Sam Sloan

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Samuel Howard Sloan (b. September 7, 1944), also known as M. Ismail Sloan, is an American author, chess player and former securities trader. While having no formal legal training, he once orally argued and won a case in front of the U. S. Supreme Court.[1] In July 2006, he was elected to the Executive Board of the United States Chess Federation, becoming the first convicted felon to hold this post.

He has been married five times and has eight children. He once drove a taxicab in New York City and is involved in organizing chess tournaments.

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Sloan attended the University of California, Berkeley majoring in mathematics. At the time UC Berkeley was a center for student protest during the social unrest of the 1960s. Sloan became the president of the Sexual Freedom League. His book Sex Marchers, co-authored with SFL founder Jefferson Poland, called for sexual emancipation.

After dropping out of UC Berkeley, Sloan made a living trading stocks on Wall Street. The SEC brought civil actions against Sloan in 1971-1975 alleging he had failed to maintain adequate books and records. In 1975, the SEC revoked Sloan's brokerage license. After years of litigation, Sloan in 1978 prevailed in the U.S. Supreme Court. Sloan argued the case pro se even though he was not an attorney. The opposing attorney was Harvey Pitt, who was later Chairman of the SEC from 2001 to 2003. Sloan won before the U.S. Supreme Court 9-0. Sloan is the last non-lawyer to argue before the court.[2]

Sloan has written a book about the dialects of the Khowar-speaking regions of Pakistan. He writes that his first wife was a native of that region and their only child together, a girl, was named Shamema.

In 1986, Sloan fled the US with Shamema and established a new home in the United Arab Emirates. In 1990, Shamema was returned to the USA in a manner that was deemed a kidnapping by the UAE. He lost his custody rights to his daughter and, after a visitation incident in 1991, was convicted in 1993 in Virginia of attempting to abduct her. (Lynchburg Circuit - Criminal - CR91003195-00; total of 10 case numbers).

Sloan is a Class A chess player and chess journalist. Sloan has claimed that he "used to be a rated chess master".[3] He claims to have traveled to nearly 80 countries, primarily attending chess tournaments. He has claimed to have "won the World Championship of Chinese Chess in Beijing, China, in 1988." [4] Sloan has also competed in tournaments in Thai (Makrook) and Japanese (Shogi) chess. Sloan is also a longtime frequent poster to Usenet groups such as rec.games.chess.politics.

In July 2006, Sam Sloan was elected to the Executive Board of the United States Chess Federation.[5] He placed second from a field of five candidates vying for two seats on the board that had been vacated by the resignations of former board members Greg Shahade and Timothy Hanke, resulting in a special election. Sloan ran on an outsider platform, stating that two of the five then-incumbents were former USCF employees and that a third had previously also done paid work for the USCF, and saying the board was supposed to be completely independent from the staff. He advocated a major expansion of scholastic chess, stating that the USCF should establish a program to certify school chess teachers. He also criticized the USCF's recent move from New Windsor, New York to Crossville, Tennessee.[6]

As second-place finisher in the special election, Sloan will serve a one-year term on the board (the first-place finisher will serve a three-year term).[7] Sloan's term of service began in August 2006, after the election was certified by the Board of Delegates at the USCF Delegates Meeting. After suggesting that Susan Polgar has been given too much money by the executive board and asking for financial records relating to Polgar, Grandmaster Susan Polgar was highly critical of Sloan's election, accusing Sloan of having recently misrepresented himself as having been Polgar's business manager and boyfriend, and calling for a retraction and apology.[8] Polgar wrote that she "strongly believe[s] that a sexual predator (by his own admission) and a convicted felon should not be allowed to serve on the Executive Board of a non-profit organization with tens and thousands of young members." Polgar further alleged that in 1986 (when she was sixteen years old), "during [Sloan's] stay, he made a number of completely inappropriate solicitation[s] to me, a minor at that time, and he was promptly and firmly told no. To his credit, he did not try it again. But he tried with others." [9] She later escalated her opposition to Sloan's being seated on the board, calling (among other things) for the USCF delegates to refuse to certify the election.[10]. Sloan announced that he was considering writing a book about his prior relationship with the teenaged Susan Polgar; he has characterized that relationship as "not entirely Platonic" [11] and "seamy" [12]. Polgar has decided to run against Sloan in the next election on a campaign of throwing whistleblowers out of the chess federation if their allegations cannot be proven. She is running with her business manager and believes that the conflict of interest of having board members with a long term business relationship is not a problem because other board members do a lot of business with the USCF as well and that Sam Sloan's investigation of these relationships will make it difficult for the USCF to attract sponsors. That is, she is saying that sponsors typically like to give money to boards that have conflicts of interest that no one has investigated.

Sam Sloan has operated his website since the mid-1990s, posting over 3,000 pages of information and opinion on a wide range of topics, including court transcripts that Sloan has himself transcribed into web pages for the many other cases that he has initiated and attempted to argue pro se.

In an April 30, 2006, email to Michael Badnarik's 2004 Presidential campaign mailing list, an individual claiming to be Sloan announced his intention to seek the Libertarian Party nomination for Governor of New York State.

  1. ^ SEC v. Samuel H. Sloan, 436 US)
  2. ^ Building a Better Advocate, Tony Mauro, The American Lawyer.
  3. ^ [1] at 4'38"
  4. ^ [2] at 1'00"
  5. ^ USCF Elections
  6. ^ USCF Board Candidates Statements, "Sam Sloan for USCF Executive Board", http://beta.uschess.org/frontend/magazine_124_28.php
  7. ^ http://www.uschess.org/org/govern/SpecialElection2006.php
  8. ^ Susan Polgar, Serious issues with the USCF
  9. ^ [3] (The link to the original source is currently unavailable, as the blog is being moved on Blogger.)
  10. ^ http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2006/07/you-can-protect-uscf.html
  11. ^ http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.chess.politics/browse_thread/thread/5d9740dba7df3a32/cf91c441db6eca84?lnk=gst&q=%22not+entirely+Platonic%22&rnum=9&hl=en#cf91c441db6eca84
  12. ^ http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.chess.politics/browse_thread/thread/ad446fa4f998aedc/f143056987eb3c90?lnk=gst&q=Response+to+Ethics+Complaint+by+Herbert+Rodney+Vaughn&rnum=1&hl=en#f143056987eb3c90

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