Greg Lloyd Smith
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Greg Lloyd Smith (born July 3, 1962) is a controversial Internet entrepreneur, alleged by some to be a con artist because of his frequent changes of identity. He currently manages a corporation called Mayside, Inc. (formerly Baou, Inc, formerly MPC Trading, formerly Kestrel Trading Corporation) which is the parent company of the controversial charity QuakeAID. Smith is alleged to have faked his own death [1] in 2005, using the pseudonym "Jennifer Monroe" to do so.
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[edit] Early ventures
Smith's first Internet start-up was an escrow service called FrugalEscrow, which went bust. Although few details of this start-up survive, Smith's OfficialWire news website (described below) mentions it in one of its articles, as follows:
- FrugalEscrow was the victim of the fraud, not the perpetrator. The author(s) of the defamatory website and abusive email campaign are describing their own positions in the affair, not anyone associated with Kestrel.
[edit] Relations with Amazon
Smith registered www.amazon.com.gr in Greece and then tried to sell it back to Amazon.com. He was sued by Amazon using the RICO (Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations) statutes, and the URL was subsequently awarded to Amazon.
Smith and Kestrel Trading Corporation were ruled against by a court in Scotland for using a domain name "as an instrument of fraud", and an "interim interdict" was upheld by the judge in the case. [2] [3]
[edit] You've Got Post
In 2004, Smith started a website called You've Got Post which offered free email accounts with 1TB of storage. The users of the Something Awful Forums discovered this website and were quickly banned for using "too much" of their 1TB disk space, and eventually the website was shut down. The insulting messages Something Awful users received from the administrator, who was actually Smith himself posing as a female employee, caused an investigation into You've Got Post, which uncovered the multiple ventures of MPC Trading such as QuakeAID. Some of the messages indicated that the management of the site was reading users' private messages, despite the terms of service not making it clear that they had reserved the right to do so.
[edit] OfficialWire
Smith also runs a website called OfficialWire (formerly OfficialSpin). This website is occasionally used by Smith and other members of BAOU to promote his own ventures, and release editorials critical of the Bush administration and on other subjects of his interest. For example, a member of BAOU once used it to criticize Christian Wirth, also known as RaD Man, a user on Wikipedia who removed the link to QuakeAID from a list of verified charities.[4] The "OfficialWire NewsDesk" also released a report about business in 2002 which seemed to actually revolve around Smith's various ventures in 2002, such as the Scottish lawsuit and the failure of FrugalEscrow.[5]
OfficialWire endorses Daniel Brandt, another controversial figure online.[6]
[edit] Trademark status
Smith has claimed registered trademark status on his own name, and used this to threaten legal action against others who mention it in the course of discussing his activities.[7] However, he has also claimed the right to fair use of others' trademarks in very similar contexts in the course of his own online commentary.[8]
[edit] External links
[edit] FrugalEscrow
- FrugalEscrow counts cost of pulled IPO
- FrugalEscrow takes corporate advisor to court
- £11m Claim For FrugalEscrow Float Failure
