On Sep 20, 9:06 pm, samsloan wrote:
Take a look athttp://gothicchess.blogspot.com/

It makes it clear that Rob Mitchell is a big time con artist:

"Wire us $30,000 and we'll be there

They called Thursday night. Mike spoke up. No hello, no pleasantries
exchanged. Just this: "So far all of our costs and research for this
has set us back as least $30,000 of that $35,000 we had budgetted for.
And we realize you are going to make millions out of this deal, so if
you want us in New York by Monday morning, we need that $30,000 wired
to us tonight or tomorrow."

I could not stop laughing.

"Yeah~~~~~ right!" was all I could say.

Rob Mitchell said: "Well what's wrong with that number?" You know, I
think he actually believed he was making a legitimate request. I said
"Rob, out of the blue, you're tagging me with this ridiculous sum? I
haven't seen ANY of your work, I have no idea you guys are even going
to be there on Monday, and you expect me to pay? We talked about
having Trump make this allocation, when did this become my
responsibility?"

Rob was more than a little defensive. "We've done all of this work..."

"What work???" I said angrily. "What have you done except filled up
most of my phone calls with bull**** and nonsense?"

Rob went into this excessive diatribe about the cost of researching a
project like this. Hello? They were doing the COST part of the COST/
BENEFIT analysis, how could they have burned through the equivalent of
$30,000? Is their research valued at $2500/day? And where is it? What
was I to be in receipt of in exchange for $30,000? Had he forgtotten
that one of the objectives of the New York visit was to get such an
allocation so we could all breath a little easier? It wasn't long
before I got to the bottom of it all.

...............

I did continually say to them: "You definitely have Fischer and Karpov
on board with this, right?"

They always said "Yes" to this.

Then finally, Titus delivered the bomb.

ANATOLY KARPOV NEVER HEARD OF GOTHIC CHESS, NOR CHESS MASTERMINDS.

While I must admit I was not 100% shocked because I had a feeling this
was going on, I just could not get my mind to wrap around the
monumental level of B.S. these guys where shovelling. It made those
earth movers on The Discovery Channel with the 10 foot high tire
diameters look like Tonka trucks by comparison.

I called them. True to form, Mitchel answered, with Calger in the
background.

"Guess who I heard from today?" I said, very energetically.

"Who?" they said almost in perfect unison.

"Anatoly Karpov."

I paused for effect. Then I allowed them to remain uncomfortable in
the silence.

"I said, Anatoly Karpov."

Rob was the first one to break the eerie silence. "Well, what did he
have to say?" was all he could spit out.

I said "He never heard of Gothic Chess."

I sooooooo wanted to elaborate on it, and rub it in their faces, by
why bother when simplicty does all the work for you?

Calger tried to speak. It was hilarious.

"Well, we spoke through his secretary, who has been known not to
deliver messages."

After I stopped laughing I said:

"That's a good feature in a secretary isn't it? But I just have three
questions for you. One. How the hell could you possibly know that?
Two. If you did know that, how the hell could you assume she contacted
Karpov and then tell me Karpov wanted to play. Three. What are you
going to do after I beat the **** out of the both of you?"

I made sure they heard the dial tone first.

So, the CMM "contract" wasn't a contract at all. It didn't exist. The
whole thing was a charade to bilk me out of $30,000 which would go
towards paying off Titus.


Titus? Hmm... wasn't he the guy with blue face-paint in
an Anthony Hopkin's movie? The kiddies loved that one.

Look, I wouldn't snub this Titus fellow if I were you; when
he gets mad, he *really* gets mad. Good thing it wasn't
real money, like say a thousand talons (Ben Hur, chariot
race bet).


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