The Truth About Ruth - Part 2 - Merge

[thoughtful]

That's Steve. Leave him alone you meanie :penguin-no:

I love Steve! I've loved him since he was a cute little egg.

"Scrawny," in this context, was meant as a compliment!

[Sobeknofret]

I love Steve! I've loved him since he was a cute little egg.

"Scrawny," in this context, was meant as a compliment!

I thought she was talking about Steve *Maxwell* which made it hilarious to me!

[OkToBeTakei]

I thought she was talking about Steve *Maxwell* which made it hilarious to me!

Well he is named after him. Steve the puny chick.

[NotALoserLikeYou]

Is it against TOU to just post what to google for in order to see her name?

[LilMissMetaphor]

You're actions regarding vaccination has the potential to harm others

Your actions.

[louisa05]

I can't 100% guarantee it, but I highly doubt it. For starters, Vyckie has loads of pictures, lots of people have met her IRL and fessed up to. I follow her on both FB & Twitter and she posts regularly on both. Also, I had interactions with her through an online support group long before she dropped Quiverful, even before she had her last child; possibly the second to last, it's been awhile & I suck at remembering timelines.

Her "type" of Quiverful was from Nancy Campbell and, as far as I can tell, she had no axe to grind with Gothard or interest in ATI.

I'm sure the sleuths/admins have more info and could confirm/deny, but I don't think Vyckie should be speculated about any more than the C family.

Vyckie may have her issues, but she was QF and she is out.Being in the same state, I actually remember the "family of the year" story in the newspaper. It was the first time I heard about QF and "home church" movements.

[Lainey]

I am just popping in here before I leave the us for a week on vacay, but I can vouch for nerdymomma's husband working for legal aid in a place that would have allowed him to check up on this.

I get no on has to believe me.

I just want to know where you're off to this time. :D

[Melissa19128]

Is it against TOU to just post what to google for in order to see her name?

I'm a newer poster here and I managed to figure it out. Just follow the possum... :lol:

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Absolutely agree with Carla Bruni. There is no need to reveal the real name. I think FJ'ers have done a good job to uncover the major scam that is RR. But I think enough is enough. We can warn "the innocent" through other ways. There is a very fine line here between uncovering fraud and self-administered justice.

I don't see how posting the real name will protect any future victims anyway. (If it's about getting the scammer arrested, you can do that with a call to police or other authorities, no need to post the name here.)

If the same scammer comes up with a new scam, no way is she going to use her real name for that one either. So knowing the real name doesn't help prevent anything.

What DOES help protect people, I think, is making it absolutely rock solid obvious that two of the scam socks (RR and PM) were the same person (or any other obvious "this proves it's fake" info), and so therefore they are FAKE PEOPLE and it was a SCAM. That I think has been accomplished nicely. People need to hit bad google results when the google the name of the socks, because that's what any future potential victims are going to be wondering about and googling for, not the real name of the scammer. Details about the process, basically - what didn't add up and why.

Surely the internet sympathy scammers have real problems and yes it might be an actual illness. But probably the best thing for them AND their victims is to simply coldly and methodically expose them as fake, make it plain that the sock is a fake sock, every time, as early as possible. Uproot them and force them to move on, whether they quit for good or just start another scam, just interrupt that stuff. It doesn't need to have the real name, only that the sock is absolutely a sock and here's the smoking gun that showed it.

[Shoes Grace]

I gather no specific claims are being made because a majority of the evidence is circumstantial?

I've been following this since it originated in the "All Things Razing Ruth thread," and the only actual specific proof of an individual scammer creating multiple Internet personas that I've seen is a mention of the Television Without Pity poster ofDuggar posting links to the Razing Ruth blog and alluding to be Ruth. That strikes me as tenuous, though certainly not entirely trustworthy.

Everything else appears to be circumstantial evidence: another poster on another forum has also run scams of this type and her syntax is the same, and other similar claims. Has there been a stronger specific connection that I missed? While that is certainly enough to breed distrust, it does not prove without a doubt that an individual has absolutely created multiple personas and used all of them to solicit funds.

Curious, you have said that, initially, the administration checked Razing Ruth's IP addresses and found no inconsistencies, and additionally that you personally communicated with Ruth and felt everything was legitimate. Later, the administrator's post regarding the situation said that due to some undisclosed inconsistencies with IP addresses, the administration is pretty sure Razing Ruth is not who she says she is. Are you unable to explain what changed without revealing the specific nature of the terms of use violations? Or did you and I missed it in the thread?

