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◆ ◆ ◆ UNDER CONSTRUCTION ◆ ◆ ◆

DANNY'S CORNER OF THE NET

~ a place to watch the sky and count the numbers ~
56k friendly  ★  best viewed in netscape 4.7  ★  clear skies and honest books  ★  thanks laura  ★  thanks dad  ★  the truth costs what it costs  ★ 

» read this first «

If you haven't heard from me by the 20th, Laura has the files. All of them. Both halves. She'll know what to do.

The gray sedan has been on my block for six nights. I counted. I stopped going to the coffee shop on Burnside because it has two exits and they know it. I'm writing this from a library terminal because my phone line clicks.

I'm not paranoid. I audited Halcyon Energy Partners for nine months and the numbers don't close. They haven't closed since 1998. When this breaks my dad's pension goes with it, and so does every retired teacher and steelworker in three states who trusted "A Calmer Tomorrow." I counted those too. It's a lot of people.

So the site stays up. The webring badges stay up. The guestbook stays open. If you are who I think you are — you know which page to check. The number is the same as it was in Reno.

— D.

countdown to release: 09 days : 14 hrs

» welcome «

You've reached Danny's little spot on the net. I keep this site because I like the sky and I like the numbers and I haven't figured out how to stop looking at either. I'm a process engineer by day, early thirties, based in the Pacific Northwest. At night I'm out on the deck with the scope, or in here pecking at HTML, or sometimes both.

If you're from the Stargazer's Webring, welcome. If you got here some other way — pull up a chair.

— Danny R.

» where to go «

» notes to self «

The thing about a sky full of stars is that most of what you're looking at isn't there anymore. The light's still arriving but the source burned out centuries ago. Every clear night is a museum of things that used to be. You learn to trust the pattern instead of the point.

Same with a set of books, honestly. You chase one number and it's already moved. You chase the pattern and it holds still.

"A liar should have a good memory." — Quintilian

> dad always said: if the story doesn't close, the books didn't either.

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SITE LOG

~ every post, in order, going back to the beginning ~

these are old. some are embarrassing. none are deleted. i keep them because the pattern matters more than any single post.

» Mar 03, 1999 · 11:52 PM · first post

testing testing. new homepage, new modem, new everything. going to use this as a place for the astronomy stuff and whatever else won't fit on a BBS. named this whole site after the only roommate who's ever tolerated me. that would be my dog. she is four years old and has eaten three of my cassettes.

» Apr 18, 1999 · 2:14 AM

clear night. set the scope up in the parking lot behind the office because the streetlights are out on my block. saw the lunar terminator sharper than i've ever seen it. the line between lit and unlit is never where you think it is. your eye keeps wanting to put it somewhere cleaner.

» Jul 14, 1999 · 1:33 AM

saw saturn through the new scope tonight. laura came over with pizza and pretended to be impressed for about four minutes and then she was actually impressed. it's the rings that get you. every time.

» Oct 02, 1999 · 10:08 PM

took stella to the coast. sat on the rocks at yachats and watched the sky do its thing. she slept. i didn't. something about moving water under moving weather under moving stars — three clocks running at different speeds and all of them right.

» May 04, 2000 · 11:41 PM

new account at work. big one. won't name them here but they're the kind of firm that buys super bowl ads and names their conference rooms after greek gods. nine months of fieldwork. going to be tired for a while.

mike asked what i was working on and i couldn't say. i hate that. i got into auditing because i thought it was a job where you could always say what you did. apparently no.

» Aug 27, 2000 · 3:12 AM

can't sleep. the pattern is there. i can see it the way you see a constellation once someone traces it for you — and then you can never unsee it, which is the problem.

dad called sunday. asked how work was. i said fine. i have never lied to him before. i sat on the porch after we hung up and watched venus come up over the douglas firs and i thought about what 31 years of deposits looks like on a statement and what zero looks like.

