38. Lies, Damned Lies, and Politics

Is that the worst this letter doth contain?
——Henry VI, Part I, IV.i

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands:
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
——Othello, III.iii

No, 'tis slander,
Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue
Outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath
Rides on the posting winds and doth belie
All corners of the world: kings, queens and states,
Maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave
This viperous slander enters.
——Cymbeline, III.iv

The other day I saw a news item about a fellow here in Washington state who had assembled a small collection of slot machines in his recreation room. He had them up and running, and it seems his family liked to play slots — using tokens, not real coins — for fun. What the hey, it was cheaper than going to Vegas.

One day, though, he had a yard sale and made the mistake of leaving the garage door open. Someone spotted the machines and called the Washington State Gambling Commission, which sent the man a cease-and-desist letter, ordering him to get rid of the machines. Slots are illegal in Washington, even in our ever-proliferating casinos. Never mind that no actual money was actually changing hands.

I'm not bringing this up to comment on the fairness of that particular law. I just thought the assiduousness of the Gambling Commission, in response to a yard-sale shopper's complaint, provided a nice contrast to the behavior of the Secretary of State's Charities Division and, as we'll see in a minute, the Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division in response to my complaint.

I'll just get the mea culpas out of the way now and admit that I probably could have played a more strategic game of hardball. I had, in fact, already spoken earlier to someone who worked for the Consumer Protection Division, back when I was trying to decide between hardball and softball. But now instead of calling that person back, I used an online complaint form. The day after I did this, my brother-in-law in Atlanta died. Sarah and I were thrust into the sort of harried, last-minute travel plans that a death in the family forces upon you, and my feud with Q. had to take a back seat for a while. I had intended to follow up my complaint with a phone call, but never got around to it. I did check Q.'s Web sites nearly every day in Atlanta, and noticed that the tax-deductible claim suddenly disappeared on June 30, 2006.

When I got back from Atlanta, there was a letter from a Miss Understanding of the Consumer Protection Division (she wasn't the person I'd spoken to before), stating that she'd received my complaint and forwarded it to Q. I thought about calling her to see if she had any questions or comments about my case, but it was a busy week and Sarah and I weren't exactly finished grieving for her brother. Again I didn't call.

Keep in mind, dear reader, that the main purpose of the Consumer Protection Division is not to police the fundraising activities of nonprofits. (That is the Charities Division's job, but Ms. Makenice had already dropped the ball and then punted it.) The Consumer Protection Division, as the name suggests, is more concerned with helping people who've been ripped off recover their money. And since E. had at least been smart enough to refund my attempted donation, I wasn't actually out any bucks. All I had to complain about was Q.'s false tax-deductibility claim, which was on his site when I made the complaint, but was there no longer (although I had printed it out). I had no proof, though, that anyone else had even tried to donate money through the Web site in question. It's not exactly a high-profile site. I was able to determine that I was the first person to send money to E.'s PayPal account in several years, which tends to support the notion that I am the only person who even gives a rip about how she collects donations.

After another week I got a second letter from Miss Understanding, stating that her office was closing its case. She enclosed a reply letter she had received from Q., dated June 30, 2006, which is worth quoting at length:

1. ____ is an organization that organizes concerts at various venues during the Olympics in the host city. Every two years since the location of the Olympics changes, we setup a new HQ, new name that correlates to that Olympics theme but doesn't infringe on any Olympics copyrights in place. We setup accounts and paperwork and non-profit status either in the host country or the surrounding region. Once the Olympics is over though we close all accounts, offices and such. ____.org page only serves as a stable website for Volunteers from each Olympics, media sources and musicians to be able to find out information about the next Olympics when it is setup, since they won't know this information from one Olympics to the next. I hope that makes sense.

2. ____, even though it is only a centralized information website for volunteers and such because I personally reside in the state of Washington between Olympic events, even though this is an in between time I have filled out the proper paperwork with the state. The form was the "Optional Statement for an Exempt Organization" and the registration # was _____. Which was sent to them prior to us receiving this complaint.

