need to talk, because apparently all youre doing is informing me.Bam: I suppose more accurate I shouldve said I need to talk to you. But can you, real quick, take my stove and hook that up to the smoker?

NOAH FAIL!Im completely willing to sacrifice my design so we can have fish now, he says. Progress has to suffer, but at least the family wont. But the viewers suffering continues unabated. Take this exchange:

Noah: Oppenheimer didnt stop creating the nuke merely because they had missiles.Bam: I dont need a nuke. Just trying to smoke some fish.Noah: You obviously didnt understand the metaphor.

There are not enough faces or palms on Earth to represent the degree of facepalming I want to do right now.

Bear assembles his hunting team of Gabe and Birdy before dawn, so that they can get up to the summit of the hill at sunrise so they can take advantage of the deer-killin happy hour specials. Theres a lot of green night vision stuff and some manufactured elements of danger, as iftheyre in Zero Dark Thirty and about to pop a cap in Osama bin Laden instead of hunting for deer.

KENNY! pays a visit to Brownton Abbey and gets a tour of all Matts stupid ideas, which, at one point, included a drawbridge connecting his tire hut to the metro Brownton Abbey area. But Mattdecided to just lay down a board and call it a day. Other c**p includes a knife-throwing target, a dumpster mirror and a doorbell of some kind. Gotta have a gong, you know, says Kenny. Indeed. Kenny helps Matt dig a shallow grave root cellar todrop The Old Man in the Cave inside. Matt eventually has to wave the white flag on his plan, likely due to lack of time and interest (see last week.)In my head, some things dont work the same as in reality, Matt says. Like gravity, for instance. The wise and practical Bam explains to Matt the folly of Matts ambitions.Bam has been against Franken-Fridge since it started, that it had no place in the root cellar, Matt says. And it feels like Bam might have been right. FRANKEN-FRIDGE FAIL!

Its daybreak on the hill where Bear believes there will be thousands of deer.But theres not adeer in sight. EXXXTREME FAIL! It is EXXXTREMELY important for me that I come home with meat, Bear says. But all Bear finds are freshly killed deer parts, meaning that theres been a hunter (I assume hes not talking about a human one) nearby and the deer have vacated the area. If Bear collects enough deer parts, could he reconstruct a whole new deer from them? You know, like Franken-Deer? Sorry.

Disenchanted with the smoker design, Noah retreats to his tent for some spider experimentation, says our dear narrator. Ive seen enough 50s monster movies to know where this is going.

Noah claims to have caught a poisonous male spider in a jar, and Noah says that the spiderwould bite him butit doesnt realizetheres glass in the way. He also claims that spiders makezombie-like moaning sounds. If Noah has caught a purring wolf spider, the spider does not want to bite Noah, but merely wants to have s*x with him. Noah names his spiders by drawing from a deck of playing cards with pictures of dead composers. (Or De-Composers?) This particular spiders namesake isSergei Rachmaninoff. More like Sergei Arachnidinoff, amiright?

Ami gets out of bed to take a nice stroll through the garden. Look how lovely everything is! This sweetmoment could in no way portend some kind of tragedy.

And then tragedy struck. Bear, Birdy and Gabe hear three gunshots coming from Brownton Abbey. Three shots means theres trouble afoot, probably those goons from up in Chitina coming down to finish the job.

All the preview junk indicates that Billy has some major medical emergency.

[SPOILER ALERT!]

Billy is not dead.

Source: http://www.channelguidemagblog.com/index.php/2015/11/19/discovery-channel-alaskan-bush-people-recap-shots-fired/

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"Alaskan Bush People" Recap: Shots Fired

Gabe, Bird, and Bear on the hunt for deer in the mountains above Browntown.

Credit: Courtesy Discovery

After a somewhat slow season premiere, the Brownsare rolling up their sleeves, taking on some backwoods DIY, smoking salmon, and getting into seriously tense Grizzly encounters.

Bill Brown sets the action in motion with something of a real-life parable:In the winter of 1995, temperatures descended to 39 degrees below zero on Chichagof Island, with more than 120 inches of snow,andthe family had to burn everything including the paneling of their home, stairs, and furniture just to stay alive.

The moral of the tale: Everyone needs to get ready for winter,now.

The boys respond in kind. Noah, ever the tinkerer,turns tobuilding an industrial-size smoker (the last one was destroyed by bears) to preserve all that salmon caught last episode. Matt gets out a shovel and sets off to build a root cellar he calls it an "Alaskan refrigerator" used to store vegetables. Bear, the focus of this episode, arms himself and heads to the mountains to hunt for deer.

LAST EPISODE: The Alaskan Bush People Season Premiere

The mile-highascentabove Browntown to the crest of Chicagof Island"s mountainsis steep, densely wooded, and full of grizzlies (Chichagof Island is home to more grizzly bears per square mile than any other place on Earth.)But Bear thinks it will beworth the summitsincehe has previously scouted "thousands" of grazing deer up top.

Before Bear leads the huntwith Bird a serious shotand Gabe ("h**l be able to carry one deer over his back and another under his arm), Bill offers an Alaskan Bush People"s take on anSOS system: three gun shots signals trouble; one answering shot is a confirmation; three more shots means theyre in need of help, at which point the whole family will storm the mountain.

Bear and crewset out in the complete dark of early morning, hoping to arrive at the site just as day breaks, but when theyencounter a grizzly almost immediately, they have to opt for a different, longer route up the mountain. Above the tree-line, the grouplooks around: no deer. Bearinvestigates the surrounding forest and discovers something even worse fresh, severed deer limbs. "This area been hunted in really recently," he says, and "its like ringing a dinner bell for every bear that happens to be in the area."

Just as the group tries to make sense of this new discovery, three loud gunshots ring off from the direction of Browntown. Bear fires back to make sure its a Brown, and three more warning shots answer back. The episode ends with them taking off running down the mountain.

Source: http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/collection/alaskan-bush-people-recap-shots-fired-20151118

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