» Nov 11, 2000 · 12:02 AM

laura drove up from reno for the weekend. we didn't talk about work. we talked about everything else. she left me a number on the back of the rainier photo before she left. told me to call her if i ever needed to disappear for a weekend. i laughed.

i'm not laughing tonight.

» Jan 06, 2001 · 4:51 AM

finished compiling. two sets of files. one goes to the Journal. one stays with her. the second set is for one person at that company and one person only and if the first set doesn't do the job the second one will.

i asked the scope a question tonight and it didn't answer. scopes don't answer. they just show you what's there. that's the whole deal.

» Feb 02, 2001 · 11:58 PM

they know. i don't know how long they've known. the sedan appeared wednesday. probably there before and i wasn't looking. audit training does not prepare you to be audited.

the release is built. it fires on the 20th. laura doesn't know how to stop it and neither do i. that was the point.

» Feb 11, 2001 · 3:47 AM · most recent

see homepage for the current post.

« back to homepage »

In Memory of Danny

1973  ~  2001
[ danny & laura
mt. rainier
summer '99 ]
file: halcyon_gala_1999.jpg
my favorite troublemaker
[ back of photo ]
D —
whenever, whatever.
call me.

(702) 555‑1734

— L.
click photo to flip

A Note from Laura

I don't know how to write this page. I've started it three times. Danny would have made fun of the template I picked — he hated pink — so I picked it anyway.

A lot of you knew him from the webring, from IRC, from the long nights when none of us could sleep and the internet felt like a small town. Some of you only knew the handle. That's okay. He was the same person either way.

His sister Karen called me on Tuesday morning. She said it was quick, and that there wasn't a note, and that the family isn't planning a service. She asked if I'd take down his site. I told her I would when I was ready. I'm not ready.

❀   ❀   ❀

The first time I met Danny in person he spent forty minutes explaining Saturn to me while a pizza got cold between us. He had a way of looking at things like he was trying to memorize them in case they went away. The rings. Every time.

He remembered birthdays. He sent CD-Rs of mixes to people he'd never met in person. When my dad got sick he called me every Sunday for four months, and some of those Sundays I wasn't nice to him, and he called anyway.

He was also worried lately. I'm not going to pretend I didn't see it. He had some things going on at work that were chewing him up, and he wouldn't talk about them except in circles. I kept telling him to just rest. I wish I'd said something else. I wish I'd picked up the phone on Sunday.

If you have a memory to share, sign below. I'll keep this page up as long as GeoCities lets me. And if you are who I think you are — you know where to find me.