I fully understand suspicions. I fully understand the administration's choice to limit the posting capabilities of anyone they deem to have violated the terms. I don't understand why such emphasis is being placed on the situation as I see it- there are possible, but unproven, connections between multiple accounts over multiple online locations and all of these have indirectly solicited money. I don't think that's enough for me to pass judgement, but as no one else has voiced this concern, I'm asking: did I miss something incontrovertible?

[twin2]

I gather no specific claims are being made because a majority of the evidence is circumstantial?

I've been following this since it originated in the "All Things Razing Ruth thread," and the only actual specific proof of an individual scammer creating multiple Internet personas that I've seen is a mention of the Television Without Pity poster ofDuggar posting links to the Razing Ruth blog and alluding to be Ruth. That strikes me as tenuous, though certainly not entirely trustworthy.

Everything else appears to be circumstantial evidence: another poster on another forum has also run scams of this type and her syntax is the same, and other similar claims. Has there been a stronger specific connection that I missed? While that is certainly enough to breed distrust, it does not prove without a doubt that an individual has absolutely created multiple personas and used all of them to solicit funds.

Curious, you have said that, initially, the administration checked Razing Ruth's IP addresses and found no inconsistencies, and additionally that you personally communicated with Ruth and felt everything was legitimate. Later, the administrator's post regarding the situation said that due to some undisclosed inconsistencies with IP addresses, the administration is pretty sure Razing Ruth is not who she says she is. Are you unable to explain what changed without revealing the specific nature of the terms of use violations? Or did you and I missed it in the thread?

I fully understand suspicions. I fully understand the administration's choice to limit the posting capabilities of anyone they deem to have violated the terms. I don't understand why such emphasis is being placed on the situation as I see it- there are possible, but unproven, connections between multiple accounts over multiple online locations and all of these have indirectly solicited money. I don't think that's enough for me to pass judgement, but as no one else has voiced this concern, I'm asking: did I miss something incontrovertible?

Please see the thread in Chatter. It is explained in more detail there.

[NurseNell]

I'm a newer poster here and I managed to figure it out. Just follow the possum... :lol:

I did that, so that's her? We know this to be true because?

[Amelie]

I need to start replying to everything so I can read Chatter.

[Melissa19128]

I did that, so that's her? We know this to be true because?

Well,I read the thread over on GOMI that had some info in it. There seems to be a thread in Chatter that has some more in depth info. I do not have access to that board yet but you will most likely get your answer there.

[Shoes Grace]

Thank you, Twin2, I didn't realise there was also a Chatter thread, when this one moved in and out of Chatter.

[RainbowSky]

I need to start replying to everything so I can read Chatter.

Me too! I've lurked for YEARS without an account so not being able to see sucks :D

[polabear]

I gather no specific claims are being made because a majority of the evidence is circumstantial?

(Snip)

Curious, you have said that, initially, the administration checked Razing Ruth's IP addresses and found no inconsistencies, and additionally that you personally communicated with Ruth and felt everything was legitimate. Later, the administrator's post regarding the situation said that due to some undisclosed inconsistencies with IP addresses, the administration is pretty sure Razing Ruth is not who she says she is. Are you unable to explain what changed without revealing the specific nature of the terms of use violations? Or did you and I missed it in the thread?

I fully understand suspicions. I fully understand the administration's choice to limit the posting capabilities of anyone they deem to have violated the terms. I don't understand why such emphasis is being placed on the situation as I see it- there are possible, but unproven, connections between multiple accounts over multiple online locations and all of these have indirectly solicited money. I don't think that's enough for me to pass judgement, but as no one else has voiced this concern, I'm asking: did I miss something incontrovertible?

I'm not Curious, but I was the one who originally looked into the IP addresses. They did show razing Ruth making a cross country trip at the time she said she was. The route was odd, but given that Geo location on ip addresses is not exact, and she had reasons for not exactly revealing her route, it didn't raise a huge red flag.

After more information was uncovered, the inconsistencies in the IP addresses suddenly made much more sense. That is detailed in the chatter thread.

[Tallulah]

Me too! I've lurked for YEARS without an account so not being able to see sucks :D

Me three! LONG time lurker and it is killing me to miss out on Chatter!

[NDC22]

Me three! LONG time lurker and it is killing me to miss out on Chatter!

I'm on your bus too. So, I will start posting random things. Like, I love Lainey's raccoon as her profile picture.