I'm beginning to get the picture here: Q. seems to think that he needn't register as a nonprofit with the state or federal government because he operates mostly overseas. Which is nonsense: Regardless of what he did in other countries, he was soliciting money in U.S. currency using a Washington address, so that activity was subject to U.S. and state laws. The form he mentions is something you can file if your organization is exempt from registering with the Charities Division. Once you file it, of course, it's public information, so I had Ms. Makenice send me a copy. I was curious to see just what Q. might have said to convince her that he didn't have to register with her office.

And when I received the form, I was a little surprised at the answer. I figured he'd try to claim an exemption for religious activities, as provided for in the Charitable Solicitations Act (RCW 19.09). But in order to qualify for that exemption, your organization has to be either a registered 501(c)(3) or affiliated with one — and Q. and E. affirm in black and white on this form that they are not so registered or so affiliated. (Which is as good as admitting that their solicitations were illegal... but I digress.) Instead, they claim another exemption under RCW 19.09: their nonprofit is an all-volunteer organization raising less than $25,000 a year.

I can think of two problems with this. First, as I've mentioned, the prospectus for Q.'s film project, which I downloaded from his nonprofit's Web site, specifically budgets $70,000 to finance the film and associated mission trips, which were supposed to take place in 2006 according to one of the Web sites. It looks more than a little fishy to tell the Charities Division that you raise less than $25,000 annually when you've already issued a prospectus claiming that you intend to spend almost three times that amount this year.

(Honestly, from what I've seen I don't think Q. is capable of raising $70,000 in a year. What he told the Charities Division is probably closer to the truth than what he put in the prospectus. On the other hand, there were 20 Americans in Q.'s Greece entourage. If we assume all their airfares were equal to what I paid for Sarah's, then we can do the math: 20 x $1,352 = $27,040 for airfare alone. However, Sarah's airfare may not count as a donation, since I made out the money order to the travel agent — and several other folks were probably in the same boat. Christian and, I think, Pandora, flew into Athens from elsewhere in Europe, so their tickets were probably less. But Qedem's travel expenses were about $2,250 per person according to what they told Sarah. And these figures don't even account for Cory and the Russians.)

Second, there's the uncomfortable fact that B. and Holly (and perhaps other band members as well) were both supposed to be paid for their participation in the recording project and the Greece trip. Which would mean that Q.'s organization wasn't all-volunteer. Holly never received the promised payment, but I don't know whether the same is true for B. It's possible, of course, that if B. ever has been paid, the funds came from an account owned by Q.'s record label, or some other source not connected to the nonprofit. But then again, Q. or E. allegedly told the Charities Division that donations solicited on their site were going directly to B. and Six Steps to Heaven. Oh, how the mind reels! I can tell you one thing: I'd hate to be Q.'s accountant.

Q. claims above that he filed this form with the Charities Division "prior to us receiving this complaint" from the Attorney General's office. The form is actually dated the day after I filed that complaint online. So the truth of Q.'s claim depends on how he was notified. If he got an automatic e-mail notification, then he's lying. If he was notified by mail or telephone, he's telling the truth.

Finally, what Q. says above about his Web site isn't quite true: he did use it to solicit donations, and he kept it remarkably devoid of useful information about the Winter Olympics in Torino.

3. The person making the complaint Mr Martin Stillion is familiar to us. Two years ago Mr Stillion was a performer at one of our Olympic concert series in Athens, Greece. We asked him to leave because he had several violent anger outbursts...

Hey, wait a minute. I had three angry outbursts: two minor ones on Sunday, Aug. 22, and one major one at 1:30 a.m. or thereabouts on Friday morning, Aug. 27, all three of which are documented in this blog. As far as I know, Q. witnessed only this last outburst. None of these outbursts were violent. I never struck or harmed any person or object.

and _______ on several occasions.

I'm sorry I can't be more forthcoming about _______ in the above excerpt. Suffice it to say, it's a calumny of the worst imaginable kind, accusing me of an activity that is in its more virulent forms both a damnable, contemptible sin and a heinous crime. The accusation is also, of course, entirely false. More later about that. As I said the last time I quoted Q., I couldn't make up stuff like this if I tried. But Q.'s imagination apparently rushes in where mine fears to tread.

