Ed Rob Menard's FOTL Claims

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Boot2TheHead said:
The guy charging $125 for others to try out his untested theory is insinuating I'm getting ahead of myself.

Incredible.
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This just reminds me of the guy that drinks/eats something foul, then says " Hey try this." to get his friend to confirm if it is rotten.

Except in this case he is charging for the privilege.
 
ComfySlippers said:
A Saturn V Rocket wouldn't get that heap of garbage off the ground.
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I was thinking more of using a small 4 kiloton tac nuke

However he can get it erected but if it ever starts up expect difficulties with the police!

Hey were is Fabio? I would have thought he'd be hear to let us know how he joined up and got his first free meal....
 
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sadhatter said:
This just reminds me of the guy that drinks/eats something foul, then says " Hey try this." to get his friend to confirm if it is rotten.

Except in this case he is charging for the privilege.
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That is a trade mark of Menard, he never tries it himself, he gets suckers to (try and) do it first......
 
The problem with the freeman Bill of Exchange argument is legitimately a more complicated issue than it seems. I'm not saying it's really a hard issue, but I can see on this one how people can be fooled. I think Rob Menard is on the right track in terms of finding a better way to fool people, and one that involves getting them to pay up some money. I'm not accusing him of anything here because based on what I know of Rob Menard's legal abilities I think he may be legitimately confused himself and not deliberately trying to mislead anyone.

The difficulty is that the Bills of Exchange Act sets out a definition for a bill of exchange and gives some rules and requirements to determine when something is a bill of exchange. The freeman looks at these rules and thinks "I can do that" and makes up their own document that conforms to those rules. So they make the document and they have a bill of exchange and they can point to the act to prove that it meets the requirements for being a bill of exchange.

The problem is the freemen don't go a step further and ask "what is this bill of exchange worth." They promote the false assumption that if something meets the requirements for being a BoE under the BoE Act then it must have some value, or that it must be worth whatever it says it is. This is the problem. I can write a cheque for a million dollars (I don't have anywhere close to that in my account) and it would be a valid BoE but it would not be worth a million dollars. If I used that cheque to obtain a million dollars worth of goods knowing the money wasn't there then I would be guilty of fraud. All the while, the BoE act would confirm that the document I used to get the goods meets the definition of being a BoE.

The point is I guess that a BoE only has value if there is money to actually pay it. A BoE drawn from the government of Canada is probably going to be accepted by a bank no problem. They will pay you cash right away. You could probably even cash it at Safeway or something because everyone trusts the government's bill of exchange. Rob Menard's freeman bill of exchange, while it is by definition a bill of exchange, is probably not worth anything to anyone besides other freemen. Both are bills of exchange, one is worthless, on is worth exactly what it says it's worth.
 
JLord said:
The problem with the freeman Bill of Exchange argument is legitimately a more complicated issue than it seems. I'm not saying it's really a hard issue, but I can see on this one how people can be fooled. I think Rob Menard is on the right track in terms of finding a better way to fool people, and one that involves getting them to pay up some money. I'm not accusing him of anything here because based on what I know of Rob Menard's legal abilities I think he may be legitimately confused himself and not deliberately trying to mislead anyone.

The difficulty is that the Bills of Exchange Act sets out a definition for a bill of exchange and gives some rules and requirements to determine when something is a bill of exchange. The freeman looks at these rules and thinks "I can do that" and makes up their own document that conforms to those rules. So they make the document and they have a bill of exchange and they can point to the act to prove that it meets the requirements for being a bill of exchange.

The problem is the freemen don't go a step further and ask "what is this bill of exchange worth." They promote the false assumption that if something meets the requirements for being a BoE under the BoE Act then it must have some value, or that it must be worth whatever it says it is. This is the problem. I can write a cheque for a million dollars (I don't have anywhere close to that in my account) and it would be a valid BoE but it would not be worth a million dollars. If I used that cheque to obtain a million dollars worth of goods knowing the money wasn't there then I would be guilty of fraud. All the while, the BoE act would confirm that the document I used to get the goods meets the definition of being a BoE.

The point is I guess that a BoE only has value if there is money to actually pay it. A BoE drawn from the government of Canada is probably going to be accepted by a bank no problem. They will pay you cash right away. You could probably even cash it at Safeway or something because everyone trusts the government's bill of exchange. Rob Menard's freeman bill of exchange, while it is by definition a bill of exchange, is probably not worth anything to anyone besides other freemen. Both are bills of exchange, one is worthless, on is worth exactly what it says it's worth.
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Alone those lines the place in the YouTube I find an amazing is the part where Menard, with a straight face, says merchants should be able to cash in his consumer notes.

