From an old advert on Facebook, dating from 2008
Investment Opportunity – up to 2000% return in the next 4 years
On September 7, 2007, Hurricane Felix made landfall on the North Atlantic region of Nicaragua. The hurricane’s devastating winds and rain leveled the old-growth tropical forest on a gigantic scale.
Because of the extensive damage, the Nicaraguan government issued emergency contracts for the Timber Recovery Project to private sector companies such as Valcor S.A., which was chosen to head the recovery efforts within a large segment of the disaster area. Valcor is uniquely suited to this task since they own one of the largest sawmill and lumber processing companies in Nicaragua and because they have timber and mining concession agreements in place with all of the municipalities involved, approved by the government.
…Please be aware that there are only a limited number of shares available at the class A level (25% of profits) as we have acquired several large investment companies into the project, totaling $40 million at this point. We have also sold approximately $1 million in individual shares.
Please visit our hurricane relief website at http://www.hurricanefelixhelp.com/photos.html
Dan Chambers
Premier Investment
www.valcorinvestment.com
Chambers made the posting to Facebook in his own name, and Costa Rican contact details are given. Although the advert promises returns over “the next 4 years”, the company has since disappeared and the links are dead.
So, did anyone manage to get rich quick from the scheme? Details are scarce, although some googling suggests not. And according to a news report in El Nuevo Diario dating from August 2010, the director of Valcor – a certain Val Pacheco – appears to have got into some legal difficulties around accusations of money laundering (the report mentions “Velcor”, but other sites show this is a misspelling of “Valcor”).
Of course, none of this is Chambers’ fault – he was just a manager – but I’d have been embarrassed to have been involved in any capacity. Perhaps Chambers had better luck the following summer, when he was advertising as a gold bullion seller on Tradekey.
This is of some interest to me; back in 2009 I received a couple of goading comments from Costa Rica from someone using the name “Daniela Chambers”. Both appeared on posts about Dominic Wightman (who sometimes uses the name “Dominic Whiteman”). In the first post, I explained Wightman’s attempts to manipulate Tim Ireland and me into attacking a person against whom he has a grudge. Here was “Daniela”‘s response:
It looks like you have been played, Richard. I wonder what Whiteman found out about you when he was collaborating with you?
The second post concerned a list of abusive questions that had been sent to Tim Ireland, and which had a Costa Rican phone number appended. I showed how the questions looked very similar to an essay written by Wightman, which Wightman had posted to his own site after Tim had received the questions but before Tim had written about them on his blog. “Daniela” had a theory:
The similarities would be explained by Ireland dropping a key stroke logger onto Wightman’s computer at some point when they were communicating and grabbing a sneak copy of the article, which was presumably sent to Wightman first. Or maybe it is those cheerleaders again messing with your leftie minds ; )
“Daniela” also gave an email address, which was very similar to Dan Chambers’ personal email address (both use only the same part of the surname, followed by the same two initials). A look at Dan Chambers’ Facebook contacts, meanwhile, lists Wightman; Wightman was also advertising on Tradekey as a bullion trader around the same time as Chambers (this was not long after Wightman had declared bankruptcy).
I’ve emailed Dan Chambers to ask if he was “Daniela”, but I have received no reply. Alternative explanations are (a) someone else created the “Daniela Chambers” identity, using Dan Chambers as a model; or (b) there is really a “Daniela Chambers” living in Costa Rica, with a similar email address to that of Dan Chambers, and an independent association with Wightman.
UPDATE: Adrian Morgan has left a comment below, with further information about Wightman’s links to Chambers. Adrian used to be associated with Wightman’s website, but he split from Wightman when he discovered that Wightman was dishonest. Adrian and I probably disagree on some matters of politics, but we both agree that one should either argue openly or agree to disagree. The idea of using sockpuppets or manipulating the internet to disseminate false information would be repellent – both as a matter of ethics and as a matter of personal dignity.
UPDATE 2: Chambers’ involvement with Wightman is also discussed in this new post by Tim Ireland. He quotes an email which Wightman sent to Adrian in September 2009, which includes the following:
I am going to do the following:
…6. Tim Ireland take-down (Sunday – a day before he releases a vicious take-down on me) Author: Dan Chambers, a pal…
Wightman soon after published an attack on Tim, which for some reason took the form of Wightman being interviewed by a fictitious lawyer from Venezuela named Olivia James. As Adrian notes below, the name “oliviaj772” was also used to post videos of Wightman to Youtube; the YouTube channel gives Costa Rica as the location.
