Informant38

Sources close to the matter say Timothy Belden, who previously ran Enron's trading office in Portland, Ore., is prepared to implicate a number of other industry players in what could shape up to be one of the biggest conspiracies in U.S. corporate history.
Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson declined at a news conference last week to identify other alleged conspirators in the fleecing of California ratepayers.
But he did say that "Belden and others conspired to defraud California electricity consumers and customers."
This confirms a lot of hunches here in the Golden State, where folks knew something was screwy with the power grid long before federal authorities finally decided to weigh in on the matter.
Now we know exactly how it was done, at least as far as Enron was concerned.
Belden said he and his cronies would provide bogus data on how much juice was available at any given time to state utilities.
This would create the impression of congestion on power lines when none in fact existed, driving up demand and, better still, allowing Enron to charge an extra fee to relieve the congestion that wasn't actually there in the first place.Enron also exported power generated in California to other states and then turned around and sold it back to us at a big markup as electricity generated elsewhere.