Like his idea that there are mythical securities accounts, which nobody has ever tapped into, that correspond to a number on birth certificates Menard has laid out this this entire plan without testing it or really having anything more that an “idea”.

He can’t really say with any certainty at all that merchants won’t get stiffed and frankly I don’t think he cares.

It’s an idea that popped into professor Menard’s head and he figures it has to be golden.

If that’s not arrogant narcissism, I don’t know what is!

It should be interesting to see what happens to one of his marks if they get anybody to accept the card. Menard says he’ll help with the legal challenges but it will be interesting to see if he stays true to form and throws fraud convicted card users under the bus.

I suspect that since the card isn’t Master Card, Visa, or American Express, etc. merchants will just tell the freeman “No, sorry, can’t accept it.” and the poor mark will be out $125 dollars a month (the whole idea in the first place) and Menard will feel free, in his special way, to endlessly whine that since the merchant isn’t following the statute, as he sees it, he and his crew don’t need to follow any law either (the whole idea in the first place).

The other possibility is that it’s a ponzi scheme and after Menard raises some money he’ll pay off a few merchants who go with the plan (maybe even somebody in league with him), tout the success and then watch the sucker’s money roll in.

But the real question I am starting to ask is: When is the Canadian government going to lower the boom on this guy who is essentially making his own law, his own militia and now his own money?
 
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arayder said:
Alone those lines the place in the YouTube I find an amazing is the part were Menard, with a straight face, says the merchant should be able to cash in his consumer notes.
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You know, I think I figured out what he's really doing.


He's paying for everything with I.O.U.s


Take the $5 burger example. He gets the bill for the burger, and writes his FreemanIOU on it. That would be a paper of value, that could be traded for up to its face value, if (and it's a big IF) the FreemanIOU were actually backed by anything, and the people trading it had some confidence that the FreemanIOU would actually be honored if it was later presented to the Freeman for payment, or could be freely traded for other goods or services.

With regular everyday IOUs (were I to use them!), they would be exactly as valuable as the people receiving them decided they were, based on their knowledge of me as a person. For instance, I'm pretty sure if I came up short at my local pub one night, they'd likely take an IOU rather than call the cops, since they know me, and know I'm good for it. Heck, there was one time they let me walk out with an unpaid bill, because I told them I planned to be back in a an hour, and wanted to keep my tab going.

Of course, that wouldn't work if it was my first time in the establishment.

So he needs to address this - what backs these FreemanIOUs? Is it cash in the bank? Is it a promise of work or goods of equal or greater value? Is it nothing more than the goodwill of the Freeman? What gives this FreemanIOU enough credibility that any business would trust that they will be either directly repaid, or be able to trade the FreemanIOU for other valuable consideration?

And if the answer is "Birth Bonds" or "Securities of the person", we can all laugh in his face.
 
Horatius said:
You know, I think I figured out what he's really doing.


He's paying for everything with I.O.U.s


Take the $5 burger example. He gets the bill for the burger, and writes his FreemanIOU on it. That would be a paper of value, that could be traded for up to its face value, if (and it's a big IF) the FreemanIOU were actually backed by anything, and the people trading it had some confidence that the FreemanIOU would actually be honored if it was later presented to the Freeman for payment, or could be freely traded for other goods or services.

With regular everyday IOUs (were I to use them!), they would be exactly as valuable as the people receiving them decided they were, based on their knowledge of me as a person. For instance, I'm pretty sure if I came up short at my local pub one night, they'd likely take an IOU rather than call the cops, since they know me, and know I'm good for it. Heck, there was one time they let me walk out with an unpaid bill, because I told them I planned to be back in a an hour, and wanted to keep my tab going.

Of course, that wouldn't work if it was my first time in the establishment.

So he needs to address this - what backs these FreemanIOUs? Is it cash in the bank? Is it a promise of work or goods of equal or greater value? Is it nothing more than the goodwill of the Freeman? What gives this FreemanIOU enough credibility that any business would trust that they will be either directly repaid, or be able to trade the FreemanIOU for other valuable consideration?