— Laura
posted Feb 13, 2001

Memories & Messages

Mike_H  ·  Feb 13, 2001  ·  11:42 PM
Laura this is beautiful. I can't process it. We were supposed to watch Barry Lyndon on Sunday and he didn't show, which — you know him, he never missed a Kubrick night. I called his office Monday and the receptionist said he hadn't been in since Thursday, which was also news to me. He seemed excited when we had coffee two weeks ago. He said "something I've been working on for a long time is almost finished." He was lit up. I keep going back to that sentence. I'm so sorry.
stargazer99  ·  Feb 14, 2001  ·  2:08 AM
rest easy brother. the ring won't be the same. ad astra. — s99
kathyM  ·  Feb 14, 2001  ·  9:15 AM
I only knew Danny from the forum but he helped me troubleshoot my modem for three hours one night in 1999. Total stranger. Wouldn't take anything for it. He told me that night — I wrote it down because I liked it — "the trick isn't knowing what the numbers say, it's noticing when they stop saying it." I thought he meant the modem. I'm so sorry for everyone who loved him.
anon  ·  Feb 15, 2001  ·  4:33 AM
he was a good man. i hope whoever made him feel like this wasn't worth it reads this page one day. i hope they can't sleep either.
T. Reeves  ·  Feb 16, 2001  ·  6:22 AM
I am Danny's father. My wife and I learned yesterday and we have not slept since. I do not know how to use this website. Karen's son helped me find this page because she said Laura had made a beautiful place for the people who loved him. Thank you, Laura. He talked about you the way a son talks about a sister he chose. We are trying to understand and we cannot yet. If you have a memory please keep it. We have so few of the grown man and so many of the boy.
Mike_H  ·  Feb 17, 2001  ·  10:55 PM
Mr. Reeves, if you're still checking this, there's a thread on the webring where people are sharing memories. I can print them and mail them to you if that's easier. Danny helped me build a shed in '99 and we talked the whole time about how you taught him to use a level. He told me "my dad can read a room the way some people read a book." I thought you should know that's what he said.
stargazer99  ·  Feb 19, 2001  ·  11:17 PM
Laura. Take the site down. The memorial is enough. He would want privacy for his family now and this page is attracting the wrong kind of attention. Please consider.
kathyM  ·  Feb 20, 2001  ·  8:40 AM
s99 that is a weird thing to post. are you ok
Laura  ·  Feb 28, 2001  ·  7:02 PM
Update: I went by his apartment this weekend to pick up the camping gear he'd stored with me. The place was already cleaned out when I got there Monday. I guess the landlord moved fast. Weird but okay.
Laura  ·  Mar 09, 2001  ·  10:40 PM
The Wall Street Journal ran a story today that some of you will have questions about. I'm not going to answer them here. Danny asked me once, if it ever came to anything, to let the work speak and not him. So that's what I'm doing. The page stays up. If you need to reach me you know how. The number is the same as it was in Reno.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅   twenty-five years   ⋅ ⋅ ⋅
m_reeves  ·  Jun 14, 2003  ·  8:11 AM
I'm writing to you as a stranger, and also a grateful one. I worked 34 years for a company in Tacoma that was part of Halcyon's pension group. I got my first recovery payment this week. I know the young man who died is the reason, and I know you made sure his work went somewhere. I just wanted to say his name to someone. Daniel Reeves. Thank you.
Elena M.  ·  Apr 02, 2004  ·  3:45 PM
Hi Laura — I'm a reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer working on a retrospective on the Halcyon collapse. I understand you knew Danny. Could we talk? I have some questions that I don't think would be answered anywhere else.
Laura  ·  Apr 19, 2004  ·  11:55 PM
To anyone reading — please don't ask me questions on this page. Someone followed a reporter home last month for the sin of writing me an email. This page is watched. If you knew him and want to say hello, say hello. If you want to investigate, please go elsewhere. He is gone and nothing I can tell you changes that.
j. takeda  ·  Nov 28, 2009  ·  1:22 AM
Mrs. — Reading the archives of the Halcyon case for a graduate paper on whistleblowers in the pre-Sarbanes era. Your friend's decision still matters. I don't have a question. I just wanted to say thank you across the years.
anon  ·  Jul 03, 2015  ·  2:58 AM
still checking in. still nothing? interesting.
Laura  ·  Jul 03, 2015  ·  11:12 AM
Nothing. Go away.
Mike_H  ·  Feb 11, 2021  ·  9:30 PM
20 years. Still watching Barry Lyndon every year on this night. Still think I hear him knock on the door at the pizza part. Love you, bud.
Mike_H  ·  Feb 11, 2024  ·  10:14 PM
Laura, I drove out to see his dad on Sunday. He's still in the house. He made me coffee like he always does, I told him stories like I always do, and at the door he said the thing he says every time — "thanks for not forgetting him." I did not know how to tell him I am not the one he should be thanking for that.

He looked smaller this time. Take care of yourself. — M.
Laura  ·  Apr 08, 2026  ·  11:48 PM  ·  (new)
I don't know why I'm writing this here. I haven't written on this page in eleven years. I think I'm writing it here because this is the only place left where someone who knew him might still be looking.

His father is at the end of his road. The doctors said weeks, maybe less. I sat with him on Sunday and he held my hand for a while and didn't say anything and then he said "if he ever wanted to, he could." He was talking about the phone. He keeps it by the bed. He has for a long time.

