His Facebook page is full of kool aid drinkers. It’s unreal how many people have bought into this gimmick.
Embarrassingly, I was one of them…I feel pretty stupid now.
He is the Bernie Madoff of endurance sports. First off, if you “donate” you are not giving directly to Jamie Oliver’s foundation. There is no proof that he is going to forward funds or how much he will forward - there is no public disclosure from the clown. I am sure he is breaking some laws along the way in states that require charities to register to solicit funds. The IRS should dig deep on this guy. For those of you who believe, I say donate $500 or $1,000 and show my your donor acknowledgement letter from a registered 501c3 or from Jamie Olivers’ foundation directly,
#stealingyour$in50/states
His Facebook page is full of kool aid drinkers. It’s unreal how many people have bought into this gimmick.
For a supposedly unemployed scrub, he’s pretty good at riling up the natives on ST.
His Facebook page is full of kool aid drinkers. It’s unreal how many people have bought into this gimmick.
Yeah it’s pretty sad. After seeing quotes like the two I posted earlier, I gave up on people following the group. He’s going to get a lot of money from stupid people, but what can you do?
I really have no idea how but i’d love to take this guy down… does anyone have any idea how to go about doing that?
I am sure the IRS or Local tax authorities would be a start since he is selling stuff and collecting donations. He is stealing money. But people are lemmings and stupid, blinded by the inspiration. I may visit him tomorrow in GA and put the screws to his camp.
Just went through about a weeks worth of posts, and not one plug for the Jamie Oliver Foundation…NOT 1
Hashtags for everything else, but nothing about Jamie Oliver.
Man, I’m an idiot
I really have no idea how but i’d love to take this guy down… does anyone have any idea how to go about doing that?
Might want to start with substantive evidence.
I am sure the IRS or Local tax authorities would be a start since he is selling stuff and collecting donations. He is stealing money. But people are lemmings and stupid, blinded by the inspiration. I may visit him tomorrow in GA and put the screws to his camp.
rofl, are you going to challenge him to a match in the octagon?
Might want to start with substantive evidence.
That’s a great idea… i’m trying to find some substantive evidence that his charity is legit… so far i’ve come up with nothing… perhaps you have some proof?
Might want to start with substantive evidence.
That’s a great idea… i’m trying to find some substantive evidence that his charity is legit… so far i’ve come up with nothing… perhaps you have some proof?
The burden of proof is with the affirmative claims of fraud, sorry. On the other hand, you may want to figure out how to expose charities that are much larger with abysmal shares of spending on actual charity. 
So I haven’t been following this too closely, but people say he is from Utah??? I thought he was from Calgary, why would some one from Utah have a tattoo of a Canadian flag (Socialist country on his leg? Also a few pics of him wearing a stampede (canadian) cowboy hat.
Maurice
of course… there are bigger fraudulent charities out there so why worry about this con artist… excellent argument
of course… there are bigger fraudulent charities out there so why worry about this con artist… excellent argument
Yes, if you cared about actual fraud, instead of just wanting to feed your irrational desire to get one over this guy.
of course… there are bigger fraudulent charities out there so why worry about this con artist… excellent argument
Yes, if you cared about actual fraud, instead of just wanting to feed your irrational desire to get one over this guy.
Exactly! Why foil a guy who’s inspiring so many. I heard he was going to use these for the bike tomorrow:
http://www.amazon.com/Isokinetics-Inc-Brand-Pedal-Exerciser/dp/B000KDWA82
of course… there are bigger fraudulent charities out there so why worry about this con artist… excellent argument
Yes, if you cared about actual fraud, instead of just wanting to feed your irrational desire to get one over this guy.
Exactly! Why foil a guy who’s inspiring so many. I heard he was going to use these for the bike tomorrow:
http://www.amazon.com/Isokinetics-Inc-Brand-Pedal-Exerciser/dp/B000KDWA82
Yeah, definitely need to get your personal vendetta and associated insecurity onto your daily schedule.
Just went through about a weeks worth of posts, and not one plug for the Jamie Oliver Foundation…NOT 1
Hashtags for everything else, but nothing about Jamie Oliver.
