Rumors: A Historical Record of Mystery

[David Greene]

I'm having a hard time reconciling the real world Rick Christenson with retiredbanker though[/i]

Me too, which is why I asked where the name Rick Christenson came from. I cannot find any post on this site where it was revealed. It just showed up one day. I haven't waded through all the past stuff on SSC. Did someone reveal it there?

EDIT: Just saw the reference to the LinkedIn reveal. Can someone provide a link to that post? Who posted it?

[David Greene]

June/Ryan knows what's going on and are really trying to win over people.

That makes it even more suspicious. Well-connected, powerful people don't behave this way. They don't care 2 cents what some random people on a blog think of them. They concentrate on their work. Power people care about other power people.

[TTT]

^^Very true.

IllogicalJake, to the best of your knowledge, has June/Ryan provided any information to these people they are private messaging that would suggest they are indeed real people?

I'd be curious to know if people are being convinced that they are indeed real people.

[nate]

Well connected-powerful people develop contacts with influential media members and civil servants, who are then spoon-fed small nuggets of information carefully crafted to suit a very specific purpose. They do not compose 30,000 word treatises and post them on a message board for anyone to see.

My theory is it started as someone on the fringe of the development community who relayed a few accurate rumors to the message board as a way to feel powerful. Ultimately the rumors snowballed into a ball of lies requiring an elaborate hoax to keep up. Hence the multiple references to "Rick Christenson's" failing health and possibly imminent death. What better way to disentangle from the lies than to kill off the character?

[TTT]

When I go on linkedIn, you're always able to click on a profile (to the best of my knowledge) and get to their page. With all of the people that have endorsed June - I cannot get into their profiles. They don't lead anywhere, and the pictures of the profiles seem as if they're for the most part casual pictures of people, not business profile pictures.

[IllogicalJake]

^^Very true.

IllogicalJake, to the best of your knowledge, has June/Ryan provided any information to these people they are private messaging that would suggest they are indeed real people?

I definitely haven't seen everything they say, but no, their stance is pretty firmly "We don't need to prove anything, you should stop visiting these silly internet boards." They keep emphasizing to ignore the drama.

[Anondson]

Is profile fraud something LinkedIn cares to stop? Can this even be reported to them? It seriously diminishes LinkedIn's utility if it is filled with non-people...

[PhilmerPhil]

So Jake, you're telling us that this #rumorgate scandal extends to people that are not active on either UrbanMSP or SSC? That's interesting.

[PhilmerPhil]

Also, we all like:

[FISHMANPET]

I have a friend who's trying to setup a board like that at work as a joke, I may have to coopt the idea and set one up in my basement.

[IllogicalJake]

Is profile fraud something LinkedIn cares to stop? Can this even be reported to them? It seriously diminishes LinkedIn's utility if it is filled with non-people...

Nah, not really. I can't speak to their policy specifically, but LinkedIn has been filled with tons of fake people/bots for years that are programmed to send follow requests. There's a whole grey-market for buying social media follows, and it's super easy. I had a former boss who swore by them because it made him look more important while working in web strategy.

So Jake, you're telling us that this #rumorgate scandal extends to people that are not active on either UrbanMSP or SSC? That's interesting.

Everyone I know is met through SSC or here, so no. But people no longer active or rarely active, yeah.

Most of my knowledge is from someone who knows a lot more to the story than I could ever answer, but of course doesn't want to take part in the "witchhunt."

[gpete]

I'm having a hard time reconciling the real world Rick Christenson with retiredbanker though[/i]

Me too, which is why I asked where the name Rick Christenson came from. I cannot find any post on this site where it was revealed. It just showed up one day. I haven't waded through all the past stuff on SSC. Did someone reveal it there?

EDIT: Just saw the reference to the LinkedIn reveal. Can someone provide a link to that post? Who posted it?

I don't remember who posted it, but I definitely saw the post, clicked the link and viewed Rick Christenson's LinkedIn profile. Later on (maybe a few days later), I couldn't find the post with the link to Rick's LinkedIn. This was sometime in the past month or two.

[TTT]

It's crazy to think there are people private messaging with TexasRE and Ryan that still believe what they're saying whole heartedly with all of the mounting evidence. I can only speak for myself, but if that were me and the evidence was as clear as it is - I would no doubt request an in-person meeting in a public place.

[IllogicalJake]

It's crazy to think there are people private messaging with TexasRE and Ryan that still believe what they're saying whole heartedly with all of the mounting evidence. I can only speak for myself, but if that were me and the evidence was as clear as it is - I would no doubt request an in-person meeting in a public place.

And they keep promising that! But of course, some external power always makes it a private meeting at the last minute. Assuming that their "ill health" is also a fraud, the theory that it's an easy way to kill off the characters totally makes sense. Gotta have an out.

[MN Fats]

Ok guys, long post, I'm semi-obsessed with this as I mentioned over at SSC. So I did some amateur-detective sleuthing to add to PhilmerPhil's/Hank Schrader's board. I'm posting a lot of quotes, so bear with me. The links to the quotes are below them. If you click on the link, it will bring you to a page dedicated to that post on SSC. Click the link on the top right of that page and it will bring you to the page of the thread where it was posted, so you can see the context.