Wightman has also responded to the above on his own website:
The little known blogger Richard Bartholomew (Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion) has been at it again – trying to stir up trouble. This time Bartholomew smears a friend of mine who lives in Costa Rica. The bemused friend happened to chat with me over the weekend and asked me who this Bartholomew was. I had to inform him that Bartholomew is a deceitful little left wing blogger who makes John Merrick seem kissable; that Bartholomew is my electronic stalker’s lackey and that he writes a blog about religious nuts but that it is fatally flawed as he is too scared to mention Islamists. “Ah,” replied my friend and so we continued chatting about Tamarindo surf.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Hi Richard
It was through this Dan Chambers character’s involvement in a sockpuppeting scheme that I realised I had been duped for a long time by Dominic Wightman, which is why I sent the email to you which is referred to in the posting listed in this article above, which was sent on the morning of Monday, September 14, 2009:
http://barthsnotes.com/2009/09/14/dominic-wightman-the-story-of-an-encounter/
In that comment you quoted me as stating:
“I had nothing to do with the Tim Ireland article/attack, which I repudiate unreservedly. I do not know Tim Ireland and I have no cause to feel animosity towards him. In future I will not be asssociated with Westminster Journal while it is used as a vehicle for character attack and bile.”
What I had actually stated was:
“In future I will not be asssociated with Westminster Journal while it is used as a vehicle for character attack, sock-puppetry and bile. ”
I had cc’ed Dominic Whiteman/Wightman on the message I sent to Richard Bartholomew, to inform him of what I was doing.
It was only because I had a frantic communication from Mr Whiteman/Wightman, asking if the term “sock-puppetry” could be removed, that I requested that Richard should remove the term from his published message. Richad Bartholomew graciously obliged.
Why should this have happened? Let us wind the clock back a few days earlier, to the Saturday and Sunday of Sept 12 and 13, 2009.
W. had asked me to remove the name of a Tory from the “about page” of his Westminster Journal website, He could not contact Arnold, the Thai-based individual who added articles. This partiucular Tory did not want to be named in connection with Westminster Journal (one now wonders: “Why?”).
I was given the FTP address and password of the WJ site. At present, I will not repeat what I discovered there, apart from the fact it confirmed certain “sock-puppet” names had folders there. The site was written in Joomla which is hard to decode, and I had already been asked tby W. to do some graphics to turn some audio recordings (which W. had made) into videos that could be loaded into YouTube.
My whole weekend was hijacked by W.’s demands, when I had far more important real issues to deal with. When I was having difficulty with locating the webpage page which needed to be changed, W. brought me into contact with Dan Chambers via Skype. Before then – I had only heard of Dan Chambers and had not been in direct communication.
In a three-way text conversation, we discussed where the page might be located. I turned three of the audio recordings into videos. I warned W. that one of these recordings, which he called Tittle and Tattle, was malicious and nasty, referring to Tim Ireland. I had also advised him that another one – entitled “Strathclyde Anoraks” was unwise to place online, as it contained malicious slurs against David Miller at Strathclyde University, who had published an article that had exposed some of his activities.
W. had earlier said he was going to publish a malicious “psychiatric evaluation” of Tim Ireland, which he claimed would be written by a “psychiatrist” friend of his, called Dan Chambers. I had told W. that if any psychiatrist did such a “diagnosis from afar” I would make it my mission to expose the psychiatrist and have him drummed out of business.
On that weekend in Sept. 2009 I told W. that I would not do a video of the “Tittle and Tattle” audio because the content was objectionable and vicious (not to mention larded with Billy Bunterish self-aggrandizing bilge). The audio also included vicious attacks upon someone else whom W. had tried to get me to assist in a “hatchet-attack” when he had first contacted me (I had refused).
I sent the other videos to W., and Dan Chambers, who then loaded them into YouTube.
It was curious to see that when Dan Chambers loaded the other videos on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjjmKddCiuI
he used the name oliviaj772.
http://www.youtube.com/user/oliviaj772
After having seen the name Olivia James before, I was outraged on Monday morning, September 14, 2009, to see that a new article had been posted onto Westminster Journal.
http://westminsterjournal.com/content/view/230/1/
The piece was entitled: “Tim Ireland SIlenced by Tory” and the author was:
Olivia James.
Olivia James, the non-existent sock puppet lawyer who supposedly lives in Caracas Venezuela, but probably only inhabits some strange hinterland of W.’s imagination.
I had previously warned W. that his malicious vendetta against Tim Ireland was wrong and I would have no part of it, and yet he had hijacked a whole chunk of my time to deal with assisting him, when he was still going to use sock-puppets (and at least one friend – Dan Chambers – who was prepared to dress up as a sock puppet) and use these imaginary characters to slur and attack Tim Ireland.