Man, I’m an idiot
Wouldn’t that be evidence of him being a fairly terrible conman? If I had set up a website and athletic endeavour with the purpose of misdirecting charitable funds (especially one that required me to feed and truck 5-6 other people around the country), I’d be plugging my fake charity link like it was my actual job. Most of the links that I have seen are of the “fight obesity!” variety, rather than direct links to his ironcowboy fund*. This whole thing would be a abysmal return on capital, since it’s probably costing at least $10k in food, gas, and opportunity costs and having done some fundraising there’s no way it’s raising that much.
*Also, if I were trying to misdirect charitable donations, I certainly wouldn’t have a page saying “ironcowboy fund” on the actual donation page. I’d have made it look much more like Jamie Oliver’s. Or go through something like paypal directly from his jamie-oliver-decorated page.
Basically, if he’s trying to con people, he’s doing a completely awful job. It would be very easy to skip parts of each event, to not post photos of him on an elliptical, etc, rather than actually completing each thing. Hell, they could probably have pre-cached photos of him riding/running/swimming and just rolled them out as they went from state to state. Set off on the run, hide in an alleyway for a couple hours, then triumphantly return.
But anyway, keep rolling with the torches and pitchforks and chase those discrepancies. They’re certainly there, but I’d say they’re not any more severe than the other seat-of-their-pants logistical or social-media hiccups the whole project has had.
this is hilarious… he hasn’t plugged the charity he’s supposed to be supporting once in the past 3 weeks… but your claim that he’s legit is that if he isn’t legit then he’s an awful conman??? haha epic
this is hilarious… he hasn’t plugged the charity he’s supposed to be supporting once in the past 3 weeks… but your claim that he’s legit is that if he isn’t legit then he’s an awful conman??? haha epic
He’s definitely plugged it in 3 weeks (update: or not, or they’ve wiped those plugs out), and I’m not saying he’s for-sure legit. I’m saying given these possibilities:
- He’s running a long, painful con.
- This operation is quite a bit amateur-hour and hasn’t thought a lot of things fully through.
Option seems much more likely to me.
Having the donation page look kinda sketchy and loudly-labelled as going to him? Dumb if you’re a conman, probable if you’re amateur-hour.
Openly using an elliptical rather than posting a fake picture of him on a treadmill? Dumb if you’re a conman (massive loss of credibility), probable if you’re amateur-hour.
Failing to post about your fake charity? REALLY dumb if you’re a conman, dumb but more likely if you’re amateur-hour. If the whole goal is to drive donations whether for good or fraud, you gotta drive those donations.
Taking a quick peek at his FB page back to June 24, I’m counting 3-4 mentions of fighting obesity, 0 mentions of Jamie Oliver (though I vividly remember seeing one a couple days ago, so I wonder if they got a “hey shut up” from JO), 1 plug for his own /donate page, and 1 plug for someone else’s charity page.
The impression I get of the whole operation is that a couple friends got together and had this conversation:
“Hey, let’s see if we can do this thing!”
“Sure! While we’re at it, let’s kinda-sorta try and raise money for a charity. I’ll set up a donation page so people can give us money”
“Should we think about rules, or what ultra-IM-people might think, or about anything else?”
“Nah, it’ll work itself out. Let’s roll!”
I really have no idea how but i’d love to take this guy down… does anyone have any idea how to go about doing that?
A good place to start would be the initial Africa charity, going back three or four years ago. The name of the charity was “Quiet Way”. Supposedly it raised funds to build dams in Africa for children in need of water. Find out if it is a legitimate non-profit, how much money it took in, and how much it spent in Africa. There should be publicly available records. Apparently at some point he switched the charity from Africa to obesity. I am not sure how the Jamie Oliver fits into this.
It could be that he achieved a high enough public profile after the initial record attempts that sponsors now cover most of his expenses, esentially allowing him to go legit.
At some point, someone at Jamie Oliver Foundation will find out that he’s made an image of their web page, and pasted on a donate button that directs to the Iron Cowboy fund. There is no way that a legitimate charity like Jamie Oliver would approve of this. The only rational explanation is that they don’t know, yet.
I predict the Iron Cowboy gets a call from Jamie Oliver Foundation’s lawyers. Iron Cowboy will then decide it is most prudent to develop an injury, and be forced to quit the 50/50/50.
Early next week would be my guess.