Wow, the latest post at The UFO Trail blog puts out important details about
I suppose you could tell yourself Gene was just a babe in the woods trying to help out his sister-in-law's family but, I'm gonna say, for me at least Gene REALLY does not come out looking good in any of this. Maybe he was being used but I have a hard time thinking he was that clueless about it all.
I really can't buy that as Gene seems to have been suckering (or at least trying to sucker) other people for living expenses under false pretences for more than a decade
- which is precisely what his brother in law seemed to be doing prior to his arrest and trial (and perhaps even afterwards).
It seems to be the "family business" - and we have court records and business records which show Gene's direct involvement. That is not something that happened accidentally.
We know for sure from the information provided that Gene willingly misrepresented where funds he was collecting were going to in 2009 (when he was collecting money to "help" his brother in law).
He deliberately misrepresented the situation and made it out to be something completely different to what it actually was.
- The reason why is obvious, people would not willingly donate to a man who had been defrauding old ladies to fund his own lavish lifestyle (- sound familiar?) and his criminal defence.
Basically the donations were going to someone who has since been proven to be a con man - it is not even a matter of conjecture - it is in official court records.
Even at the time when Gene was soliciting money for him the court officials were concerned about how he was getting the money given his previous "form". They suspected he was up to his old games.
To believe that Gene was somehow an innocent and unknowing stooge in such as saga would be so far fetched as to be more improbable than even the most crackpot theories in ufology.
I would be more liable to believe that the Mothman was a misidentified owl or people mistook swamp gas for an alien mother ship.
He even brought Bezier on to the Paracast in 2009 and used the opportunity to shill the questionable gold business he (Bezier) was running at the time - this was long after the previous court cases and legal actions against his brother in law and at a point there could have been no question about his criminality.
Family loyalty is fine, but if you know you have a criminal family member and you have been burnt by their actions in the past, why the hell would you bring him on to your podcast to introduce him to a whole new set of "marks" by advertising and talking about his new business?
If you were a genuine victim of such a person there is absolutely no way you would help them find more victims in this way.
So I don't think there is any other way to read it than Gene being knowingly complicit in scamming people with his brother in law and that he is continuing to do that now even though the brother in law is deceased.
Whether he is doing it on the same scale or ripping off podcast listeners instead of old ladies is irrelevant, the unethical nature and immorality of it are still the same.
Jack has done a stellar job of putting the information together into a single cohesive post. I just hope enough people in the UFO community read it and wise up.
The more we tolerate or turn a blind eye towards scammers and grifters in the ufology/paranormal community the more we destroy any chances of serious investigation and investment in the field.
These kind of people make it intellectual suicide for any serious scientists or other research organisations to get involved as the whole field gets tarred with the label of being a scam, and everyone associated with it is presumed to be a scammer.
It makes it all the more disgusting and perplexing that people keep supporting and enabling these hucksters.