Michael Webster, a commercial litigation attorney specializing in franchise and distributorship law has written a post about the recent lengthy post at ShoeMoney.com called “Dennis Yu – Rise and Fall Of a Con Man in the Affiliate Industry”.
Michael’s post, called What Is the Con Here, brings up a lot of interesting points that I missed that suggests the possibility of misdirection (my interpretation of Michael’s post) going on in order to take focus off of the message and onto the messenger.
Perhaps I’m guilty of doing the same as well, but it’s hard to not get upset when confronted with someone who has victimized the very type of people I try to help everyday – and who has profited handsomely from it.
But again – perhaps as Michael and Dennis Yu have suggested this only serves to take the focus off of the message. Yes, certainly the messenger needs to be penalized, make amends, etc., but for the sake of this post that’s not the point.
Dennis Yu’s follow up to all of this called “This is why you don’t gossip on the internet” is also interesting and worth a read and I agree that when you come across attacks on a messenger that you need to “examine their motives and then check the facts to see if things add up”.
I certainly don’t feel like I have all the facts in this situation and I don’t think it will be an easy matter to get them either.
Some might consider the rest of this post a distraction from the message and back onto the messenger. However, I think it’s important as in this case as it may help people see the message as more pertinent and NOT allow it to get shoved under the table.
However, Dennis Yu does potentially clarify a couple things that I wondered about. I say “potentially” because at this point there’s no way to check the facts.
1. Dennis Yu states, “We did some consulting for the FTC– a nice surprise, as they promised not to sue.”
I had wondered why he was so willing to basically post a “signed confession to prove the prosecutor’s case” as Lynndel Edginton observed in the original post called BlitzLocal CEO explains how to trick people.
Of course the dilemna for Dennis is if he testified or consulted for the FTC in a specific ongoing investigation then he can’t say what the case was until charges have been filed. Once he can talk about those cases, things could get very interesting again.
2. He also states, “I’m owing up to all the spam (or call it by whatever name you want) that I’ve done in the past. The TechCrunch article was part of that– and there are more articles coming.”
Why is this interesting? Because if it’s true that there are more articles coming and they get published in major outlets with the same sort of prominence as TechCrunch then it puts Shoemaker’s claim that “the jig is up” for Dennis Yu in serious doubt.
The bottom line is:
- We don’t have all the facts and there will be serious facts that we possibly can’t have for legitimate reasons for a while.
- We need to be on our guard for potential misdirection whether it comes from a hidden negative option offer or an attack on a messenger who is easy to hate.
Note: PLEASE keep in mind that I am only saying those two “bottom line” items are possible. I am NOT saying they are true. There simply isn’t enough evidence to know one way or another.