This was two years ago. We have told him several times that ourselves, other musicians and volunteers at our events would prefer not to be associated or contacted by him.

Not true. The first time and only time I'd been told such a thing was in E.'s e-mail reply to my latest attempted donation.

With this current situation it is apparent that we need to file an "Anti-Harassment order" (AKA Restraining Order). Which will be done within the next two weeks in King County.

I looked up the form he mentions, and actually was worried for the next two weeks that he might follow through with it. I also sort of hoped he would. You see, I hadn't harassed Q. in the least. I'd sent him and E. six e-mail messages in two years — donation attempts included — all of which were brief, cordial, and to the point. We'd had no other direct contact. Writing and talking about Q., and reporting him to state agencies, is not harassment. Once filled out and submitted, the antiharassment order constitutes a sworn statement. So if Q. did file it, that would be an act of perjury on his part, and you can bet I'd point this out to the judge at the court hearing. But the two weeks came and went, followed by five more weeks so far, and still no restraining order has been filed.

4. Please look at all the websites listed in the complaint. If any mis-stated information was on the web, it had been removed prior to receiving this complaint,...

False. The first day I noticed the solicitations were gone was June 30, the same day Q. wrote his letter. In his haste he also removed B.'s preview CD from his online store.

although the email address, our names and other vital information was never listed online, ever. The only way he had this was because of our prior relationship.

This actually is true. It brings up an interesting point, though: RCW 19.09 requires organizations that solicit to disclose the name of the person making the solicitation, as well as that person's place of business. By admitting that he never put this information on his site, Q. is giving further evidence that he violated RCW 19.09. Not that anyone in state government seems to care.

Now let's revisit the most disturbing part of Q.'s letter: the accusation that I engaged in "_______ on several occasions." I beg you to keep in mind, dear reader, that this was a letter Q. sent to someone who works in the office of THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON, for pity's sake, and it is the professional duty of every state Attorney General to prosecute, convict, and incarcerate people who engage in _______. You can well imagine how shaken and angry this made me. So I finally made that phone call to Miss Understanding.

When you file a complaint with the Consumer Protection Division, it too is considered a sworn statement. There's a line on the form that begins "I testify under penalty of perjury." So my first question to Miss Understanding was whether Q.'s letter to her was also regarded as a sworn statement. It contained, as I've taken some pains to point out, several falsehoods and one outrageous whopper. So if he had made those statements under penalty of perjury, then by golly, it was time to file a perjury complaint.

I thought this was a fairly straightforward question, but Miss Understanding did not seem to understand it — and even after I explained it to her thoroughly, she refused to give me a straight answer. I finally gathered from her evasive blabber that the answer was no. In other words, I was legally obligated to tell the truth in my complaint, but the same obligation did not apply to Q. in his response. Which strikes me as fundamentally unfair, but what the heck.

My next question concerned the accusation of _______. It was my opinion that this accusation, a false statement with grave potential to harm my reputation in society, could well be considered libelous, and I said so to Miss Understanding. I'll be danged if she didn't reply in a manner that suggested she did not understand the word "libel." How one gets a job in the Attorney General's office without knowing basic legal terms is beyond me. So I called her attention to the line about _______ and assured her that I was entirely innocent. I managed at least to obtain her assurance that a rogue accusation like this was not going to result in a criminal investigation of me.

That's the good news. The bad news is that Miss Understanding didn't seem inclined to investigate Q. either. In the end, the only positive outcome of my pursuit of justice for Q. was that he finally removed the improper solicitations from his Web sites. Not quite the victory I was shooting for, but I'll take it.

(I feel obliged to add that through the most amazing coincidence, I've actually gotten to know Miss Understanding, who now attends my church. Judging from her LinkedIn page, working for the Consumer Protection Division was her first job out of college. I have to say she's a thoroughly delightful person and I regret that I ever characterized anything she said as "evasive blabber," but there you have it.)