And if the answer is "Birth Bonds" or "Securities of the person", we can all laugh in his face.
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I think he says in the video that merchants should be able to take the consumer note to the bank and cash it in.
 
arayder said:
I suspect that since the card isn’t Master Card, Visa, or American Express, etc. merchants will just tell the freeman “No, sorry, can’t accept it.” and the poor mark will be out $125 dollars a month (the whole idea in the first place) and Menard will feel free, in his special way, to endlessly whine that since the merchant isn’t following the statute, as he sees it, he and his crew don’t need to follow any law either (the whole idea in the first place).
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I wonder if he understands how credit and debit cards really work, and the sort of infrastructure that he'd need to issue them. Not to mention that there are undoubtedly any number of Canadian banking regulations that he'd need to comply with to even start something like this.

arayder said:
The other possibility is that it’s a ponzi scheme and after Menard raises some money he’ll pay off a few merchants who go with the plan (maybe even somebody in league with him), tout the success and then watch the sucker’s money roll in.
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This occurred to me also; the problem is that most of his members will undoubtedly max out their cards in short order, and I doubt he'd be able to cover that, unless he has only a very few cardholders.

arayder said:
But the real question I am starting to ask is: When is the Canadian government going to lower the boom on this guy who is essentially making his own law, his own militia and now his own money?
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I'd say probably about the time he starts trying to issue debit/credit cards.
 
I wonder if he understands how credit and debit cards really work, and the sort of infrastructure that he'd need to issue them.
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This.

He has absolutely no idea of how the real world works regarding this.

I do.

He is hopelessly deluded.
 
But since I also claim that we as individuals have the right to draw these bills on the Bank of Canada for our consumer purchases,
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Would this be the Security of the Person stuff?
 
arayder said:
I think he says in the video that merchants should be able to take the consumer note to the bank and cash it in.
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Well, sure, and you could do that with my IOU as well. IF the bank knows me, and trusts that I'll cover it.


It's that "covering it" part that has issues. Well, that, and the trust.

A scheme like this could work in a small town, where everyone knows everyone else, and knows who is likely to meet their obligations, and who isn't, and accepted or rejected the IOUs as appropriate. You could even set up an IOU rating system, so an IOU from someone who is known to default every so often is traded at a discounted rate.

But then, we'd quite quickly end up back at the system we have now!

I think he's pulled another Menard - he's inadvertently re-inventing banking as we know it! :D
 
Horatius said:
Well, sure, and you could do that with my IOU as well. IF the bank knows me, and trusts that I'll cover it.


It's that "covering it" part that has issues. Well, that, and the trust.

A scheme like this could work in a small town, where everyone knows everyone else, and knows who is likely to meet their obligations, and who isn't, and accepted or rejected the IOUs as appropriate. You could even set up an IOU rating system, so an IOU from someone who is known to default every so often is traded at a discounted rate.

But then, we'd quite quickly end up back at the system we have now!

I think he's pulled another Menard - he's inadvertently re-inventing banking as we know it! :D
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Nah, he says the government will pay. We just have to mark bills with "consumer purchase" - literally write that on the bill. This turns them into consumer notes, which the Bank of Canada is required to cover.

Yes, it really is that stupid, and we should laugh right in his face.
 
Looks like Rob has finally crossed the line from encouraging people to engage in lesser crimes, such as driving without a license, to advising people on how to pass bad checks (otherwise known as "fraud"). If he keeps this video up and actually accepts money for his bogus card, he may just have a little visit from his local Policy Enforcers. Maybe if he goes to jail for this he'll make some involuntary associations!
 
I suspect that since the card isn’t Master Card, Visa, or American Express, etc. merchants will just tell the freeman “No, sorry, can’t accept it.”
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That would be step one. Should the salesperson attempt to validate the bogus card... that would be the end of the matter and, in my country at least, would involve real Police people turning up at the scene rather quickly.

Rob clearly has no idea whatsoever about merchant accounts or how the credit/debit card system actually works in real life.

It's quite embarrassing to read tbh.

As I've said before Rob isn't capabale of inventing his own scam, he merely copies crap he's "researched" on the internet, alters a few words, and brands it as his own.
 
D'rok said:
Nah, he says the government will pay. We just have to mark bills with "consumer purchase" - literally write that on the bill. This turns them into consumer notes, which the Bank of Canada is required to cover.
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So why does Menard need $125 for these notes if the government is going to pay?
 
Bosozoku said:
Looks like Rob has finally crossed the line from encouraging people to engage in lesser crimes, such as driving without a license, to advising people on how to pass bad checks (otherwise known as "fraud"). If he keeps this video up and actually accepts money for his bogus card, he may just have a little visit from his local Policy Enforcers. Maybe if he goes to jail for this he'll make some involuntary associations!
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Yup. Although, I suspect that, like all his grand ideas, this will come to nothing and he'll just move on to the next harebrained scheme. He doesn't have a lot of follow-through.
 
Stacey Grove said:
So why does Menard need $125 for these notes if the government is going to pay?
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Because he's a conman. He knows that it is nonsense and that it won't work (he openly admits as much in the video - that it won't actually work for individuals), but he still has to find a way to create a revenue stream from it, thus his "association".
 
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