naked capitalism

By Richard Smith

I posted this a few days ago, about the screechingly obvious fake Gibraltar company Validated Carbon Credits, a trading name of Baron Traders Ltd and its lying “CEO” James Richards. Two comments to the post have caught my eye:

It´s obvious your posting is not only slanderous but based on pure conjecture without any circumstantial evidence whatsoever. Why is it you don´t have a “contact us” link? Did you even bother contacting the company / individuals to try and establish some facts?

This was purportedly by a lady called Karen Johnson, who guilelessly provides an email address, bubblybosun@gmail.com, which, a quick Google reveals, is a handle used by none other than James Richards, the aforementioned lying CEO. Rather than dwell on that, or on the fact that “she” evidently doesn’t understand the meanings of the words “circumstantial evidence” and “slanderous”, I responded as follows:

Hello Karen,

Since I know that James Richards is a liar, and Ellie Johnson is a liar, why on earth would I go out of my way to contact them? I’d just get told more lies.

I don’t think my post is the least bit slanderous.

Produce some evidence that I am wrong.

Evidence was not forthcoming. But you will have guessed that, dear readers. Instead, James Richards freaked out a bit and took his web site down for a few hours, as reported here, and then realised that doing that gave completely the wrong impression, and put it back up again. Twerp.

There is more: today James Richards has followed up again in the comments, using his usual name. His comment has the same IP address as the Karen Johnson comment already quoted, confirming my belief a) that he can’t be relied on to give his own gender correctly, never mind his name or his business, and b) that he is startlingly stupid. So now he’s even on record on this blog, lying about who he is. But heck, we knew he did that already.

I can’t fix his IQ, but I do wish he would decide what he’s called, and whether he’s a boy or a girl. There is quite enough gender confusion at this blog already.

I will respond in-line to his latest ungrammatical rant.

We are writing in response to some poisonous, but more importantly, completely incorrect diatribe you have written about our company. We do not know who you are or what your motives are but what you have published is completely without substance, has no evidence to back up your wild allegations and is ultimately libellous and defamatory.

You will find all the evidence that’s needed if you read the post again, James. For reference: ignoring what you’ve been told already is another very well-known sign of bad faith, just like faking your name. There is a simple way to rebut the claim that your company does not exist. Provide a URL to a register of Gibraltar companies that shows your company. You haven’t done that very simple thing. It is fairly obvious why that is. By the way, our motives are perfectly irrelevant, (and would be unintelligible to the personality-disordered anyway, so it may be doubly a waste of time talking about them, to you).

Our company is registered in Gibraltar…

No it isn’t. Read the post again. We covered that already. For reference: ignoring what you’ve been told already is another very well-known sign of bad faith, just like faking your name.

…and our Articles of Incorporation can be provided to anyone on request.

Any fool can fake a set of Articles.

We are a VeriSign trusted company and we are contactable by phone and e-mail.

You have a secure money transfer link and you have an email address and a telephone. So what? And if you don’t handle client money, as you claim later, why are you even mentioning Verisign?

However, since you are clearly not capable of finding the truth you have failed to find us registered (how much do you know about Gibraltar registered companies anyway when you are located in Canada?)

Dear readers, there would of course be an easy way to put a very minor dent my post, namely, to provide a link to the Gibraltar registry or to OpenCorporates that shows Baron Traders Limited. And yet, somehow, this simple expedient doesn’t occur to James Richards; or much more likely, it has occurred to him, but he can’t deliver. The bit about Canada is comedy genius, of course. And anyway, nothing is going to prop up his other fakery from the post – Vogue Estates, his spam about the trader who can make $300K in three months, and so on.

and you have never made any contact with us direct. Is there a reason for this?

There is indeed. Since I know that James Richards is a liar, and Ellie Johnson is a liar, and Karen Richards doesn’t exist, why on earth would I go out of my way to contact any of them? I’d just get told more lies. That, by the way, is the gist of my response to your fake alter ego “Karen Richards”, which you will have already read before writing your latest comment, James. For reference: in this kind of conversation, ignoring what you’ve been told already is a very well-known sign of bad faith, just like faking your name.

Usually when someone has a grievance with a company or individual, the first port of call is to try to address the situation direct.

I don’t have a grievance with your company. I think you are a liar and a scammer, that’s all.

If you have the courage of your convictions why are you hiding behind the internet with no way of anyone communicating with you?

You somehow haven’t noticed, but you do seem to be communicating with me, do you not, (if lies count as communication)? Just…not in private. You may wish to abuse me privately, but that ain’t gonna happen. It is precisely because I am convinced that you are a scammer, and thus, an abuser, that I am not interested in opening a private channel to you.

We, therefore request that you provide this information so that our lawyers can contact you direct to address this situation you have created.

Try yves@nakedcapitalism.com, you pompous, inarticulate jackass.

We will be pursuing you aggressively through the proper legal channels…

No you won’t.

…and expect a full and public apology and punitive damages.

No you don’t.

We are completely above board,…

No you aren’t.

…do not handle any client funds and work with a highly credible, long established UK company who have been active in the global carbon markets for a number of years.

Who’s that then? You mention them here and at your web site, but you never say who they are. By now, readers can guess why that is.

We introduce clients to them should they wish to invest or offset in carbon. Nothing more, nothing less. We would be most interested to know where you have evidence that we have scammed anyone.

I would be most interested to see whether you have any clients at all. It may be that you are such an incompetent scammer that you haven’t managed to scam anybody. The intent, however, is blindingly obvious.

In Gibraltar we are under the watchful eye of the FSC (similar to the FSA in the UK) and so it would not be in our interest to mislead clients in any way.

Rubbish: the FSC, (which proclaims itself to be a lot less fearsome than the FSA, actually),  has never heard of you. We covered that already. Read the post again. For reference: in this kind of conversation, ignoring what you’ve been told already is a very well-known sign of bad faith, just like faking your name. Perhaps I mentioned that already. Provide a URL to an FSC register that shows your company. You haven’t done that very simple thing yet. That tells onlookers quite a lot. Oh, and you are not “in” Gibraltar, either!

In fact, given the number of rogue companies selling carbon credits out there, it is most likely that we have lost sales through telling it like it is and not making it up in order to get a quick sale.

This is your usual threadbare, obvious, hypocritical patter. It may convince FTAdvisers but it doesn’t wash with amateurs like me.

Perhaps, given the situation you have brought about, we should also consider contacting all the entities who advertise on your site and explain that you are now at the centre of legal proceedings due to the entirely unfounded, libellous and defamatory garbage that you have published.

Go ahead, numbskull, draw even more attention to your lies. If you wish to write to some of our payday loan advertisers in that vein, that would be particularly wonderful. Just like everything else about Baron Trading Limited, we’ll believe we’re at the “at the centre of legal proceedings” when we get some independent evidence that these “legal proceedings” exist. We are agog.

Please note that Yves Smith, or Susan Webber, whatever she prefers to be called, as the Principal of Aurora Advisors, Inc. will also be receiving this e-mail.

Well, that bit is true, at last; in fact, you brightened Ms Webber’s day. In, um, “Canada”.

Clients of James Richards, if there are any, whether at Vogue Estates Limited,  Baron Traders Limited, or Validated Carbon Credits, are invited to pipe up in the comments about their experiences. If they are too embarrassed by their past association with this ludicrous deadbeat, they may wish instead to email yves@nakedcapitalism.com in strictest confidence. Testimonials from satisfied customers or business partners are also of great interest.