I have the number. I've always had it. I have never once called it on Danny's behalf and I don't intend to start now, because that's not mine to do. But if anyone is out there who knew him the way I did — if anyone is reading this who has any reason to think a message might reach him — the rings still get me. That is all I will say in this venue.

Please don't respond to this post. You know where I am.
— L.
❀   ❀   ❀
this guestbook has been closed to new entries.
— page kept quietly by m42_keeper since march 2001
❀   ❀   ❀
« return to danny's homepage »

for you // a page only you will see

if you are reading this you already know how to find it.

password hint: the first thing you ever showed me through the scope.


 

for you

— a page only you will see
★ STARGAZER'S WEBRING » General Discussion » Thread #4417
Users online: 3 Total members: 42 Archived read-only « back to ring
where is danny?? (he hasn't been on IRC in 4 days)
Started by Mike_H · Feb 12, 2001 · 6 replies

Has anyone heard from Danny since the weekend? He didn't show up for the Sunday chat and he missed the Kubrick watch party last night which is completely unlike him. His page posted something weird Friday night and now I can't get him on the phone or ICQ.

I'm not trying to be alarmist. But if anyone has seen him post somewhere or has a number for Laura, drop it here. (She's m42_keeper on stargazers, reno area, if anyone has her ICQ that's faster than her work line.)

— Mike · "the stars look the same from everywhere"

I haven't. His site looks the same as it did Friday. I hope he's okay. Is anyone near Portland who could drive by?

mike i just heard. laura called. its bad. give her a day before you call her ok

im not going to be on the ring for a while. take care of each other

— s99

stargazer what do you mean "laura called" — do you two know each other offline?? i thought you'd never met

i'm calling her now regardless

[ post #5 deleted by moderator · Feb 13, 2001 3:02 AM · reason: "by user request" ]

I spoke to Laura. She's put a tribute page up, link here. I'm locking this thread out of respect.

If anyone hears from stargazer99, tell them to check their email. I don't know who they are but they knew before any of us did and I'd like to know how.

Rest easy, Danny. You were one of the good ones.

sorry to necro a locked thread but mike you should check the ip logs on stargazer99's last three posts. they don't match the older ones. whoever posted on tuesday wasn't whoever's been posting as s99 since 98.

also: if anyone has laura's reno phone number from '97 please msg me. i went to school with a laura who matches her description and the timing is strange.

[ thread locked · replies disabled ] · « back to webring · view danny's backup mirror »

DR_ARCHIVE :: backup mirror

last sync: 02/10/2001 · 23:58:14 PST · dump size: 14.7 MB
> README: if you are reading this on the mirror instead of the main site it means the main site is down. i am leaving this here as a courtesy to whoever is trying to understand. paging through directories should be obvious. do not contact me at the day job number. do not contact my family. talk to laura if you have to.
i work auditing side for a firm that contracts with halcyon energy
partners (HEP) out of houston. i have been on the halcyon account
since may of last year. what follows is a summary of what i have
found. full files are zipped at /private/notes.html and will
release automatically if i do not check in by 02/20/2001.

two separate items. one public. one private. they are not the
same crime and they are not the same people. this matters.

item one: the company itself is fraudulent. accounting fraud at
a scale that will wipe out retail shareholders when it breaks.
my best estimate is Q3 or Q4 of this year before it becomes
unhideable. pension funds in OR, WA, and MT are heavily
exposed. my dad's is one of them. this is not a metaphor.

item two: separate from the company fraud, one specific person
at halcyon is stealing from one specific other person at halcyon
in a way that would be ruinous for both of them if surfaced
independently of item one. i will not put their names in this
file. the names are in the other file. with laura.
my father worked 31 years at kaiser. he retired in 1997 with a
pension that was, and i quote the letter they sent him, "fully
funded and professionally managed by halcyon energy partners
financial services division."

he is 66 years old. my mother had a stroke in 1999 and their
medical is not free.

