Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby Anondson » February 14th, 2015, 10:50 pm

How are the ring of fakery on LinkedIn any different than fakes on any other social media?

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby Visualizer » February 15th, 2015, 12:44 am

I recall someone linking an old article in a Rochester newspaper about the real "Rick Christensen of Wells, MN". Coincidence?
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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby mulad » February 15th, 2015, 9:28 am

It was some other small-town paper that linked him to Wells -- Albert Lea? I'm having trouble finding it. Someone going by the name Rick Christenson and claiming to be a Minneapolis businessman had made a few appearances in the Rochester Post Bulletin, though:

An opinion piece about the Rochester airport written by Rick Christenson in 2006:

http://www.postbulletin.com/col-rochest ... 58354.html

A blog post from 2006 reporting that he'd heard Frontier Airlines was thinking of expanding to RST (along with a "[email protected]" email address to voice support):

http://postbulletin.typepad.com/kiger/2 ... irlin.html

A PB clipping from 2002 where he'd been pushing a "minihub" idea for the airport (this story seems to have gotten copied to a number of aviation forums online):

http://archives.californiaaviation.org/ ... 23175.html

I know I also saw a blog post on the PB's website where someone had a comment along the lines of, "Have you talked to Rick Christenson about this? He's a great advocate for Rochester!", so the commenting game may have been going on there too.

I don't have a PB subscription or know how to search their archives, but there's probably more lurking. If this turns out to be the same person, then there's a potential that he's scammed someone in Rochester or at least driven some business conversations in directions that didn't necessarily make sense. But is that any different than normal boosterism?

I guess I have a sinking suspicion that this guy could have induced some talk about things like Zip Rail or the Destination Medical Center idea -- but again, those projects have plenty of others around to either hype up or critically analyze anything that would help/hurt them. Governments have to deal with folks bringing in crazy ideas all the time (and sometimes a kook turns out to have a good idea).

Anyway, if there's any news organization that would really be interested in digging into this, it's probably the Post Bulletin.

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby seanrichardryan » February 15th, 2015, 11:34 am

Perhaps Rick's mother willed him some land adjacent to the Rochester airport.
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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby mulad » February 15th, 2015, 11:50 am

I did actually spend a little time poking at Olmsted County's GIS map and property database, but it's such a pain to use that I didn't check more than a couple parcels.

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby MNdible » February 15th, 2015, 12:31 pm

ImageTo Wells! by grant.simons, on Flickr
Nice work on this, Grant!

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby DFPegg » February 15th, 2015, 12:51 pm

Perhaps Rick's mother willed him some land adjacent to the Rochester airport.
That would be an interesting line of investigation

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby PhilmerPhil » February 15th, 2015, 1:26 pm

Yeah, so it goes back to Minnescraper, and RB is a real person who maybe had some peripheral involvement in financing and probably knew some actual people and knew some actual stuff. He's got a lot of big ideas, but not enough money or connections to turn them into anything, and now he's retired and feels out of the loop. He posts on Minnescraper, and he likes the fact that people pay attention to him and he feels important.

Then, on UrbanMSP, some people question what he knows, and he takes umbrage at that.

So, he shifts over to SSC and decides to make up a new character that will prove that he's important and knows what he's talking about and has a lot of money. It's not unreasonable that you'd take a little time (20 random posts isn't much) to establish some baseline credibility for the person that's going to talk you up. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that he originally had plans to post as much as he did, or to create Ryan or the other characters. But he found that he really enjoyed the attention, and he got sucked in.

It would seem that the creation of all of the LinkedIn accounts would be the point in time when he doubled down on building this into a full blown hoax. Not sure how that timing corresponds to the other posts.

The other connection that would be interesting to dig into is the Rochester connection to Gus Chafoulias that Derek M mentioned, and June confirmed. Assuming that Derek M is another sock puppet, this might be the only real, potentially verifiable connection that was noted. It would be interesting to try to find a copy of the Regional Impact study that he apparently did for the Rochester Airport -- a quick google search doesn't reveal anything. You'd like to think that the Rochester newspaper would have done some fact checking before letting a guy have a featured opinion piece.
Alright, MNdible's post from a couple weeks back seems to be really what's going on here. Someone called one of Rick's former associates and was able to confirm the following things:

1. Contrary to June's claims, Rick is in good health.
2. This former associate of Rick's has nothing to do with the urbanist/development world, but confirmed that Rick likes to tell people about "all the guys he works with." This associate was not able to confirm any solid results of Rick's claims, though. This also tells us that this facade he puts on reaches more than just the online development community. He is sharing these rumors/ideas/lies with outsiders. I'm guessing that's why the LinkedIns are still being managed, but posting on SSC has ceased. SSC is a lost cause, but he can still trick others.
3. When asked if Rick was a bit off, the response was a laugh with a comment stating "The last thing you could say about Rick is that he's typical." This may have been a leading question though.