Instead of going through state agencies, perhaps I should have referred Q. directly to the IRS. (I guess I thought state agencies would be more responsive, but what do I know?) After all, I'm pretty sure Q. was breaking federal law as well as state law by attempting to collect "tax-deductible" donations when he didn't have 501(c)(3) status. Not only that, the exact words on his Web site were "100% tax deductible," which wouldn't be true even if he were registered. If a charity provides an item in exchange for donations, the fair market value of the item has to be subtracted before calculating the tax deduction. So if a CD was worth $8 and Q. gave it to you for a $10 donation, then only $2 of your donation would be legally tax deductible. If the CD was worth $10 or more, you couldn't deduct anything.

Assorted other claims about Q. have come to light in the past two years, none of them positive. I heard from a studio owner who let Q. do some recording in his studio and said he never got paid for it, and I talked to a graphic designer who said he finally got paid a year and a half after designing a CD package for Q. I even heard from one of the band members who disappeared just before we went to Greece. Surprise! Q. had asked him, at the last minute, to pay for his own plane ticket — or to get his church to sponsor him. This band member also remains uncompensated for his studio time, although after about two years he finally received partial reimbursement for travel expenses (he lives on the other side of the state and had to drive all the way to Seattle for sessions and practices).

I should note that some of the other band members did succeed in getting money from their churches to help with trip expenses — which no doubt contributed to the shame and embarrassment of being involved with Loudmouth at all. It's one thing to spend your own money on a debacle, and another thing to spend money collected from your fellow parishioners and given to you by church leaders in a good-faith show of support.

During July 2006 I did a lot of digging, in anticipation of Q. taking me to court with a harassment complaint. I uncovered some details about his career before he started hawking Bible software and tormenting musicians: While still a Bible college student in the early 1990s, Q. founded a telecommunications software company. His software was a sort of primitive version of Skype and other VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services. I don't think VoIP is quite the right term, since Q.'s software didn't actually use Internet protocols. (Dial-up over telephone lines was pretty much the only Internet protocol available when he started the company, so VoIP would've been pretty much pointless.) Instead, it emulated telephone switching signals to create "free calling networks," enabling users to place calls between various Seattle suburbs without having to pay local tolls to the phone company. He also had a product ($24 a pop) that enabled users to make free calls from pay phones, among other things.

At its high point, Q.'s company claimed 40,000 customers in the Seattle area. Several newspaper articles about the company were published in the mid-1990s, mostly in Seattle but also in Houston and Southern California — both markets that Q. had his eye on back then. Both in these articles and on the company's Web site (remnants of which can still be found if you know where to look), the company claimed its products and practices were legal, even though they used telephone lines owned by telephone companies in a way that effectively deprived those companies of expected revenue. Sometimes Q. and his partners even described themselves as "telecommunications anarchists" and claimed that their goal was "world domination." I love the irony of someone involved in such a bottom-feeding capitalist venture calling himself an anarchist. Not to mention the contradiction between anarchy and world domination. Isn't the point of anarchy that nobody should dominate anybody else?

Sometime during the 1990s Q. also started his secondhand office equipment buying/selling/recycling business, which he still operates. Although this doesn't sound like the most exciting line of work, it does seem to provide a worthwhile and needed service in a straightforward fashion, which is more than I can say for the software.

In late 1997 the software company vanished. I still don't know why. Perhaps legislators closed whatever legal loopholes had allowed Q.'s software to circumvent phone charges. Perhaps ISDN (remember ISDN?) and DSL began to render his software obsolete. Perhaps the phone companies remapped their calling areas, or took him to court, or perhaps they purposely tied up his lines with fake calls (as Q. accused them of doing) so that he lost business. Perhaps his customers got sick of hearing a software ad every time they called in to use his free calling networks. Or perhaps Q. turned his attention to Bible software and Christian music, and lost interest in being a telecommunications anarchist.

Whatever the reason, if Q. sounds like someone who habitually does things that, even if legal, aren't quite on the level, you can understand why. He's had lots of practice. For now I'm done being Q.'s watchdog, although I reserve the right to reactivate if he does something else worthy of investigation, or tries to make good on any of his empty threats to pursue legal action against me.

Now if only I knew whether he collects slot machines...