if halcyon collapses the way i think it will collapse, he has
nothing. not reduced. nothing. the fund documents i have pulled
show that 84% of the retirement trust is invested in halcyon's
own securities and in securities of entities that turn out, when
you unwind them, to be halcyon wearing a different hat.

he is not the only one. i counted. i stopped counting at 140,000
pensioners across the three states and i was not done counting.

so this is what i am doing. i am not a hero. i am a guy whose
dad worked 31 years and deserves to not eat cat food in 2004.
the scheme uses shell subsidiaries with names that sound boring
on purpose. i have a partial list:

  - halcyon midstream holdings LLC (delaware)
  - calmer tomorrow trust series A-F
  - HEP peripheral services, inc. (this is the one that matters)
  - westbrook capital advisors (cyprus registration)
  - voss & associates consulting   <-- note this one
  - sagebrush logistics partners

item one runs through all of these except voss & associates.
voss & associates is the private item. it sits under HEP
peripheral services on the org chart for reasons that took me
four months to understand.

you do not need to understand the four months. you need to
understand that "voss & associates consulting" has only one
vendor contract and that contract has been generating
$40,000-$80,000 per month in unexplained invoices since
august 1999. none of it hits the books the way it should.

the payments route to one person. not the company. one person.
i will not put the two names in this mirror. the mirror is too
easy to find.

i will say this. the public name is on the cover of forbes this
month. they called him the oracle of energy. read it and imagine
that man explaining to his wife why his own executive assistant
is a millionaire on paper from a consulting firm no one has ever
heard of and that has no employees.

now imagine what he does when he finds out.

i am not worried about him finding out about item one. item one
goes to the SEC and the wall street journal the day i release.

i am worried about item two because item two is personal and
the math of how he reacts to item two is not the same math.

the full names live at /private/notes.html. password is a line
from the first thing i ever wrote on this website, march 1999.
if you are laura you already know it. if you are not laura and
you need it: six letters. it is also the name of my dog.
if something happens, the files release on 02/20/2001 at 0000
hrs PST regardless of whether i am alive to send them. laura
has the trigger. she does not have the authority to stop it.
i built it that way on purpose so nobody could make her stop it.

if you are a halcyon lawyer reading this: you cannot buy her.
she cannot stop the release. nobody can. the files are already gone.

if you are a reporter reading this: emma r. at the WSJ houston
desk has my contact info and a partial dossier dated 01/28/2001.
call her first. do not call me.

if you are my father reading this: i am sorry. i love you. the
second floor of the cabin is where you think it is. there is
enough.

if you are me reading this after the fact: you made it. go.
★ STARGAZER'S WEBRING ★ « prev random next »

/private/notes.html

this area is password protected
 

/private/notes.html — FINAL

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The Halcyon Record

an archive assembled by Laura — public domain clippings · last updated 2024
The Wall Street Journal

Halcyon Energy Partners Collapses Under Accounting Fraud, $12B in Retirement Savings at Risk

Halcyon Energy Partners (HEP), the Houston-based energy trading firm once hailed as "The Oracle of Energy" for its market-beating returns, disclosed late Tuesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating systemic accounting fraud dating back to at least 1998.

Internal documents obtained by the Journal and verified by three independent forensic accountants describe a network of shell subsidiaries — including entities registered in Delaware, Cyprus, and the Cayman Islands — used to hide an estimated $4.7 billion in losses from public view. The scheme relied on a financial mechanism the documents call the "calmer tomorrow" structure, named after a series of pension-investment trusts that company brochures have long advertised to retiring public employees.

"There are 140,000 retirees in three states whose pensions are now, as of this morning, worth a fraction of what they were told yesterday." — a source close to the investigation

CEO Richard Castellan, featured on the cover of Forbes in December, declined to comment through an attorney. Sources tell the Journal that the documents were delivered anonymously Monday morning and verified over a 36-hour sprint before publication.

