Here's Marianne's twitter page...
http://twitter.com/sadeydog
Reading it through she does seem to have a need for money. One of her tweets talks about having her electricity turned off. She lists her occupation as agricultural and immigration specialist.
I'd probably keep in mind that there's a possibility she's somewhat innocent. There's no guarantee she knows who Leonard Crow Dog is and that she might be in contact with someone claiming to be him and needing money. From her tweets it seems as if her son is dealing with addiction and I can imagine another scenario where he would use her e-mail to attempt to collect money (addiction causes the ultimate crazy types of behavior). Don't know anything for sure, that's just my imagination running a little, but it all gets figured out by having authorities contact her first and letting her know that her name is all over a fraudulent request for funds in someone else's name and finding out what the whole deal behind it is.
Superdog
superdog ..
your right .. there are many possibilities as the whys and hows of this letter .. .. indeed the letter raised huge red flags for me and i figured that it was a scam .. on the other hand i did stop and think, why would a scam artist place their full name, address and two phone numbers in this letter .. ..
i do believe that we all should check things out as thoroughly as possible .. checking things out was the reason i posted the letter in here .. to see if anyone else had any information about the contents etc .. but that was not the only step i have taken .. in addition to talking to many others in an effort to find out more, i have repeatedly called the two numbers listed for "marianne" .. others that i have been in contact with have also called repeatedly .. the first number takes you directly to a voice mail/answering machine, where messages have been left (politely) asking for a return call .. the second number gives us a message saying that the person is not taking phone calls at this time .. .. i will, of course, let this forum know if any of my calls are returned and i am able to find out "the story" on this letter ..
personally, i feel that anyone with any insights at all should have seen that this letter was at the very least suspect and most likely a scam .. i feel, like you, that this "marianne" could very well be innocent and was used in some way or another .. if i am placing blame/responsibility on anyone, it is on the original people who sent the letter out on the web without first checking out it's validity .. as i said in my post, this sort of thing happens far too often and innocent people do send their money in .. one of my concerns with this letter was where i received it from .. a friend in germany, who believed it to be true, based on who it originated with, an official LPDOC support group ..
and more importantly, the letter was endorsed by billie fidlin, who is an active and current member of the official LPDOC .. acting in an official capacity for LP these people should know better, they should know to check things out as everything that they do can, and does, reflect back onto LP ..if they endorse a scam, how does that look for LP??? .. .. this letter made its way quite quickly to germany and most likely to other european countries, where interest in the ndn people is huge .. the people who support the causes of the ndn people in europe do not have the means that we do to check things out, and most often rely on the credibility of the sender to ascertain whether it is legit or not .. which is exactly what happened in this case, people relying on the credibility of LPDOC and their endorsement .. one has to now wonder how much money this scam has generated form innocent people merely wishing to help .. ..
i have always found it telling that the letters asking for money are quite long and quickly make the rounds .. and yet the retractions are very short, without much explanation if any at all, and are not widely distributed and seen .. ..
i do believe that we all have a moral and ethical responsibility to ferret these sort of scams out and inform people as much as we can about them .. and we do know that NAFPS and it's members do exactly that, with all the (hopefully) unbiased research that we all do on things such as this, among others .. ..
thanks to all of you for your input on this letter .. i will let you all know if i find out the real story behind it ..
tachia