I did not know TIm Ireland, I did not share his political outlook, but at no stage could I see that he had done ANYTHING wrong. I was disgusted that I had been roped in to help W when he was trying to use me to assist in the attack against an innocent man.
So I wrote an email to W, and to you, to make it plain that I would not be part of such nasty and underhanded tactics.
Interesting that W. was so desperate to remove mention of “sock-puppetry.”
I soon stopped communicating with W., when he continued to write vicious smear pieces against Tim Ireland on his blog.
And worse – accusing Tim of using sock-puppets, when Wightman himself was employing sock-puppets. A severe case of projection.
I held me peace, but it seems W. is unable to contain his malice and spite, and tries to get idiots to assist him in his orgies of vitriol.
I was one of those idiots, and that weekend in September 2009 was a revelation – mu Damascene moment when the scales fell from my eyes and I saw what he was up to.
Dan Chambers exists – but he was allowed to drag up as Olivia, it seems, when it suited W.
There is much more information I could share, but for the moment, I hope that this should serve as a reminder to Dominic Wightman that while he pretends to be a man of integrity, and pretends that Tim Ireland is someone “bad” that he exposes himself for the malicious and dishonest piece of work he is.
I would hope that W. will now stop all of his attacks against Tim Ireland and Richard Bartholomew, and to rein in his motley crew of sock-puppets and psychopaths.
I have dug through all of my correspondence and shared those details with his victims, and they have permission to publish those details if these malicious attacks do not stop.
It is time to stop whining and lecturing others about their perceived lack of integrity, Mr. Wightman, and take a dose of your own medicine. I suspect you would not know integrity if it crawled into your underwear and gave you a dose of herpes.
You (and your former VIGIL patner-in-bullcrap Glen Jenvey) are a disgrace to the anti-jihad movement, and though you may think you are engaged in some grand “jape” a la Biggles, or perhaps the Famous Five, your malice, personal viciousness and blatant dishonesty are the main motivating factors in your life.
You can threaten me, bring on some sock-puppets against me, or get some loser to threaten me under an alias.
But remember – I have enough evidence to bury your reputation permanently, and evidence against some of your co-conspirators.
Time to stop your vicious personal attacks, and to grow up. You have thrown enough stones, while you live in a glass house. You are also a disgrace to the Tory party (if such a thing is possible).
And lastly, I must voice some regret. I should have come clean and exposed all that I knew about the use of sock-puppets by Dominic Wightman when I could see it was having a negative effect upon Tim Ireland and – most importantly, his family. His wife and kids should never have been threatened or intimidated.
I sat back, hoping that Wightman (and his “friends”) would give up his malicious vendetta against TIm Ireland, or at least provide ONE scrap of evidence to prove that TIm Ireland deserved ANY opprobrium from any quarter.
It took some time to discover to what extent I had been used, played, lied to, and deliberately misled by Mr. Wightman. It was only with hindsight that the pieces fitted together. But that is no excuse.
That weekend of September 12-14, 2009, was when I finally woke up.
But I should have acted sooner. And for that I apologise to Tim Ireland, and also to Richard Bartholomew, who was also on the receiving end of similar attacks.
Sometimes, by doing nothing, one can be as bad as the person who commmits an offence against someone else.
But it is time to end this nonsense vendetta now.
Adrian,
There is a lot to say about what you reveal here, but for now I must restrict comment to the following observations:
1. You have a lot less to apologise about than most people who have come into contact with Mr Wightman. Even when you were taken in by his lies, your adherence to ethics protected you/others.
2. Your position sets a fine example for people I won’t name who are in possession of the facts but still refuse to act responsibly, out of malice or possibly from fear of admitting that they acted with decidedly poor adherence to ethics.
Actually, bugger it, I will name them:
MPs Nadine Dorries, Patrick Mercer and Anne Milton, plus the wannabe-MP Iain Dale and the assorted hangers-on/activists who share their overlapping interests in a certain brand of Conservatism that ranks smearing opponents while feigning victim status as the cleverest thing you can do when you are exposed as a corrupt liar.
I have just re-read this thread, and my response, and noticed that I forgot to thank you in a very loud voice…
THANK YOU!
… and point out that I was one of those idiots myself. His lies are very effective when they work, but they are often dangerous and once exposed, the immediate response is revulsion in most people.
(Also some confusion. I have met many dishonest people and sock puppeteers in my time, I have even met a fantasist or two, but none of the worst of these people would engage more than once (i.e. perhaps in haste or anger) in the kind of deceits Wightman has made a habit of. Even if you put morals aside, it’s extremely high risk. FFS, the man tells lies on behalf of specific police officers.)
It is unethical (and a violation of actual property law) for an agent to misrepresent the pricing
of a property.