Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
I need to clarify something here.
I keep seeing people blame Brandon for this, and that's really bothering me.
Brandon is not deserving of any blame in this situation.
Some are asking, "Why didn't Brandon alert Druff to this situation a long time ago?"
He actually did. So did Chinamaniac.
However, the information they had back then was FAR less than what we have today.
Right when PROJEKT:SEP started (December 8), both China and Brandon explained their concerns to me.
Their concerns at the time involved the following factors:
1) Jasep's cell phone number seemed to be rapidly changing, and his reasoning behind it (he broke his iPhone) did not seem to make sense.
2) Jasep gave up his own place and claimed he moved in with his girlfriend.
3) Jasep was being evasive regarding transferring control of VPR's finances to Chinamaiac.
We spoke about this on the phone, and concluded that Jasep was likely broke. We felt that he had to give up his place because he could no longer afford it, and maybe even sold his iPhone and got some cheapo phone in order to save money.
However, he had already admitted to basically being broke in both the original post of this thread, as well as his own radio show. PROJEKT:SEP seemed to be a last-ditch attempt at building a bankroll, basically starting from nothing. We thought all of the investors understood that, so we didn't see the value of humiliating Jasep with revealing the fact that he was so broke that he had to give up his place and his phone. And again, we didn't have proof of this. Jasep claimed that his phone was simply in the process of being replaced, and that he moved in with his girlfriend because their relationship had progressed to more serious. If we had publicly accused him of being flat broke, he could have easily made excuses that we wouldn't have been able to disprove, and we would have looked like assholes.
Regarding VPR, again that was a red flag, but they did not have any proof that he had done anything wrong. Until it became VERY clear that he was intentionally dodging visibility into the finances, Brandon and China would have looked like assholes accusing him of anything. Indeed, he did most of the work on VPR, so it wasn't outrageous to believe he would have taken control of the finances, even if that wasn't the original agreement.
We all agreed that we simply did not have enough evidence to make such grave accusations against him, and that quietly investigating it behind the scenes was the better play. All of the "gotcha" evidence came to light very recently. That's what led us to come forward with what we knew.
Furthermore, it appeared that the money was already collected. If it was a scam, the money was likely gone. If it was not a scam, it would still be there. There didn't seem to be much in between. We did not know at the time about the "double selling", which didn't seem possible because everyone knew who had bought pieces (or so we thought). This also contributed to our decision to keep quiet until we had conclusive evidence that we could feel comfortable presenting. Remember, these were serious allegations that would likely damage his name forever, so we didn't want to take public accusations lightly.
So please do not blame Brandon for this. It was a joint decision to investigate quietly and wait until we really had the proper amount of evidence to come forward and accuse him of being a scammer.
At the time PROJEKT:SEP started, we did NOT know any of the following:
- That Jasep had an identity theft conviction where the mother of his daughter was the victim
- That there was any reason to believe he had ripped off the 22Q foundation
- That he had double-sold any shares
- That the VPR server was $4.95/month and being reported as $120/month
- That he he was secretly trying to sell VPR behind the scenes
- That he would react with such panic when someone would attempt to come watch him play
- That his prior "restaurant ownership" appears to be simply working at his brother's restaurnts
- That he had been surviving off of borrowing from friends like Tim Byrd for quite some time
These are all things that came out recently.
In hindsight, it is easy to say, "You should have said something earlier" (knowing now that he was guilty), but that decision was much tougher when it was just a moderate suspicion based on very circumstantial evidence.
Finally, what about Brandon's $600? Should he have mentioned that it was simply passing a debt into shares? Perhaps, but this is the sort of thing you only think about after-the-fact. I guarantee that Brandon was not trying to cover anything up or freeroll off of other people's cash. He just figured it was an automatic that, if Jasep transfers debt into BAP shares, Brandon can take credit for having $600 in BAP shares. Brandon never vouched for this BAP or encouraged people to invest in it. His investment in it should not automatically be considered an endorsement. Furthermore, having $4400 in cash and $5000 in cash is basically the same thing in a BAP like this. It's not like it made a major difference in the amount of money he had to play with. Also, since its likely he barely played at all, but rather stole all of the money, this likely had zero impact on the final result.
I hope that the blame against people other than Jasep can end, and we can move on trying to track him down and force him to deal with this situation.