guilty as charged. If you actually sue then for the fraudster – as Jim Ellerton of Sefton found to his cost – it invariably ends in tears. Do I like receiving lawyer’s letters? The honest answer is sometimes. Just occasionally you receive one that is so badly put together and has such a dismal case that myself and Pizza Hardman Darren Atwater just laugh, publish the letter and goad whichever crook sent it that little bit more. As a bonus that invariably brings out some whistleblower who provides some more filth to chuck at the crook. Normally I am less delighted when a letter arrives. You have to take it seriously. If we are threatened with an injunction – as has happened twice – we get the foxy legal team in and use the cash our supporters have donated to the fighting fund – to mount a professional defence. Injunctions are a) quick to process and b) fiendishly complex. So far we have won 2 from 2 (Aiden Earley and Julian Hamilton Barns) and my hope is that our track record will deter others from seeking an injunction. They are dam hard to get and horribly expensive when you lose. If it is a libel case we fight ourselves. We have many legal friends who will give free advice. And a libel case will take anything up to two years before it gets to Court. One has plenty of time to reply to papers and that time can be used to dig up more and more dirt on the enemy. The reality is that we are only ever going to be in a libel fight we know we can win and folks who tell one lie or commit one fraud invariably have told many lies and committed many frauds, it is just a matter of digging away. With Jimmyliar Ellerton after nine months we have not even got to the stage of getting disclosure on the documents we needed when we discovered the nuclear grenade which sank him for good, forcing his resignation from Sefton – that is to say the Gary Dillabaugh papers. Anyone dumb enough to sue me for libel should know that I will dig and dig and continue writing about them as the Courts wend
their way through months of inaction. And that digging will bring them down. I am fully aware that some folks do not like the way we go after companies that are in our view frauds or just over-puffed promotes. The use of our own videos (I just loved offering a victory glass of champagne to lawyers at Pinsent Masons after the Sefton win), music videos, cartoons, caption contests, podcasts and bad language does not appeal to everyone. Some would just like sober analysis on its own. But in a long campaign you need as a writer to have some fun to keep your spirits up and if we attract a wider audience that all helps. The bottom line is that you may not like our style but since no other publication in the UK really seems to give a monkey’s wotsit about exposing fraud it is our way or the highway. Last month we were not the only publication to get hold of the devastating QCM report e x p o s i n g Globo as a fraud. The FT which is far more able to take on a legal challenge than we are had it but it just sat on it. We published and forced the suspension of the shares and within three days the company to admit that it was a fraud. Once again the FT and the mainstream press just did not have the balls. As it happens we had already heard from Globo’s lawyers some 17 months previously. So we knew they were litigious. But having verified the QCM report we went for it. Unlike the silly girls blouses at the FT we have cojones. Bloody hell, I am swearing again. A pompous email from Evil Knievil will no doubt be the result. A shareprophets reader will email me and accuse me of being a foul mouthed drunk and say that he is cancelling his (free) subscription. As I noted, not everyone likes our style. But the folks who are most offended and really hate what we do are the fraudsters. And that is, surely, not a bad thing.
UK Investor Magazine — 14 — November 2015