The Defamatory Posts And Their Poster
A quick Google search suggests that Michael Gale is, “is a professional con-artist, consistently making false representations” and “dishonest, a pathological liar and sociopath” who is “hiding from US, European and Australian authorities who are now desperate to get their hands on him” These claims are accompanied by long lists of supposedly fraudulent companies and other tidbits to impress the reader.
The statements are completely and absolutely false. Not only that, but it’s all the work of just one online troll, I’ll call him The Poster, a former contractor who failed to deliver on his contract when I was the CEO of Gramercy. In fact, we paid him and his associates over $100,000, and what we got for our money was a fraud on Gramercy which cost its shareholders multiple millions of dollars.
To cover his tracks and deflect attention from himself, The Poster created a set of fictitious persona and online postings about me, my wife, the company and even his own colleagues, blaming the company’s demise on made-up fraud by me rather than his own wrongdoing. And now, he thinks we should have been paid more. He even sued Gramercy, and wanted my wife and I to pay him $1,000,000. The case was dismissed.
There is a Michael Bruce Gale of Colorado who was convicted of fraud and money laundering so what the Poster did was find references on various sites to this person and then posted my photo or links to me so as to make it appear that we are one and the same person. Except I have never been charged with anything in my life let alone convicted.
Typically, the Poster anonymously recites a long list of my supposed misdeeds at various companies. Some of these companies are entirely made up by The Poster, but some are companies that I work with now or have worked for in the past such as Gramercy, MBD, Tharawat and Wasaia. This smattering of “real” information with its one verifiable fact – that I have worked someplace – is designed to give an aura of credibility to the rest of his claims. The rest of those claims, are unverifiable because they are untrue. But in today’s political atmosphere of “fake news” that is enough, for some people, to draw the wrong conclusion.
To give an example, the Poster correctly points out that MBD was closed. However, he fails to mention that it closed after the death of its controlling beneficial shareholder and funder, The Hon. Angad Paul (even though The Poster gleefully announced the death to all and boasted how I would be next.) He also notes that the Gramercy business failed, but never explains that it failed because he and his associates had brought several phony oil deals to Gramercy, all of which turned out to be fraudulent, costing Gramercy and its investors millions. In fact, I recently cooperated in an investigation into one of the people heading one of the companies associated with several of these deals. She recently pled guilty to wire fraud in Colorado, a fact that I could not discuss until last month when the conviction was announced. See https://www.justice.gov/usao-co/pr/littleton-woman-pleads-guilty-oil-investment-scheme . Unfortunately most of the other criminals remain free in Russia and China. The Poster has suffered no consequences . . . yet.
Each time an “anonymous” posting is made, the Poster emails the post to a select list of former and current shareholders, clients, friends and business partners of mine using his real name. He never misses a single “anonymous” post, no matter where it appears or how obscure. How is this possible? Clearly because he made all the posts. It is evident from the tone of the posts and the consistency of the spelling and grammar mistakes that they were all written by the same person: the Poster himself. Of course, the Poster uses a variety of handles and fake names.
One, “Peter Lundgren”, is supposed to be a German banker from Yukon, Germany. If you took the time to search, you would find no Peter Lundgren in any kind of banking field in Germany or Switzerland and in fact I can only find two worldwide, one at Sun Trust Bank in Florida and one working for Jyske Bank in Denmark. There isn’t even a place called Yukon, Germany. At least one of Peter Lundgren’s posts was made from an IP address belonging to a cell phone in California, where the Poster lives! This Peter claimed in a posting that he came to dinner with me in Zurich along with a friend who was going to invest in MBD but was clever enough to spot I was a phony and warn his friend off. Apart from the fact that MBD never took on outside investors no such dinner ever happened and I have never met anyone by that name. Nor have any of my colleagues. Then in a later post he claimed to have lost $2mm investing with me, presumably because he later on decided not to take the clever advice he gave his friend. Still later The Poster quoted him in an email saying that myself and an Arab investor caused him millions of losses on a banking transaction. So not only is he a fake persona for the Poster, he can’t even keep his story of misfortune straight!
Another persona, Gordon Archer, has been created to pose as an investor who had lost money. This person is not real, either. The same goes for all the anonymous “people” who have supposedly been harmed by me, and their colorful but made up stories. Never has a flesh and blood person said such things, in his or her real name. What’s more, a closer look reveals that these anonymous posts are split between a couple of inter-related complaint sites that encourage defamatory posting to drive their ad-driven business models. A quick search will reveal that anyone can post anything without any verification and that these sites then offer to help “clarify” or “mediate” what was posted – for a large fee.
About Michael Gale
Some people who Google me will look at the headlines only and not seek to dig deeper and find the truth. Indeed, several have done exactly this.
If you start searching on my true career and press articles and who I really am you get a different picture. See http://bit.ly/1WHKaGz and www.linkedin.com/in/michaeljgale/ You could search publicly available databases and find I have never been bankrupted, charged much less convicted of a crime or in fact ever mentioned in any credible source as a wrongdoer. You would also find I hold office in a regulated financial entity and have been carefully vetted by official regulators.
You would certainly find out that I am an entrepreneur and have been all my life. You would see I have had my fair share of great wins and plenty of big losses. There are people out there who dislike me, because my endeavors sometimes fail, people who invested in those endeavors have lost their money and workers have lost their jobs. I don’t apologize for that, and entrepreneurship is not for everyone. Any investor who has invested in companies I have been associated with knew the risks involved in creating new businesses from scratch. In fact, many of those people are still backing me today. But none of them have started an online harassment campaign against my children or posted information about my family, both immediate and extended, obtained through a dummy FaceBook profile. Who would go to such lengths? Only someone with nothing better to do.
Next Steps
Thank you for reading this far. Please take the time to decide for yourself. Search further. One company even ordered a Kroll report to satisfy its board and investors. I have a long list of legitimate business references spanning the almost 40 years of my career. Just email me at michael@michaelgale.com and I can supply all you might need to be re-assured. I have nothing to hide. And if you are yourself a victim of trolling do reach out as well! Together we can fight such people.
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