[Amelie]

Me too! I've lurked for YEARS without an account so not being able to see sucks :D

You're way ahead of me, RainbowSky. I need 70 more posts.

[Curious]

I know it's frustrating for people that do not have enough posts to see Chatter to feel like they are being left out of the loop. Here is the reason that more information was provided in Chatter vs all of it being provided in one place:

You may wonder why this particular thread is in chatter while the main one remains in snark. We understand that it in the nature of FJers to speculate and web spelunk to uncover inconsistencies. Chatter, unlike snark, is not trolled by bots and not archived. Because FJ ranks very high on google for a number of items an innocent person named in this thread may quickly find themselves linked to nefarious terms such as "scam" or "fraud," having a real life effect on them. While we remind you that linking a real name to a FJ username is a violation of our TOU we recognize that blogs, pinterest accounts, or even unintentional linking may occur. Therefore, this action is preemptive to protect the truly innocent.

As you can tell, from following this thread, that is exactly what did happen due to the fact that there are 2 people with such close names (literally 1 letter difference). Because we are following the TOU and not allowing real names to be posted, the innocent person has not had their name attached to this mess.

As others have said, knowing the real name won't change anything. If (when) she does this type of thing again, it won't be under her real name. The important thing is tying everything together and Carla B has done an amazing job finding things I knew about, but hadn't been able to dig up yet. She also found some things that I was not aware of, so I think that it was stuff that didn't even get found during the Penn Mommy scheme.

Anyway, without going into too much detail, I will try to give those that can't read Chatter yet a bit more information.

Essentially after some digging around, we discovered that RR had been posting for most of her time (both on Yuku and here on the new forum) on FJ from the same town as PM. Some googling led to her facebook which showed a trip from CA to IL which matched the IP addresses we had for her posting during the trip.

Now, I realize I said there was nothing particularly noteworthy regarding her IP addresses when I posted originally about it. At that time, we knew that her route was different than the one she had posted here on FJ, but it was a viable (if somewhat odd) route from point A to point B. Several of us theorized that since she was so worried about her identity and was posting essentially a play by play of her travel, she was simply posting a different route so that people could not track her down on the trip, if they were so inclined.

Obviously, once things really started to coming to light and we found out all this other information and the facebook page with pictures that match the exact locations and dates, it's harder for us to write it off as RR being afraid of being met out on the road somewhere. That being said, there is likely more than one person that took a vacation from California to Chicago during the same time period, so it could all be a coincidence.

We also found a twitter and blog that were asking for references for an attorney in IL, which was in the same area that her IL posts were from.

Since then, other people have found other things and have posted them, of course. We had a much more detailed summary, but we do not feel comfortable with giving out the level of detail due to the fact that it contains, not only her information, but also her kids and ex-spouse(s). No innocent people need to be tarred with this and regardless of what people think, FJ is not going to be part of that kind of action.

I would afford any other member the same protection, which I hope would be appreciated.

[Amelie]

Can we start a thread just for newbies to post random thoughts?

Yay! Only 69 more posts needed. :dance:

[Sass]

IANAL and only play one when I'm covering my ass(ets) on FJ ;) However, I think that last step I've bolded is the kicker for fraud. I don't think anyone could claim they have damage due to the RR scheme. Making you jaded against donating to other people on the internet, would not qualify I don't believe. Most people have said they didn't donate anything that took away from their own families and it was small amounts over a period of time, other than a couple of people. We only have a small sample that have come forward, of course. I'm sure there are many people, even here, that donated and haven't come forward, just statically speaking for every person that comes forward x amount do not in any given situation.

That makes sense. Thanks Curious! It also now occurs to me that nobody is going to bother with litigation over such small amounts of money as were donated- it just absolutely boils my blood when I think of how much money she likely made over the years by bilking kind people. I am concerned that without real-life consequences, she's just going to start scamming people elsewhere on the internet and they won't be able to figure it out because she'll be better at it, now that we've pointed out her mistakes this time around.

[Palimpsest]

At least these threads are bringing out the lurkers. Welcome. :D

Post some more! If you are afraid of being bitten start on the SOTDRT (although you are not required to do so). Most of us try to be gentle to newbies there. Unless you say something really incredibly stupid or Fundiesque, then all bets are off. :lol:

[Curious]

Can we start a thread just for newbies to post random thoughts?

Yay! Only 69 more posts needed. :dance:

You can post on a variety of threads in SOTDRT. There is a test thread in there that allows for testing various things like fonts, smilies etc. An introduction thread, and other threads for new folks so that should get you a few posts under your belt :)