Additionally, we have been given TexasRE's IP address used to create the account. This traces back to Blue Earth, MN, which is close to Wells. The IP addresses retiredbanker's account posted on this site from also all led back to Blue Earth, MN. This nearly confirms that Rick is responsible for TexasRE, and thus DerekM and LukeNNicole, based on the claim at SSC that those accounts are all run by the same person.

I can confidently say that MNdible's theory is exactly what's going on here, with the added twist that it spreads further than the UrbanMSP/SSC communities. The next question for us is why? What are his motivations? Who else is being hoaxed?

Where do we go from here? I'd love to hop on that streets.mn bus to Wells, with a few Pizza Ranch stops.

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby Viktor Vaughn » February 15th, 2015, 3:06 pm

Someone should tip off Ira Glass. Sounds like an episode of This American life.

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby DFPegg » February 15th, 2015, 3:21 pm

Phillmer: great quote and follow-up

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby Minneboy » February 15th, 2015, 4:08 pm

Maybe because someone pissed him off here? But then why didn't this person stay here and hoax.

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby kiliff75 » February 15th, 2015, 7:52 pm

Someone should tip off Ira Glass. Sounds like an episode of This American life.

Haha you mean like this one?? :o

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-a ... n-all-caps

So this episode from This American Life about internet trolls aired on January 23rd, this whole story "broke" on January 25th...what are the odds??

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby PhilmerPhil » February 15th, 2015, 9:47 pm

Image

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby Anondson » February 15th, 2015, 10:32 pm

It does feel like it could be a topic you'd read about in City Pages twenty years ago, one of their exposés about some trouble in some corner of the twin cities.

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby Lancestar2 » February 15th, 2015, 11:08 pm

I think all of this should be forwarded to WCCO or KARE. There is obviously a systemic problem with LinkedIn and fake profiles. I've been a member of Linked In for many years and I can't find any way or reporting "bad" links. This could be a national story.

oh dear lord, people online making fake profiles and pretending to be people they are not? I think your right, national story if not world wide breaking news! :roll:

How many more mods need to post pictures of other people looking at computer screens before we can move on from this? Every 17 days a mod has to Google "guy looking at computer" and copy and paste... oh the humanity!

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby PhilmerPhil » February 15th, 2015, 11:46 pm

hey lance, the above photo is a reference to House of Cards (season 2 in particular). You should watch it. It's all kinda familiar.

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby Nick » February 16th, 2015, 10:37 am

The story here isn't the story itself, but the idea of the story.
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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby mister.shoes » February 16th, 2015, 10:49 am

I think all of this should be forwarded to WCCO or KARE. There is obviously a systemic problem with LinkedIn and fake profiles. I've been a member of Linked In for many years and I can't find any way or reporting "bad" links. This could be a national story.

oh dear lord, people online making fake profiles and pretending to be people they are not? I think your right, national story if not world wide breaking news! :roll:
LinkedIn takes itself very seriously—far more seriously than FB or Twitter or most other online networking sites. They're working really hard to cultivate the impression that the people who are on LinkedIn are who they say they are. Many people treat that site as an online resume, on both sides of the job search relationship. Hundreds (or even dozens) of fake profiles on LinkedIn is a big deal.
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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby MN Fats » February 16th, 2015, 2:58 pm

Every time I jump back into this, I become more and more convinced there's something more sinister at play here than fooling forumers. Here's a profile I dug up in the fake ring of profiles: "Samuel Horowitz," a private investor from NYC. This isn't a character that ever popped up on SSC (as far as I know) but the person took the time to write up a bio and have a number of other profiles endorse him. Think of the time it took to assemble all of these! Hundreds of fake emails, bios, pictures, work histories, recommendations... remarkable. I can't believe it was all just to trick people online.

By the way, this is one of the few so far that I've been able to track down where the photo was lifted from. "Samuel Horowitz" is in reality Bill Barry, a broker out of Oregon.

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Re: Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

Postby IllogicalJake » February 16th, 2015, 3:30 pm

Every time I jump back into this, I become more and more convinced there's something more sinister at play here than fooling forumers. Here's a profile I dug up in the fake ring of profiles: "Samuel Horowitz," a private investor from NYC. This isn't a character that ever popped up on SSC (as far as I know) but the person took the time to write up a bio and have a number of other profiles endorse him. Think of the time it took to assemble all of these! Hundreds of fake emails, bios, pictures, work histories, recommendations... remarkable. I can't believe it was all just to trick people online.

By the way, this is one of the few so far that I've been able to track down where the photo was lifted from. "Samuel Horowitz" is in reality Bill Barry, a broker out of Oregon.
I have to agree with this. This has a vibe of deep mental illness to it that I can't shake as just "LOL, someone's trollin'!"

If this was in fact RB, then that man has some deep issues and he probably needs help. This is not a normal thing for a rational person to do by any stretch.
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