Monday, November 12, 2012

The FriendsReunited Conspiracy (?) – Part 5 – The Document


In summary a group of people have been after me for years and have completed a 12-year investigation into the history of FR in an attempt to discredit me. They allege that we copied the idea from them through contact with a developer that they had engaged to write their website and that we lied about our launch and have been doing so ever since. They have been contacting us on and off for 7 years. In August we received an email and a 21-page summary of their investigation.

For background to this story read:
Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 – The Claim
Part 3 – The Contact
Part 4 – The Email

The document I received attached to that Email don’t forget was a summary of a 120-page document of the complete investigation. They haven’t shown me this – on one hand I would love to peruse it, to see what more these people have been up to.  However, if its anything like the summary then perhaps best I don’t see it.

I received the 21-page document in August this year, whilst on holiday with my family. It took me 24 hours to find a laptop that would open it as it was in an old version of Word. Once I did and started reading it I could not believe what I was seeing.

For most of the previous seven years I thought these people had gone away – that’s what they led me to believe in 2005. However, the things they did, the tactics they used, the people they allege to have involved is mind blowing. I couldn’t actually read the document from start to finish as it made me so angry on nearly every page.

I have to admit here that for the first time I lost it. Yes I had got angry previously at their communication and insinuation, but this was unbelievable. Some of the things made me feel physically sick. I decided it was best I take a break from my family holiday, as I didn’t want the kids to see me stressed and angry. Thanks for that, guys!

And the reason for my anger, apart from the allegations against me, was the tactics – following people; recording my conversations, turning up at friends’ houses and hassling them and then calling them liars; phoning friends and harassing them; warping things we said to suit their agenda;  the use of a fraud squad officer to investigate us; use of home office officials, senior police officers, legal experts, solicitors, authors…. You get the gist.

I started by going through their 21-page summary document line by line and making comments. You can imagine how slow a process this is. However, by the conclusion I realised a number of things.

Firstly, after 12 years there isn’t a shred of evidence to support any of these people’s wild claims, as I would have expected (given that their claims are utterly untrue). This is after 12 years of investigations, use of numerous supposed experts and lots – maybe hundreds - of man-hours.

Secondly, the document itself is all over the place in its comments, questions and summaries. I could not even work out what they were suggesting we did in places as it keeps changing its mind.

Thirdly, it is just full of sections of transcripts from conversations, emails, phone conversations and meetings. A lot is out of context and ALL the conclusions are based on these peoples’ strange interpretation of what peoples’ answers, written and spoken, mannerisms and body language mean. A single hesitation, a simple negative answer, a mistake, a hint of anger all become a scripted cover-up or lie. It is classic conspiracy stuff.

And finally, they had concentrated almost completely on trying to find a link between ourselves and their developer, and in trying to disprove the one fact, namely our URL registration date, that should have put a lid on this at the start. They at no point tried to gain proof behind any of our well documented history of FR – as I will show later in another blog, a simple email and phone call to the current owners of FR would have given them easily-accessible concrete evidence of our start date – why hadn’t they thought of doing this at any time?

I decided it was pointless directly answering any of the points, because these people would then do the usual and twist them to suit the conspiracy they allege to have taken place.

It appears a lot of people had been roped into this investigation – family friends, fraud squad officer, an author, private investigators, senior police officers, a Home Office director, ‘leading’ legal experts, various solicitors to name some of those who are mentioned. The list is incredible. However, I sort of sympathise with them all. If you were blind to the whole story and read their document as I was given it – with lots of information missing and with everything we said or did massaged into the conspiracy – then I can sort of see someone might say “You might be onto something there”.

However, that’s where my sympathies stop.  Did any one of these people, I wonder, just stop and ask the question: is there a chance that we might have been telling the truth all along and there was no conspiracy ?

Back to the document – I am not going to publish it. I would love to. However too many people are mentioned who don’t deserve to get pulled into this. It also has many legal aspects, which I am still looking into and will pursue.

Apart from the legal elements – upon which I may do a separate blog – I have pages on sections of just ludicrous stuff. The Ridiculous as I call it will form a very long blog in a week or 2.

I cant believe anyone has really given the go ahead to release this document – its so full of unbelievable claims that at best make the author look embarrassing and at worst put the author in legal quicksand if published.

Coming Next – The FriendsReunited Conspiracy (?) – Part 6 – The Connection

@spankyhurst

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