[The Flying Mouse]

Originally Posted by A Slice Of English

R did the right thing from the off. I can't deny that it concerned me enough to raise the issue weeks ago anyway in private to the mod team and I'm glad they have reacted so responsibly.

This is how long this investigation has took.
We thought there was something wrong with his story from the get go.
For one, he seemed more concerned with the concert than his health, and with being put in touch with Meat directly.
I have a feeling that he had hopes Meat giving him a free VIP ticket complete with backstage pass, M&G, and maybe even a nice memento of the occasion.
Talking about how his tribute act was going from strength to strength, singing with the NLE (did anyone on this site believe a single word of that one? ), thinking of going to another concert (hinting for a ticket IMHO) just made our suspicions that much stronger.

The problem was the possibility that we were wrong, and having enough proof or reasonable doubt to take direct action.
I'm sure you can all appreciate that if we publicly accused a cancer patient of being a fraudulent fake and banning him without any proof, and it turned out we were wrong, we would be less popular than an unwanted gas evacuation inside an astronaughts traveling togs.

Originally Posted by Lucy!

I think what this does highlight and is something that's worth remembering is that just because someone posts regularly does not mean that you know them. Don't get me wrong, this fanclub/forum has created some lifelong friendships and relationships for many of us, but it's easy to forget that we've actually not even met so many people here...it's easy to get used to seeing someone's user-name and reading their posts but that is no indication at all to the person behind them.

That's not to say we should all be suspicious of those we've not met here but perhaps we need to "keep it real" a little more

Very sad, but very true.

Originally Posted by AndrewG

Interesting he has lots of time available to set up a new Meat Loaf forum and to try to nab members away from here but no time to deal with the laptop dispute. What an ahole.

It's my feeling that he may have known we had our suspicions (if he didn't, he's an idiot as well as an asshole) and he was facing a ban, and wanted to set up his own community in case things fell apart for him here.
What good that will do him though is pretty limited as the online Meat Loaf community have got his card marked.

Originally Posted by A Slice Of English

Maybe so, but it is a damn shame nothing could be done to prevent honest posters losing money on this jerk.

This is regretable (more than regretable), but again, without proof there was only so much we were able to do due to the delicate nature of the problem.
I locked the thread and asked people to wait before making any donations so that they could go to an official source rather than a private individual in the hope that this would give us more time to look into the problem before people started handing over their hard earned.
It was our reasoning that if he supplied the details of his health care provider (ones that could be checked out and verrified) then he was for real, but if he was a fake he wouldn't be able to do this.
Numerous requests were sent asking for these details and delays were all we got back.
It was decided to give a deadline on the matter for one day this week, but this other evidence has made that redundant.

All in all, I can honestly say that I don't recall any other occurance of site moderation that has taken such time, deep thought, and discussion.
Between our deepening suspicions coupled with our desire to protect the membership from a scam, versus the slight possibility we were about to make a terrible mistake, nothing in my experience as a mod has ever been more difficult to call.
I think the team have acted in a highly resposible manner, and have done the best job anyone could have done under the same circumstances.


As for the scam itself, I am thoroughly disgusted.
Meat himself has supported cancer charities as his own mother was a cancer victim, and for someone who calls themselves a Meat Loaf fan to try to fraudulently profit from the good hearted and generous people of our community makes my blood boil.
Ironically, if he had posted an honest message saying "you know what folks, i'm a bit short of cash and I wanna go to this show, anyone fancy having a whip round to get me a ticket?" then I believe the people on this forum would have clubbed together and stumped up the money for the ticket, and there would have been no mod investigation as there was no fraud involved.

Between his scams and stories of tribute singing and getting on stage with the NLE, he's a con man and a fantisist.
He has no place here.