Anways. You guys mentioning characters got me thinking, one account I thought was weird on SSC but didn't know why was DerekM, an over-the-top enthusiastic poster supposedly from, wouldn't ya know it, Rochester. Looking at the post history it definitely seems like a character someone (i.e. the person behind TexasRE) conceived. Derek posted about a possible Rochester meetup (on a thread that appears to have no actual Rochester residents on it) and Nexis mentioned there may be some on Urbanmsp.

Hey Nexis, good suggestion about local photographers. Maybe the guys at the Post Bulletin would check in every week to update us. Think I'll pass on the Urbanmsp group, I check the site out maybe 1x per week. Little on the nasty side of things. Think a few recent members, the argumentive ones are from there. They only want to stop a good conversation on threads. Start arguments, I came here to learn more than anything. Add what little I can. I know what's all going on in Rochester. Guess I could write more here, too. I'll drink to that.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost. ... stcount=60

The person has a strong dislike of UrbanMSP for reasons similar to Texas RE, et al. They then lobbed this softball question to Texas RE in the dev thread:

Hey Tex, is retiredbanker the same uber rich guy who spent like suitcases of cash-o-la to help Rochester out a few years back. Pre DMC stuff? If so, I'm P-U-M-P-E-D!

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost. ... count=4082

to which Texas had a detailed response:

Yes, he has partnered with the Chafoulias family & has advised them for many yrs. Times Square project that included Nordstrom's, Chafoulias wanted to build but was turned down in favor of another project. Retiredbanker had many venture capital investments in Rochester for decades, but wanted to capitalize on the resurgence of downtown Rochester, he had several developments planned including bringing Famous-Barr department store & another 1, plus a convention hotel, office tower & several residential towers. I negotiated with the possible tenants for the projects. So, quite familiar with it. The airport area was to be developed more, too, but he had a serious fallout with the mayor Ardell Brede & the RAEDI V.P. Gary Smith. So, he cancelled all the projects, which was somewhere between $240-$350 million dollars worth of construction over a 10-yr. time frame.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost. ... count=4090

Almost as if Texas RE had specific info they wanted to post, but needed someone to bring it up. Then out of the blue a couple weeks ago, DerekM mentions that Texas is not the first person to talk about the consortium.

Ya, Grant does bring a lot to this site. You have, too, nasa, I've followed this site long before joining it. You and Avian talked about the consortium long before Tex did. Now, we're hearing more and more about it like Duval was quoted saying!!!!! I'm just a dummy, a novice, can't really contribute much because I'm not into the construction trades, but I'm learning so much more now that I can ask questions on here.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost. ... count=5049

No one was even talking about the consortium at that point. This raises questions about nasa and avian. Now that's what I have on DerekM. I could be totally off, it's just a hunch. Anyways, moving on to two one-time posters that surfaced in the "Twin Cities Drama" thread on SSC.

markpear22 said this "Twin Cities Drama" thread on SSC.

Hi All, Looooong time first time. I just wanted to say that I'm surprised by the surprise regarding TexasRE. The kind of language she was using was way out of place. Having said that, I don't know what that means for a particular "birdly" poster. I've been long-time lurker/admirer of that person's posts and it seems like birdly was one of the early vouchers for Texas. Maybe I'm not remembering correctly.

Either way, I'm bummed that the ride is apparently over. Someone put a ton of energy into this and even convinced as I was that it was a troll, I checked the site daily to catch up on the yarns being spun. If the person responsible is reading this, I enjoyed the show, thanks.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost. ... stcount=85

Who here knows the definition of "Avian"? ...

Then this guy, ryan0290 who registered March of '14, posted the dancing banana thing in the Twin Cities Drama thread. That account has only one other post. It was in October '14 in the dev thread:

I bet retiredbanker is Jim Cambell

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost. ... count=3219

Randomly specific thing for a one-time poster to throw out there in a forum. To which Major Deegan replied:

This guy?

http://tcbmag.com/Honors-and-Events/Min ... R-Campbell

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost. ... count=3220

Who appears to be the man ryan0290 was referring to.

Now what does this all mean? I have my ideas, but wondering if any of you want to chime in on it. I'd like to hear what you think.

[PhilmerPhil]

Emergency Happy Hour to discuss #rumorgate? We can extend our invitation to SSCers! (Probably wouldn't hurt to get some face time in with them anyways.)

[phop]

Oh, and this editorial written by Rick Christenson on the same subject: http://www.postbulletin.com/col-rochest ... 58354.html

Does anyone with familiarity of the hoax accounts notice any similarities here with regards to style? There are some definite idiosyncrasies in his writing. I have no exposure to the other board so I'll refrain from making any judgements.

I'm not a frequent poster, but I've also been kind of captivated by this.

[IllogicalJake]

Nobody here happens to be good friends with Jacob Frey, right? I mean they've "met" with him a few times now...

[xandrex]

Strange they'd pick Frey. He's a guy who's really, really willing to talk development. He's not mum about anything. Even if he wasn't, it's likely that his personal calendar (and definitely all email exchanges) are matters of public record. So...

[TTT]

That is a fantastic assesment MN Fats. I have been on SSC since April of last year (with a different screen name), but have not posted over there yet. I don't have a good reason why, maybe because I was at the time too enthralled by what was being said by TexasRE all of the time. Maybe I should have posted something, anything, because at this point I may seem suspicious if I do so at SSC...!

At any rate, I couldn't agree more with what you are saying about this DerekM person. Talk about over the top with excitement and dancing bananas.

What is also funny, is that he no longer posts over there... AND his picture is much like the bizarre photos that these LinkedIn profiles have as well.