Sunday, October 24, 2021

Rebel News: Small business' kiss of death.

Hey, kids, let's check in on the most recent small business that Rebel News crippled financially while raking in truckloads of donations, not a dime of which will go to said business:




So, just to be clear, after Rebel News hoovered up God-knows-how-many tens of thousands of dollars, encouraging Chris Scott to continue breaking the law and collect fine after fine, the end result is as you see -- three days in jail for Scott, 18 months probation, and tens of thousands in fines and costs, absolutely none of which will be covered by Ezra or Rebel News.

None.

Because that's how Rebel's "Fight the Fines" campaign works -- you get legal representation for free, but you are on the hook for everything else. So one can easily imagine that, if Rebel raised, say, $100,000 to represent Chris Scott, the end result is that Rebel and its lawyers got to keep the entire kitty, while Chris Scott got shafted with probation, jail time, fines and costs, all of which are his to deal with. But it gets worse.

Apparently, Scott is so indescribably addled that he's preparing to bury himself even further:



And, yes, Rebel News is fundraising off of this. Because, you know, money.

BONUS TRACK: It's worth appreciating how many millions of dollars have been sucked up by Rebel's "Fight the Fines" campaign, with so depressingly little to show for it.

As I am on Rebel's mailing list, I get regular self-congratulations from Rebel's in-house troll Sheila Gunn Reid, squealing with glee over the most recent "victory," wherein some Rebel-subsidized lawyer managed to get some piddling, dick-ass fine overturned. If you close your eyes, you can almost hear Sheila's nails-on-chalkboard screeching about the magnificent win of paying one of Rebel's lawyers $7,600 but, by God, they sure got Karen's $350 fine for not wearing a mask in the Dollar Store tossed, so all you generous donors are making a difference!!

(Pay no attention to the fact that most of these insignificant cases had a good chance of being overturned already, simply by having the defendant express remorse in front of a judge, or explain possibly extenuating circumstances, all without the need for a $750/hour lawyer.)

But once one stops obsessing over these trivial cases, one is suddenly forced to confront the fact that -- to the best of my knowledge -- Rebel has not won a single of their high-profile, flagship cases.

Not one.

Rather, their perpetually-flogged cases involving Pastor Art, or the Whistle Stop Cafe, or the other restaurants I wrote about earlier, have not ended with a single victory. Instead, the end result is always the same -- defendants who find themselves saddled with fines, costs, jail time and maybe the loss of their business -- while Rebel's lawyers are off doing the backstroke:




It's truly head-scratching to estimate how much money has been poured into this campaign, when the only people ending up with all that money are the people working for/with Rebel News.

I doubt I could come up with a more magnificently brilliant (while still totally legal) grift if I tried.

CC HQ READER CHALLENGE: If anyone wants to provide a link to a single high-level "Fight the Fines" victory, I will be happy to post it here. And by "high-level," I mean a widely-promoted case with actual strategic litigation value, and not the insignificant "Our brilliant lawyer, Chad Williamson, got Martha's $750 fine thrown out, whoo hoo!!" idiocy we are all so used to.

3 comments:

John S. said...

Chris actually bought the restaurant and land around it with some of the donations, along with side begging he did. He even erected a fence around it for photo's to play like the AHS did it. He's fine.

CC said...

Really? Well, I'm guessing that's worth an upcoming blog post. Got any links for this?

John S. said...

@CC

It might still be on his Facebook page in a video he did.
Same one where he claimed his daughter was sick and he was pulling out of the fight
to deal with that. Maybe 2-3 months ago?

I haven't seen direct proof.
He says he bought the restaurant with the donations.
I imagine you can check records of who owns the building and land.

That news went over like a lead balloon along with him previously asking people
to come work for him for free. Apparently several of his staff quit.

A lot of the people who appear in Sheila's videos are friends of hers and the family.
Like I've said in the past. A lot of the stuff coming out of Rebel in Alberta and BC is staged with people they know.

The guy with the beard who was whining about the Gracelife fence being torn down by protesters is one of Sheila's friends who does security for Rebel and so is the guy in tinted glasses on her left. That's one of her security. Saw him in BC at the Yaniv court in Surrey. They stopped the fence being torn down because she needed it up for the e-begging videos.