Can you just not get enough of my posts about Australian fuel-additive swindlers Firepower, but find it difficult to pick those posts out from the others in my Scams and Strange Tales categories?
Well, now your worries are over, because How To Spot A Psychopath has added - for no extra charge! - a whole separate Firepower category.
I hope this'll help out the journalists who've been contacting me so entertainingly often for background info.
To save you all from yet another Firepower post, I'll add the latest few articles about them to this one:
The law firm whose services Firepower retained to sue the Sydney Morning Herald and journalist Gerard Ryle for the articles Ryle wrote about them in 2007... has now filed an application in the Federal Court to wind up Firepower, and put the proceeds towards their unpaid bills.
The Sydney Kings, the basketball team Firepower sponsored, are now officially dead, with large outstanding debts.
So Tim Johnston, the high-rolling Firepower chief executive who's recently, apparently, high-tailed it out of the country, is now in hiding from a number of very tall and muscular men, in addition to the usual collection of angry creditors.
13 June 2008 at 12:41 pm
I think it will definitely be helpful. That, and the fact that you're above the fold for google results on various permutations of "firepower scam", "firepower scammers", and most beautifully, #1 for "firepower pill".
13 June 2008 at 10:33 pm
Despite the fact that I despise basketball, I do actually feel a bit sorry for the Sydney Kings. After all, they are (were) sportspeople; you don't expect them to be experts in business investment.
15 June 2008 at 2:29 pm
I find it fascinating (in a morbid sense) that a fuel scammer can take on so many people this day and age and effectively destroy the entire sports of pro basketball in Australia.
16 June 2008 at 9:48 am
"Despite the fact that I despise basketball, I do actually feel a bit sorry for the Sydney Kings. After all, they are (were) sportspeople; you don’t expect them to be experts in business investment."
But you certainly do expect them to hire business experts before embarking on something like the FP deal. It's basic common sense, for Pete's sake.
19 June 2008 at 3:32 am
Sorry Dan, I almost feel guilty about bringing them to your attention with that first email (2 years ago now! geez...) what with journalists now contacting you (and basically having to point out the obvious, in slightly different ways, over and over again!) Although i'm pretty sure you would have got wind of FP via other means. The real kicker is my dad went ahead and invested in them anyway, and not only that, he kept holding out hope that he'd profit because the company was "just about to be launched on the London Stock Exchange" regardless of the other lies and non-eventualities, and through each successive revelation of conman-dodgy-ness in the press. I'd like to hope he's learned his lesson. I really would.
I hope you are charging those lazy journalists ridiculous Subject Matter Expert fees ;) I also really hope Tim Johnston et. al. eventually get a painful dose of natural justice, while observing that there will always be con men and it's the individual's responsibility to wisely avoid them, caveat emptor style.