U.S. Attorney's Office

Castellan Sentenced to 24 Years on Fraud, Conspiracy, and Witness Tampering Charges

Richard M. Castellan, former CEO of Halcyon Energy Partners, was sentenced today to 24 years in federal prison following his conviction on 17 counts including securities fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, and witness tampering. Judge Marta Salazar noted at sentencing that Castellan had "presided over one of the largest premeditated destructions of working-class savings in the history of the Texas energy industry."

Former executive assistant Miriam Voss, who turned state's evidence in 2002, received 18 months in exchange for her testimony regarding a parallel scheme involving falsified consulting invoices.

The original source of the documents that triggered the investigation has never been publicly identified. Sources close to the case have referred only to "a former contractor with the firm's audit partner." Federal prosecutors have declined to name the source out of an abundance of caution. The office recognizes that this person made this result possible and wishes to note, for the record, that the debt is acknowledged.

June 14, 2003

Dear Laura,

I don't know if you'll ever read this. I found your page through my grandson who is good at the internet. I worked 34 years at a mill in Tacoma. My pension was in the Calmer Tomorrow fund. Last month I received my first recovery payment. It was not the full amount but it was more than I had convinced myself to expect.

I wanted someone to know that the man who did this — I understand he did not want his name said — kept me and my wife in our house. That is not a small thing. That is the thing.

I hope he is at peace wherever he is.

— Marcus Reeves (no relation, I have been told)
Tacoma, WA

ProPublica

The Halcyon Ghost: As Castellan's Parole Reconsideration Approaches, Questions That Were Never Answered

Twenty-five years after the collapse of Halcyon Energy Partners, Richard Castellan is eligible for parole reconsideration for the first time. I've been writing about this case since the Journal sent me to Houston in 2001. I was twenty-six years old. The source who made that story possible was never named, and I have never tried to name him, and I will not try to name him now.

But there are questions that the 2001 documents raised and did not resolve. Specifically: there is reason to believe that in the days before the documents arrived on my desk, someone at Halcyon made an operational decision regarding the source's physical safety. A decision that, if it could be documented, would constitute a separate and uncharged crime.

"If anyone reading this story has material that would answer that question, I would very much like to hear from you. My inbox is at the bottom of this article." — from the piece

Castellan's parole hearing is scheduled for October.

Contact the reporter: ana.reyes@propublica.org · signal: +1 (646) 555‑0198 · SecureDrop available. · stargazers.net DM: ana_r (old habit — checks occasionally)
Associated Press

Halcyon CEO's Parole Hearing Advanced to May After Behavioral Review

The parole hearing for Richard M. Castellan, convicted former CEO of Halcyon Energy Partners, has been advanced from October to May 19, 2026, following a standard behavioral review by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Castellan, now 71, has served 23 of a 24-year sentence and is eligible for release on time served under federal guidelines if the parole board finds no cause to deny.

Prosecutors originally involved in the 2003 conviction declined to comment. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas confirmed that victim impact statements may be submitted to the parole board through May 12.

Attorneys familiar with the case have said the outcome is considered likely to favor release absent new material information regarding the original conduct.

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geocities.com/Area51/Stars/7844/
Captured: 14 Aug 2002 · 03:21:15 UTC · No later snapshot available. Site offline since 2009 (GeoCities shutdown).

THIS PAGE IS NO LONGER ACTIVE

The site you requested has not been captured since 2002.
The snapshot below is the most recent available.

★ stargazer's webring · site #14
HEY WELCOME TO MY PAGE
~ under construction forever ~

i am a 19 yr old amateur astronomer from Tucson AZ. i mostly take pictures of the moon. this page has a GUESTBOOK so please sign it ok!

favorite planet: Mars
favorite star: Sirius (it's the bright one)
scope: Meade DS-60

★ LINKS ★
- Stargazer's Webring (broken)
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last updated: 11-04-2001. i'll update more soon!
<MARQUEE>Thanks for visiting!!</MARQUEE>
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