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Brian Dunning lawsuit

Is it just me who never thought much of Skeptoid?

It always disappointed me. I want a thorough debunking, not a few apparent bald assertions and that's him done. I don't recall linking anyone to it for a very long time.

So, I'm not particularly upset about this. I'm sorry for his fans and his family, but I'm not personally upset.
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
He earned $5.2 million from hundreds (thousands?) of cookies. The fact that he plead guilty to just one is a procedural matter.
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Exactly. For a continuing crime like this, you charge the time period that allows you to aggregate the totality of the criminal behavior, as long as the statute allows you do to that. It is a much neater (as in less messy) trial than having thousands of counts that you need to charge, and prove, and which the jury has to render verdicts for.
 
brodski said:
Large numbers of people seem quite prepared to minimise, or even outright deny, the crimes of a self-confessed, convicted, major fraudster because of personal connections and the fact that his opinions on other topics accord with our own.
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I'm not really seeing these "large numbers of people" doing this, especially not after he pled guilty. Where are you seeing them?
 
brodski said:
before we consider allowing "redemption" we need to accept that there has been serious wrong-doing. Large numbers of people seem quite prepared to minimise, or even outright deny, the crimes of a self-confessed, convicted, major fraudster because of personal connections and the fact that his opinions on other topics accord with our own.

As a community we certainly weren't anywhere near as forgiving for the crimes of, for example, Kent Hovind. It is fascinating* to contrast the reactions to the conviction of Hovind and the guilty plea of Dunning.


*not really, it's quite predictable and depressing.
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A) I was speaking in general
B) I didn't think I needed to say I'm fully on board with the idea that he should feel the weight of justice and that he'll have to live with the consequences.
 
Orphia Nay said:
Is it just me who never thought much of Skeptoid?

It always disappointed me. I want a thorough debunking, not a few apparent bald assertions and that's him done. I don't recall linking anyone to it for a very long time.

So, I'm not particularly upset about this. I'm sorry for his fans and his family, but I'm not personally upset.
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I really liked skeptoid, which is why I am so bummed, I think. Skeptoid actually led me here.
 
This is all quite depressing to me. Brian Dunning is someone whom I feel immeasurably indebted to for having opened my eyes to skeptical discourse on the internet (yes, the rock I was living under had internet access), and while Skeptoid itself may not always provide sufficiently thorough critical analysis, as Orphia Nay has pointed out, I've always considered the podcast a fantastic appetizer for critical thinking.

His guilty plea doesn't magically invalidate his accomplishments, of course, but there's always been a lot of himself and his morals in his work, which is why I find it hard to separate the two, especially his episodes on consumer ripoffs.
 
Atwill said:
His guilty plea doesn't magically invalidate his accomplishments, of course, but there's always been a lot of himself and his morals in his work, which is why I find it hard to separate the two, especially his episodes on consumer ripoffs.
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I agree. I really have admired Dunning and the guilty plea is disappointing.

However it does not invalidate the work of his podcasts. His work has always been about the strength of argument, not his personal charisma or moral leadership.

It will be interesting to see how Dunning handles this in public. I don't feel like he needs to ask for my forgiveness because he didn't damage me. I hope he offers an apology to the people he defrauded and makes a full public accounting for himself. Unfortunately it is probably impossible to tell who most of the individuals were, so compensation could be made.
 
As far as sentencing, Dunning's wikipedia page has recently been updated, and now says:

On April 15, 2013, Dunning pled guilty to a single count of writing one cookie in San Jose, CA federal court, where he faces a maximum sentence of 29 months in confinement and no fine.
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Wow, this is a shock and a shame. Here are the two things that anger me about this:

1) The whole point of doing Skeptoid was to shine the light of skepticism on unrealistic claims, usually to help people avoid falling prey to scams. Dunning's transgression here would be like Jeff Corwin getting convicted of dealing in ivory and rhino horn. Like a few others have written, I have very little sympathy for hypocrisy.

2) Dunning was constantly goading his listeners to make donations to support his work. Why? The guy had more money in the bank than I'll ever see.

Sorry, this seems to have played out to be a guy with a squeaky-clean image who took advantage of a weakness in the system, regardless of who got hurt along the way. Meanwhile, he was trying to get his listeners to give him money he didn't need. If I didn't know and like his public persona, I'd say that's my definition of a sleazeball.
 
Denver said:
As far as sentencing, Dunning's wikipedia page has recently been updated, and now says:
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Hmm, with a "sealed plea agreement" as the source and deleting the information from the complaint about how much he allegedly received as well as the FBI release on the case. Also changed it from an "FBI investigation" to an "ebay investigation" and removed the fact the guilty plea was to wire fraud, which is in the FBI press release.

A sealed plea is not a valid WP source document as it's not verifiable, so even without the whitewashing that needs to be rolled back ....
 
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icerat said:
Hmm, with a "sealed plea agreement" as the source and deleting the information from the complaint about how much he allegedly received as well as the FBI release on the case. Also changed it from an "FBI investigation" to an "ebay investigation" and removed the fact the guilty plea was to wire fraud, which is in the FBI press release.

A sealed plea is not a valid WP source document as it's not verifiable, so even without the whitewashing that needs to be rolled back ....
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Someone did roll it back. Apparently the source was gotten from the courthouse, but is not online to cite. So it may take a while before it appears on WP again I suppose.
 
If Brian Dunning wants to regain trust, he should make an apology and stop asking for money. I just checked his website and didn't see anything about his crime at all. He is still asking for money also.
 
BTMO said:
I really liked skeptoid, which is why I am so bummed, I think. Skeptoid actually led me here.
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Seconded. It lead me here. I haven't listened to the actual podcast in some time, but I read the blog consistently.
 
petrov2500 said:
If Brian Dunning wants to regain trust, he should make an apology and stop asking for money. I just checked his website and didn't see anything about his crime at all. He is still asking for money also.
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Agreed. But can anyone show me exactly how much he stole? And do we know if those funds have been seized or not?
 
petrov2500 said:
If Brian Dunning wants to regain trust, he should make an apology and stop asking for money. I just checked his website and didn't see anything about his crime at all. He is still asking for money also.
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Considering that he's seriously reliant on Skeptoid at this point to feed his family, I don't think he CAN do that or he probably WOULD have last week or so.
 
Denver said:
Someone did roll it back. Apparently the source was gotten from the courthouse, but is not online to cite. So it may take a while before it appears on WP again I suppose.
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Yeah, that was me. Also cleaned up a few other aspects.

Orphia Nay said:
Agreed. But can anyone show me exactly how much he stole? And do we know if those funds have been seized or not?
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The FBI says $5.2 million, but the plea agreement apparently includes Dunning disputing that it was all illegally obtained. This is probably true, some would have been from legitimate links from his sites.

I don't know if any of his assets have been seized as yet, I can't find any reports of that. A hearing on any restitution is still to occur. On his skeptoid blog he says that he didn't get all the money, that there were others involved in the company (true - the ebay and fbi complaints have him as joint owner with his brother) and that he's spent it all on lawyers anyway.

Cry me a river.
 
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